rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

as far as i know stet and i have it. anyone else?

Saturday 28 March
During the day i started feeling that classic tingly 'emergency' feeling that accompanies pretty much any fever. i had a scheduled aperatif/hangout at 7:15 with my wife's family, about a dozen of them shouting over the top of each other for an hour. my wife also said she didn't feel good, so we PRETENDED to drink by pouring some kombucha into wine glasses. it wasn't so bad.

by the time i was ready for bed i had a proper fever - 38.3C (101F). that night was terrible. classic delirium dreams. i was one of many little bundles or hashmarks that needed to be grouped and lined up inside a large pen somewhere in westminster. it was my job to do the grouping and lining up, and i was also one of the hashmarks. i tried every combination. it never was right. i woke up maybe 4 times and always returned to this same anxiety dream. my body ached. it was hard to get back to sleep.

Sunday 29 March
toast was bitter. coffee was horrible. i started coughing. not a lot, and it never felt violent, but it was there. i ached all over. in the afternoon i slept, which was massively helpful. after that i even started to feel okay.

my wife having similar symptoms to me, but milder. little or no fever, and less aches.

i went for a walk (allowed under NHS guidelines) keeping well away from everyone and feeling like the angel of death. as i walked i could smell something. it was persistent. extremely recognisable yet very unusual. i could smell it wherever i went. once i got back home i could still smell it. i finally figured it out. burning hair. since then i haven't smelled it.

another symptom began: little pain flashes at the base of my skull lasting for no more than a second or two. right side, left side, at random. no trouble breathing. but chest feeling tight and a bit... hollowed out sort of. there is some serious shit happening in there. prefer not to know.

whole family watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol which was WAY more trash than i had remembered. still kinda fun.

i started to feel even better. by this time i'd started taking paracetemol right up to the max dosage each day (2x 500mg tablets three times a day) and kind of trying to game it so that it would take effect at the ideal time but not put me over my limit. felt better going to bed.

Monday 30 March
night absolutely awful. worst yet. woke up needing to pee and couldn't go back to sleep for maybe 2 hrs because of the aches. finally realising i was being an idiot and should just take some paracetemol. did so, got to sleep in 10 minutes. some untold time later wake up absolutely DRENCHED. hanes beefy T just wet through. changes clothes.

realise there is an eerie resemblance between how i feel in the mornings and how i might feel after an almighty speed bender. metallic taste in mouth, insides feel totally used up and squeezed out, flashes of pain in head. strong urges to pee that result in very little.

actually take a shower and change into real clothes to try to feel more normal. it kind of works! and guess what - it's a homeschool day!

somehow my wife and i manage my kids through a few online classes, set them up with some videogames and lunch, are incredibly irritable towards each other and the kids. after the kids are in bed we have a big talk and apologise to each other.

Tuesday 31 March
new night strategy: keep two paracetemol by the bed and take as soon as i wake up in the middle of the night. IT WORKS. more or less. i basically sleep through. rise at 8:30 feeling like shit but at least i slept.

the first of several grocery drop-offs arrives courtesy of a neighbourhood friend. the lovely Emma B feels significantly worse and i'm about the same. we're basically holding steady. no shortness of breath is what i'm holding onto.

it turns out one of my bosses at work had it right before we were all told to work from home and it took him 15 days to come out of it. he urged me in a text message to completely disconnect from work for at least 3-4 days and get better. that's what i'm doing.

as i'm writing this my kids are playing PS4 and my wife is in bed.

i fully intend for this to be as bad as it gets. i'm not drinking alcohol at all. i'm having like a half a cup of coffee a day (as opposed to my usual 3-4). it tastes nasty now anyway. drinking lots of water. getting to bed around 11pm.

whole family watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol which was WAY more trash than i had remembered.

(get well soon stet and tracer obv)

Seconded.

(Big Star's) Thirded

Sounds horrible TH, hope that’s as bad as it gets & you both get better soon.

the most amazing part, which i had completely forgotten, goes something like this:

cruise: 'you're an analyst?'

renner: 'that's right'

cruise: 'pen'

renner: 'excuse me?'

cruise, more pettily: 'give me a pen!'

renner gives cruise a ballpoint pen. cruise then starts drawing on his own palm with the pen. as he's drawing, he's talking. cruise: 'if you're such a hot shot analyst, i'm looking for a european male, mid-50s, blue eyes, looks like this' and then cruise HOLDS UP HIS PALM to show him the BALLPOINT SKETCH and renner says...

'well.. it's crude sketch, but it could be...' and pinpoints the exact dude, rattling off the guy's postdoctoral degrees

xpost lol thanks all

feel better tracer! and stet!

yes but had you any criticisms of this perfect movie or were you just going to detail its awesomeness

I didn't think I had seen this movie but now that you described the scene, I have totally seen it.

Get well!

Good luck Tracer! Judging by your post it sounds like your kids are just bowling through this without any ill-effects at all, which I guess is both a blessing and a curse right now?

Good luck & get well soon, Tracer & stet & families and any other ilxors with bugs to report!

and thanks for the symptoms diary, it's interesting to have an idea what to expect (or not)...

take care TH (and stet, and yr respective households), good to hear you've been able to function on some level during the day

Matt: bingo

tbh the thing i’m almost dreading more than contracting the ‘rona is trying to look after a 21-month-old while feeling like hammered shit for a week or more

Get well, this is riveting 'rona-blogging

from what i understand stet is much further along in this. would be interesting to see to what extent our experiences line up.

Ilxor stevie had it too iirc, but I think he's out the other side now

!!! i did not know

Get well sooon, tracer.

Very best wishes to both of you.

i hope you all get well soon xx

the most alarming symptom i’ve heard about so far tbh

― a struggle to make meat-snacking fit (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, March 31, 2020 8:17 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well loss of taste is a common symptom

roasted

lol

a+

I mention this just to cheer you up, Tracer Hand (hoping you find humour in such things): I was going to post on that first-ILX-mention thread, so I looked up "coronavirus," and, well, I'm sure you can guess the rest.

rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

Huh? Wrong link.

'Professor Wickramasinghe admits there is no hard evidence for his theory; and researchers who have been working on Sars reacted with a mixture of disbelief and ridicule.
There is nothing strange about the Sars coronavirus, they said; it certainly evolved from other known viruses.

One leading expert said Professor Wickramasinghe's letter "must be a joke"; another said it is simply ridiculous.'

surely it is the Professor's name that is the joke here?!@@

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, May 23, 2003 11:59 AM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

http://www.asiantribune.com/files/images/Chandra1%20-%20Chandra%20Wickramasinghe_0.jpg

Wow!

I am ashamed of making fun of what at this remove I now consider a rather brilliant, grand and gnarly name. :/

Also if that be he, he is clearly A Dude

And he is claiming extraterrestrial origins of coronaviruses to this day.

Unfortunate joke. I was reminded of how, 25-30 years ago, when my friends and I came across someone with an unwieldy name we would exclaim "Gesundheit!" As kids this just seemed silly, but now I have to wonder if it ever came across as racist.

pigs! in! space!

Wednesday 1 April
Best night yet. I didn’t need my emergency paracetemol.

Two massive naps today. Worryingly, Paul comes down with a 103F fever and sleeps for hours as well.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation on the teevee with the kids. Goodness me what a movie. The opera scene. The ‘water torus’ scene. The car chase in Morocco. Kidnaping the Prime Minister. The final cat-and-mouse shootout / knife fight among the foggy alleyways of Tower Hill. The delicious conclusion. Best MI hands down imo.

Appetite still good (though still no sense of smell) and breathing still fine.

Thursday 2 April
Rocky night. However Paul has woken up in a great mood, and no fever.

Went for a longish walk today with the lovaly Emma B. Made avologmeno for lunch and was then attacked by a headache the ferocity of which I have probably never felt before in my life. It wasn’t all-encompassing like a migraine but it somehow felt worse - it was sudden, implacable, vice-like, a heavy boot holding me down. Utterly defenseless. Slept three hours in the afternoon and the boot was still there when I woke up.

Managed to rouse myself for dinner, read to the kids before bed.

In some ways this is maybe the worst day so far. Just flattened. Currently watching Pitch Perfect, which is exactly my speed. Head still throbbing. I’ve heard that people can really take a nose-dive in the second week and I hope this isn’t the beginning of that.

fingers crosse tracer, i hadnt seen migraine as a common symptom but i have where possible just been avoiding too much of that reporting tbh

heartened that yr MI taste is back, that is indeed the best of them

Sorry you’re going through this!

Thanks for keeping everyone informed, I'm sure it's a struggle.

best wishes to you both

Best wishes to you both.

<3 <3 <3 <3

<<<<3333

Damn Tracer, hang in there.

,

fuck, tracer. get well soon. and thanks for keeping us updated here - this sort of thing really helpful (and dare i say it interesting)

Get well soon. Hope it does mean you can't get it again at least.

<3 Tracer all the best to you and family. thanks for posting your updates. what fizzles just said.

Hold tight Tracer. Honestly this sounds like a real motherfucker, something especially cruel about the way it seems to trick everyone into thinking they're improving for a bit before finding new and more horrific ways to brutalise them.

It would be pretty sweet if they developed an at-home test that covered COVID, flu, etc all in one. per tipsy it’s very nice to know what you’ve got

I think you need to cough on different cards or whatever but isn't this exactly what they developed at Pluslife?

Yeah some people I know aren't even testing anymore when they get sick. Which is super weird to me, because if I can know what I'm sick with, I would like to!

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 26 June 2024 23:55 (yesterday) link

I don't bother anymore, because it's not going to change my behavior. If I'm sick, I stay home, stay away from others and sleep in the spare room so I don't get my wife sick.

I mean, there's a public health benefit is you test positive and report it online (I did once a couple months ago), but I think they're able to glean all the data they need via wastewater samples now

Further updates, flying back from Ireland direct to L.A. and I have never heard that much coughing or sneezing on a plane. Kept my mask on, kept the air blowing down on me from above, sneaked in some bites of food at dinnertime, and I guess we'll see what happens.

My wife's boss and his boss, both them and their entire families are knocked out by it currently, and they picked it up from different sources. The former had to cancel his vacation, the latter are stuck in a hotel room on their vacation.

My companions who got knocked out by it were my father, brother, and his wife. I was worried for my dad because, well, he's battling brain cancer. This was his final journey over there. But he had just been vaccinated and therefore overcame it quickly. The others are still fighting off lingering symptoms, ten days later and back in the states.

My dad likely picked it up on the flight over. He didn't mask up, he's a bit stubborn about it. I was really insistent that he do so, too. But at least he wore the mask flying back home.

I finally got unlucky. :(

now almost everyone i know has covid

yeah I'm back to masking in grocery stores etc

Unlucky here, on my American holiday :-((((

Ivy and sleeve where are you? Haven’t known any people getting it recently in the DC area.

nyc

I was visiting DC earlier in the week!

Oregon xxp

It finally got me

Hope it's not too bad.

noooo

Get through okay! Was looking for this thread a couple of weeks back, finally got me then too.

oof, get well soon Neando, a lot of people are getting it, but masking is still so rare here in DC, unfortunately.

You hung out longer than anyone, man. Cheers!

When I get sick with ANYTHING, even a mere cold, my immune system overreacts severely at first. No exception here. Got high fever, weakness, night sweats, no voice, ick.

Then a day later all that's gone, I'm fine and I'm only slightly congested. From deliriously screaming FACE ME SON OF JOR-EL at 3 am to being bored and sipping Gatorade

tested negative today (day 8).

for all I know, I'd have tested negative yesterday or the day before, just didn't try because it's expensive to test every day and I'd decided to be housebound until i next tested.

my main theory about how i'd avoided until now despite like 6 exposures is that I'd been ahead of the curve for years on the vaccine, getting the first two shots before the rest of the world du eto the trial, getting my first booster before Delta even showed up on a lark, and from then on, not letting 5-6 months go by without getting the new shot or a booster of the last one. and that streak broke last fall, after I got my fall shot, I didn't get another this spring like I'd done last year. CDC didn't recommend it for me, dad's not around anymore, mom didn't get a reboost, and I just didn't think about it.

thought about doing it anyway 2-3 weeks ago and almost made an appointment, but one of the experts I read said if I did that, I'd have to wait 4 months to get the new fall formula so I said I"d just awit. oops

glad you are okay!

i'm already looking forward to the new shots. i keep hearing about it being around. i've never had it as far as i know though i suppose i could have had an asymptomatic covid. my dad's never had it either and i'm looking forward to him getting the new shot as well. he lives with me. he's 89. so, you know, i worry in general about him.

(by "it" being around i mean covid not the new shots.)

Man, people all around me are down with it. I was worried about it on my recent UK vacation, but didn't get it and came home to find it just rampant in my own backyard. Some bad cases too, no hospitalizations or anything but just bad sick. And school starts tomorrow, so that's bound to be fun.

School starts so early now compared to when I was a kid and people started in the last week of August or even the day after Labor Day. Why?

A friend who caught it the first time two Augusts ago at a Vegas convention returned from the same convention last week...with COVID lol.

I too didn't get a spring booster like I did in '22 and '23, but I still mask in class, public transportation, and any place I feel uncomfortable. I still go out to eat in restaurants. At this point if I'm going to catch it it'll be because I hung out in someone's kitchen or living room.

I caught an asymptomatic infection in September '22 so I've no idea what symptoms are like.

School starts so early now compared to when I was a kid and people started in the last week of August or even the day after Labor Day. Why?

― guillotine vogue (suzy),

Same thing in Florida. A friend told me it's because here at least they finally get Thanksgiving week off.

I had a mild case late april/early may but I was still hawk tuah-ing up shit until very recently, mostly first thing in the morning... it seems to be finally over

maria got it and isolated in a bedroom and i felt so bad for her to be alone like that for so long. she got pretty sick but none of us got it from her. feels like a lifetime ago.

it helps that i have no friends and never go anywhere. i always knew there would be an upside to that someday. during peak pandemic people always masked when they came in the store and i never got sick.

maria probably got it from her step-mother who never met a mask she would wear or a new age dance party that she wouldn't go to. just this past week maria was supposed to go to dinner with her at the very place she thinks she got it all those years ago and her step-mother called to cancel because of covid!! it would have been the double step-mom whammy!!

she's very nice - and a nurse! - but that contact improv crowd is not to be trusted.

Nurses are the most feral COVID deniers imo.

My mom got it for the first time, tested positive this morning. She has hypertension so I'm a bit worried, going to tell her to take it very easy. My aunt also got it possibly for the first time (they didn't get it from each other.) I was at my mom's house two days ago, and flew back on yet another plane full of coughers. And O'Hare sounded like a collective sickbed. Wish me luck, I'd prefer to never get this.

Though I suppose I could have had it asymptomatically and never knew...what a bullshit virus.

We think my wife had it about a month ago — very mild case if so, but flu-like symptoms and major fatigue lingered for three or four weeks.

Based upon all available evidence, my mom appears to have picked it up dining outside at a restaurant, on a breezy day. The server was semi close to her. It's really everywhere right now. Sending the kid back to school wearing a mask, he's been masking since he went back to school in person in fall of 2021 so that's not a change. I'm just glad several of this close friends continue to follow the same masking philosophy so he doesn't feel weird.

I've never heard of an outdoor case! At least around me.

tested positive today, I did not suspect covid and was blindsided. symptoms are mild except the bleary lightheaded feeling is unbearable and I don't have the mental acuity to make a cup of tea. It took a lot of effort to write this actually.

David @ the Dentist "is this forever??" where I'm @ rn

oh well, it was a good run

Feel better Deflatormouse. This was your first bout? Yeah, good run.

Feel better!

Just curious, what prompted you to test, especially if the symptoms were mild? I've had to set a relatively measurable bar for myself to justify a test, like two or more conspicuous unshakable symptoms, fever plus something else. Otherwise I'd be testing all the time something felt off, because welcome to middle age, lol. Am I achy because I am sick, or because I slept funny, or exercised too much, or spent the previous day moving heavy boxes around?

I just saw a Facebook friend declare “I am never taking a COVID test again!” which is such a weird position to take. When I’m sick I LIKE knowing what I’m sick with, if possible, for lots of reasons.

All the best DM.

if i’m sick and am potentially hanging out with people in the near future, i take a covid test

lot of my friends are immunocompromised tho

I mostly self-isolate when I'm sick regardless of what I'm sick with, but I still think it's valuable to know what you have. If there was one wide-spectrum test that could tell if you have COVID, flu, a cold, strep, RSV or whatever, I'd take it any time I felt crappy.

getting there https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/well/covid-flu-combination-tests.html

xps thanks! I called my ent for an appointment, said I had a chest cold that might have caused an adenoid infection (I get em constantly) and would she take a look to see if I need antibiotics. she told me to go to urgent care first.

really lucky because tho I'm generally reclusive, this tends to be my busiest week of the year socially (@ivy - good idea).

I stopped masking on the subway... less than 6 months ago? too complacent

i tested neg recently, and decided to compete in a climbing competition i had signed up for— of course, my performance was off, but i honestly did pretty well for someone who had just had covid.

I've seen those combination flu/COVID tests in CVS.