My Covid Experience

As we all know, the COVID outbreak has really affected all of our lives. Some people lost their jobs, some lost their homes, and others lost their lifetime worth of savings. Everyone in each corner of the world has been affected, even myself. About a week ago I got a cold and my head started hurting. I thought that it was just a common cold because it was also snowing here in Iowa. Little did I know that I was actually infected with COVID. When my symptoms started getting worse my father suggested that I should get tested just to be on the safe side. Until my tests came back I had to stay quarantined. It took about three days for the tests to come back. Externally, I was very sure that my tests would come back negative because my symptoms started to go down. Though, deep down I feared that the results would come back positive. It was about 5:00 pm on November 6th when my father had called me to tell me the results of the test. The result was what I feared. The results were positive. There was so much going on in my head when I heard the results. I didn’t know how to react to the news. It was in my best interest that it was in the earliest stage when we found out that I had COVID. 

Now let’s talk about some of the symptoms that I had prior to getting tested. The symptoms started to show up shortly after the first snow of the year. It started off with just a normal cold. For the first two days I overlooked it because it was getting cold and of course, I only had a common cold. However, on the 3rd day, I woke up with a severe headache. I thought that it would be fine by the time I get to school because my headaches usually only last for 10-15 minutes. When I got to school my headache got worse and by the end of the day, I felt like I was going to pass out. Struggling, I made it to my house and told my mom about my day and how I had a constant headache all day. She told me to take a short nap and maybe I would feel better after I woke up. I went to bed it wasn’t hard to fall asleep at all because I could hardly stay awake during the day. About an hour and a half later, I woke up. When I woke up I felt better but it was almost like an illusion because 10 minutes after I woke up the headache was back and it was even worse than before. It almost felt as if someone was in my head and was constantly hitting my head with a sharp weapon. The next day, my sister told my father about what all I was going through. My dad told me to stay at home and wait to go back to school until I get tested. Of course, the results were positive.

After I learned about the results I immediately moved to my room and completely eliminated contact with any of my family members. I had already kept a few disinfectant sprays, and disinfectant wipes to clean in my room to keep everything clean. Once in my room, I sprayed all of my belongings with the disinfectant spray and then I stored any items that could not be cleaned at the moment in a large plastic bag. That night it felt as if time had stopped and every minute felt like a thousand years because I had nothing to do and no one to talk to. My mom would put food outside of my door and when she would leave I would slightly open the door and take the food kept outside. It felt like I was living in a prison. I didn’t have any medications at home that would treat COVID so I just took a Tylenol for relief. The next morning my parents called the local hospital to talk about some treatment options. The doctors said that hospitalization was not needed because my symptoms were mild, though, I did have to take Vitamin C pills and foods that had high citrus concentrations. My mother made me drink hot water with lemon juice every two hours to relieve my sore throat. I have to say that hot water is very helpful because whenever I drank hot water my throat wouldn’t feel sore.

I had to stay quarantined for about 2 weeks. In those 2 weeks, I went through countless headaches, body aches, coughs, colds, and many other symptoms. You name it and I had it. Though I did not receive any medical treatment for Covid-19, my family did consult a few family physicians who talked us through a few medications that I could take at home to treat the virus. During the time that I was quarantined I still that to do online school but even when I was doing that I continuously felt tired and couldn’t pay attention. I spent a lot of time sleeping or lying on my bed because those are the only things that made me feel better. Covid-19 is not something that you want to experience, you go through so much pain that makes you feel like you are dying from within every second. My experience was not fun at all and I do not want to experience it again. Now, I take extra precautions to make sure that I stay hygienic at all times and make sure to follow all the CDC guidelines.