How Did I Get Here?

How Did I Get Here?

I wrote this about 3 weeks after my Covid infection. 

I wrote it down over several days...

It was so hard to read and to write, most days I could barley think coherently...

Some days I could not read , write or think at all.

All I could do was lay down and cry in pain...

I found this journal entry that I have no memory of writing.

I have short term memory issues now and am finding notes I wrote to myself, Facebook lives I recorded, that I cannot even remember doing. 

This is hard to see and acknowledge ...

the lost minutes, hours and days...

and to realize that I continue to have all of these symptoms, even 6 months later.

This is the journal I wrote to myself in early January...

January 2021-

I spent 5 weeks in the basement. I went in the week before Thanksgiving, and came out on Christmas day. I was finally night-fever free and I had finally tested negative.

The symptoms came on every day for nearly 4 weeks. The headache, loud humming in my head and nausea started first. Then came the vomiting and diarrhea. Next, all over body pain, the most concentrated in my lower back and hips and down my thighs. It felt like the bones were being burned and crushed at the same time. The mental confusion and inability to think and read and write started and is ever present still. I would sleep for 20 hours a day for days at a time, then be awake 20 hours a day for days on end. The symptoms continued to add on with the night sweats starting about day 7. Somewhere along the way the left eye began to lose vision clarity and have a haze at the peripheral vision. I also was having severe chest pain and it felt like every heart beat my heart was being stabbed. My 02 levels would drop to 90 but my heart would race to 130s to keep the oxygen level up. My body was compensating. I could not walk across the room without severe dizziness and heart pounding, shortness of breath. Talking and walking was a chore. My breathing was labored at rest. My fingers, toes, and left side of my face are numb. And all the symptoms would come and go, no rhyme or reason, every day, throughout the day, with no end in sight.

I cannot manage from day to day with any real routine. Sometimes I am feeling good when I wake. The headache level is good at 5 but as the morning goes the dizziness or balance issue worsens. I cannot drive unless it is a no dizzy day. I get maybe 2 or 3 a week. I will go to the store for an hour or 3, just wandering around to get some exercise and take advantage of being out of the house. But when I get home, I crash in exhaustion and find that I just cannot function.

Driving takes a lot of concentration because of all of the stimuli. I can't handle too much noise, light, activity around me or I just can't focus. This makes doing things very hard at times. And is exhausting mentally and emotionally.

If I cannot work as a nurse, cannot drive with any regular schedule, cannot read and comprehend and think clearly on a regular schedule , then what will I do, how will I take care of me and make money?

I really want to start a podcast taking about the trials of widowhood, depression, COVID. And I want to start an online community for women who have experienced life altering events,  people like me, to be able to speak to each other in a safe place and find help and support and advice and wisdom from each other.

I am doing my facebook lives as The Crazy Covid Lady in the basement. I Started them Dec 19^th after 4 weeks in the basement.

I want to help people and my podcast, Beautifully Broken with Dawn- Learning to Let Your Colors Shine, is my way of trying to do that.

I have to stop writing because my head hurts so badly and my left eye vision is fading out. Like when a candle flickers then goes out, only it doesn't go out completely, it just stays faded. I know, weird.

It's all weird.

It's all too much sometimes.

But... I will be OK...

Eventually, because what other choice do I have?