IV. my COVID Experience
It’s late 2021, almost 2022, and before I post anything else on my site I have to share my COVID experience. It started with my very first plane ride. I was coming back from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. I was balled up on the window seat and not only that, the fan that was over me wouldn’t go off and was stuck in place. In some seat ahead of me someone had gone to sleep and smelled like pure mucus the entire flight. By the time I got off the plane, got my luggage, got into the car of my ride and back to my hometown, I had almost completely lost my voice. Not only did a fever and small throbbing headache set in, but my upper back and chest started aching. I tried to ignore these things. I took some pain medicine and lay down, but in the early hours of the night the pain only worsened and I became sick to my stomach. I vomited almost completely water. I tried to rest again but diarrhea started and it was the same, the stool was more water and less poop. I felt myself getting weaker and weaker every time I went to the bathroom. I decided to go to the hospital with aunt and cat pushing me up and out. Me and my aunt left for the hospital. I was very weak and it looked like it. Nurses did not want to come anywhere near me even when I knelt to get my strength up to continue to the waiting room office to answer questions about how I was feeling. They all looked wary of me but otherwise unbothered. I managed on my own. The nurse that oversaw me gave me medicine and so much fentanyl, which he did warn me about, that some of it squirted back out of my arm onto his clothes, he then placed me on an IV and left. We stayed there, me and my aunt, all night into morning just for a doctor to tell us that he did not know what was wrong with me but I didn't have pneumonia and that was good. We left with an antibiotic prescription and gastroparesis pills that I immediately discarded. All the same problems were there just like I hadn't been to the hospital at all. Me and my aunt visited the store. I bought smart water by the 8 pack liter and vitamin water, robitussin pills and liquid. The IV put water back in my body and made me feel better although it didn't stop any other symptoms but it did help lessen the pain and weakness. I stocked up on that water and over the course of many days other things.
Fortunately for me, I have two living grandmothers who advised me based on my symptoms. My symptoms were, upper back and chest pain, congestion in the chest, stuffed nose, basically bronchitis with pharyngitis, weakness, fever, cough, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. One of my grandmothers had sassafras root that she boiled. She offered it and I used that for the bronchitis which really helped every night. I took the robitussin pills. I took tylenol PM for the pain. I took aleve for my fever and sweating at night. My aunt poured vicks vaposteam directly into an old kettle and boiled it on the stove after one night of her and my grandmother waking me up because of how I sounded when I was breathing. They said I sounded as if I was screaming a bit in my sleep and woke me. It was the congestion blocking my airways. It did help especially with my stuffed nose. It was nothing for me to, during the day, feel mucus moving in my chest when I was just sitting. It would rise up into the back of my throat and, like my cat when she's coughing up a hairball, I would have to cough it up. It was so fucking green and gross.
My grandmother reminded me that I had to eat. Medicine helps with a sickness but your body has to fight a sickness too. In order for your body to survive a sickness it needs to be strong and that requires eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day. This also required stopping the diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. In order to stop the diarrhea, I researched and found that ginger was a way to go. I went with Seagrams ginger ale and it stopped the diarrhea completely. For nausea and vomiting, white saltine crackers or sweet red apples. I used them both and they worked great. And of course, sipping on Smart Water all day and Vitamin Water (mainly Power C) helped. The hydration kept me from feeling so weak and helped with pain for some reason too. I also made sure to lounge, basically allow my body to rest. My official medical sequence was, when I got up in the morning, take two robitussin pills, two tylenol, one aleve, drink a cup of ginger ale, eat breakfast (egg, ham, or grits and bacon) with a little coffee, then eat on some saltine crackers or the red apple. At lunch I drank the ginger ale, and after eating, had the apple or saltine crackers or both. After dinner, I drank ginger ale, ate white saltine crackers or a red apple, then before bed, I took two more robitussin pills or used the liquid, two more tylenol because pain could sneak up on me, one aleve, drank from the sassafras root, boiled the vicks vaposteam and breathed that in and then went to bed. And of course, I always finished that liter of smart water by the end of the day. This was my medical sequence from November 23rd 2019 to late February in 2020 with mucus continuing throughout the year to be a serious problem and a varying shortness of breath with cough. In March 2020, the Coronavirus was declared. When that happened, the parent company of the hospital I had went to in my hometown sent four legal documents stating the same thing, that I could not sue them because they had filed bankruptcy. I hadn’t even thought of them at all but apparently they had certainly been thinking of me. That on and off cough from shortness of breath went away only to come back later that year in 2020. It remained there until I took my first shot of the Moderna Vaccine in March 2021.
When thinking about 2020 hardships I can only describe the coronavirus as more like an entity that was still holding on to me trying to take over my body until I got the vaccine. I also look back on that time and am shocked that it took all that to stop myself from suffering from it and/or keep it from killing me. Covid attacked my body in many different ways, but the most chilling way was when it pushed out almost all the water in my body to make me so weak I could hardly stand and walk. The memory of my weakness during that time still gives me chills because I know what would've happened had I decided to do nothing and if I didn't have family to support me. COVID makes me feel like it is a virus that behaves exactly like a machine made to conquer and kill. As far as the Moderna vaccine is concerned, I was fortunate to be able to go to work in August of 2021 and my work requires travel. I went from Raleigh-Durham NC airport to Fort Worth Texas airport, ate at restaurants and stayed in a hotel, then from Texas to McCarran Airport in Las Vegas to working outdoors and indoors while staying in a hotel for about 30+ days and eating at all types of restaurants to then having to travel back from Nevada to North Carolina one-way, and I didn't get sick one time. I think Moderna is to thank for this and I'm glad I took it when it was offered. A lot of people are vaccinated today and that’s great. To any of you that are not vaccinated, please either get vaccinated or take down my medical method above and prepare for a very long fight.