I’m pretty sure that I caught this version of Covid-19 aboard flight AC855 from London to Toronto on Thursday 7th September. Where better to catch a virus than a packed tin can which spends the best part of seven and a half hours recycling the same air to everyone else? About five days later, I had a tickly cough and the start of an annoying cold, which at first I took to be merely a tickly cough and the start of an annoying cold, but which deep down I suspected could be something else. I carried on regardless, even after I tested positive for Covid some nine days later, as people tend to do these days, and we flew back to the UK with me quite possibly positive for Covid – I probably wasn’t by then, but I wasn’t to know – and the news is that the remnants of Covid, over a month on, are still with me.
This time, Covid hit me in three big ways and several very minor ones. The minor ones were at first, and only briefly, an undulating body temperature and aching limbs. The major ones weren’t exactly major issues in the grand scheme of things, but they have been more than irritating. In order of appearance, I have ‘enjoyed’ an awful hacking cough, so extreme I have almost passed out on numerous occasions, waves of tiredness veering from mild weariness to exhaustion and my breathing, thanks to added asthma, hasn’t been the best. None of this has put me anywhere near death’s door, I hasten to add, but had I been even older (is this possible?) and more frail, I suspect this may have been a tad more serious than the pain in the arse post Covid place in which I find myself.
This, I believe, is my second Covid infection, having waited two years for my first one and, unexpectedly to me at least, it has been much worse than the first one, even though I was still testing positive after 15 days last time. Within a week in early 2022, I was virtually back to normal, whatever normal is, but now, something like a month on, I’m definitely not.
When I went to the Netherlands, almost immediately after I got back from Canada, I really had to push myself through the tiredness and concentrate on my breathing – and it worked. I walked an insane number of steps in my five full days in Rotterdam – well over 90,000 as it happens – because there was so much I had to see and do but my God it was a big effort, even though I say so myself.
The point of this blog is not so much to describe my life of wallowing in self-pity – I certainly don’t feel that – but to urge that you, my loyal reader, take good care of yourself, rest when you need to and have that vaccine, even if it means paying for it. I wonder if my respiratory system was any worse, the need for more serious medical intervention may have been more likely. What I feel is beyond doubt is that Covid-19 remains a seriously unpleasant virus which will affect the whole country in all sorts of ways this winter, from things like staff shortages across everything everywhere, and, sadly, from hospitalisations and deaths.
The virus might have evolved and may kill less people, but it’s still pretty horrible and it’s worth avoiding if you can avoid it. I for one will be very glad when it’s gone altogether.
