Holidays 2024, Part VII: Sidelined

 It's Covid. Daisy and I both have Covid. 

Yeah, turns out that the surf and turf of Black Friday may not have been food poisoning after all -- that is one of the symptoms of the new strains, I guess. Not everyone gets it.

Yesterday, we began to feel more and more sickly all day, into the afternoon and evening hours. It got to the point where we were both googling Covid symptoms just to check them, at the same time, without telling the other person. At that point, I was just like "fuck it, let's just test ourselves."

Mine came back positive within a minute -- it's supposed to take 15-30 minutes. Daisy's took a few minutes but the positive line on her test came in much darker than on mine, indicating a high viral load. 

I guess. Truthfully I have no idea scientifically how those tests work. I think they're supposed to test not for the virus itself, but for antibodies or something. 

Regardless...we're sick. 

I am mostly lucid and am feeling -- cognitively, at least -- pretty normal. I have big time, wicked head congestion, runny nose/sneezing, and an awful cough, but I'm not dying or anything. Daisy, however, is really sick. She sounds like death, has a near-constant fever/chills, and in general is not doing well. I have already started to lose a bit of my smell and taste (though not all of it, thankfully) and she has not.

More than anything else, I'm just tired. The fatigue is just draining. Were it possible and/or comfortable, I'd be sleeping the majority of the next 24 hours or so. I should be okay to work for the rest of the week, provided the illness doesn't take a really bad, wild turn somewhere. Regular intervals of DayQuil and Mucinex are helping, greatly so. I notice a huge difference when I am medicated versus when I'm not, which is good -- it means the medicine is working the way it's supposed to. 

We did, of course, let Daisy's parents know and let her sister and family (now safely back in Denver) know as well. The parents, mom at least, are testing negative so far. We'd like that to continue. I don't know about the sister's family yet, but I know the sister herself had already told Mama that she was really sick upon returning home...and remember, her second-oldest son (who sat next to us at the Thanksgiving table) was sick on the way into town, so I think we've found the likely disease vectors here.

The sickness does, however, throw a bit of a wrench into our plans for the next week or so. We now have to self-isolate for at least five days (which isn't a problem for me, because I never leave the house unless I have to), and that means the dentist appointment we had scheduled for Wednesday morning is now definitely going to be canceled. It means Daisy can't go run errands or get groceries during the day when I'm sleeping. It means delaying mailing out my Christmas boxes for folks by at least another week.

I guess I can look forward to my Tiktok shop stuff showing up over the course of the next two weeks or so, right? Right?

Anyway. I digress.

The last time we had Covid was February 2023. That was actually our first time having it. I got my kidney stone exactly one month later. So, I'm going to try to avoid repeating that scenario this time around -- I'm going to drink a lot of water, avoid excess vitamins/supplements, and just try to cleanly recover as much as I can. We've got so many things coming up this month as we have the lead up to Christmas. Here's the rough calendar as is, that will absolutely get stuff added to it over the course of the month:

• December 2 through 18: work as normal for me.
• December 10: Repairman appointment for our adjustable bed frame, which is behaving badly.
• December 13: Payday.
• December 19 through 28: I'm off work for my "Christmas vacation." 
• December 20: My 42nd birthday.
• December 27: Also payday. 
• December 29 and 30: work as normal for me.
• December 31: off for New Year's Eve.
• January 1: work as normal for me, I cover the holiday.

There will be a lot more thrown in as the month progresses. I have to see if I can get in for a doctor appointment at some point with my new PCP, in order to get refills on all of my meds. I do not for the life of me know when that's going to happen. I also don't know for a fact that Daisy is completely done Christmas shopping, and we'll certainly have to get some foods for Christmas dinner -- which, I learned will just be the four of us this year (us and the parents). 

I will, of course, have to make time to wrap presents for everyone (whether they're in town or not) and mail out packages to extended family like my own parents. I'll also have to deal with the final batch of Christmas cards over the next few days too, once they arrive.

Don't worry -- for those of you who get cards from me in the mail (so, like 1% of 1% of people reading this), you won't get Covid from the cards. They were all sealed up and done before I had any contact with the patient zeroes at Thanksgiving dinner. By the time the others get here in the mail and I send them out, this crud should be completely out of my system.

What am I doing in the interim to feel better? Well, unless this gets worse, I'm thinking the worst part of it I might already be through -- given the surf-and-turf on Friday and how bad I felt on Saturday evening and most of Sunday. My goal is to just rest as much as possible, to stay hydrated, to keep taking my meds at regular intervals, and to just try to ride it out, as they say. I'm probably at around 60% right now, but Daisy is likely around 20-30%. My goal is to hang loose and see how long it takes for this shit to dissipate.