Category Archives: Covid Diary

As my experience with COVID-19 switches from a very personal fight to an occupational one, my heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones to the virus, whose own personal battles did not conclude as positively as mine. What have I learned from this? Well, coronavirus can present extremely differently. I hadContinue reading “Day Ten: Final Words”

I plan for this to be the penultimate entry on my fight against COVID, one which had become so personal. Day eight had not been disclosed in its entirety. I had organised a COVID test for Fi. It would have been a sense of deja vu had it not been for the contrasting drive. LockdownContinue reading “Day Nine: An Emerging Stigma”

It was another rough night for Fi and that meant a near enough rough night for me, but there was no further vomiting and the back pain was better. She did however, have the restless legs that I too, had experienced and on direct questioning, it was the same left leg that was particularly troublesome.Continue reading “The Crucial Day Eight”

Fi had a rough night, to say the least. She had back pain, lethargy, fevers and vomiting. Thinking back, she complained of back pain two days prior. I had to do a quick literature search to find out how common vomiting was. Not common but has been reported, was the conclusion. I realised I wasContinue reading “The End of Week One”

I felt better but little did I realise that the worst was yet to come… We may have been approaching the crucial day eight but I felt better. Fi and I joked how perhaps I had some underlying syndrome – clubbed fingers, being cursed with a lack of masculine height, born with pyloric stenosis toContinue reading “Day Six: One Contagious SOB”

I had a dream and not a very pleasant one. In it, I was reading an article but somehow living it too. A thirty-something Caucasian doctor, usually fit and well had COVID and deteriorated, requiring intensive care. Her symptom the day prior to deterioration was restless legs, a syndrome which already exists and may signalContinue reading “Day Five: The Dream”

At the start of the pandemic, I expected all of us on the frontline to get the c-word. Then three months on, I had no symptoms, felt well and hadn’t needed to isolate at all. I began to wonder if I was a lucky asymptomatic one, just happened to be immune or maybe my PPEContinue reading “Day Four: Confirmation”

I must have been tired and slept like a log; the drenching night sweat did not even cause a stir. Aside from damp pyjamas, I also woke with a shrivelled tongue inside a parched mouth and a very greasy block of hair. The glass of water by the bed proved useful and my tongue absorbedContinue reading “Day Three: Guess the Flavour”

I didn’t sleep well. Of course, I didn’t. I felt a little shivery and my temperature was 37.9C. Mild but high nonetheless. The tossing and turning of both mind and body was almost disturbing, as I began to contact trace in vain, after all I had been in contact with COVID patients all week. AndContinue reading “Day Two: Reliant on Memories”

It was odd really. The first thing my colleague Sarah mentioned when I greeted her was, ‘do you have a cold?’ In truth, I had a flare of allergic rhinitis at the weekend but then again I suffer from hayfever and a severe dust mite allergy. I didn’t feel unwell but I didn’t feel oneContinue reading “Day One: It Begins”