Richard Quest relives Covid-19 ordeal
WASHINGTON - I got Covid-19 two months ago. I'm still discovering new areas of damage.
The cough has come back, without warning and seemingly for no reason; so has the fatigue. True, neither are as debilitating as when I had the actual virus, but they are back. Like many others, I am now coming to realise that I am living and suffering from the long tail of Covid-19.
I got infected back in mid- April. The onset of symptoms came quickly. I suddenly noticed I was feeling very tired and I had a new cough. I got tested and the morning after I received a phone call from the medical centre, I had tested positive for coronavirus.
The virus is like a tornado. When it lands, it swirls through the body, causing chaos, confusion, coughs, wreaking damage to each organ it touches. Some won’t survive its visit.
For those that do, when it has
one surveys the damage to the human landscape and realises it’s much greater than first thought.
The Covid cough is not like your usual cough-it-up deep cough (what doctors politely call a “productive cough.”)
It is very distinctive. It is a dry, raspy, wheezy, cough. In my case, lots of short, expelling gasps of air, followed by a long, deep, chest-wrenching expiration cough, that has standers by wondering if I am going to keel over.
I have tested negative for the virus and positive for the antibodies, and my doctor says it won’t return. But there are days when I feel that it has.
I am also discovering new areas of damage: I have now become incredibly clumsy.. It is as if that part of my brain, which subconsciously adjusts hand and movement to obstacles it sees, isn’t working.
At times there’s a sense of mild confusion. The micro delay in a thought, the hesitation with a word. Nobody would notice but me.
My digestive system is peculiar, to say the least.
It doesn’t matter whether I call them symptoms, traits, or wreckage - my body doesn’t feel quite right.
For those who have not had Covid, or witnessed the mess it leaves behind, again, I urge you, do whatever you can to avoid this tornado.