Before I start, I do recognise the irony of me posting this when I posted about how incredibly happy I am about 6 weeks ago, (and I still am), but that was me before I caught the virus, and unfortunately, it isn't over just because our ten days of isolation is. I'm not sure if it's actually not spoken about enough, or if I've just not seen many people talking about it on my socials, but I do feel like I want people to know that there are more long-term side effects to having the virus, (I don't know how long-term, because I think that varies from person to person), but everything doesn't just go back to normal when you stop coughing, unfortunately. Here are the five things that I'm struggling with the most.
1. If you know me well, then you know that I really enjoy working out. I've always had a workout routine since I was 16 years old, and although the workouts have changed over the years, I've never really gone more than three days at a time without doing some form of exercise, apart from the first two weeks after getting a new and healing tattoo. Saying that, I unfortunately caught covid right at the end of healing my third tattoo which means that I couldn't workout for that whole ten days, and that was on top of the two weeks that I already hadn't because I don't like to sweat on new tattoos. It's hard to tell whether I'm struggling with being short of breath due to literally not exercising at all for three weeks, or if it's because my lungs are still healing from the virus. I've been trying to build myself up to doing my usual half hour workouts again, but I'm finding it hard because it's really hard to tell what particular exercise will wear me out, as it appears to be more about intensity than it does duration. I did a full-body 5 minute workout last week and it nearly killed me, whereas I can now do a 15-minute lower intensity dance workout and be absolutely fine. In contrast to that, I had to run out of the house the other day to race Stephen's laptop charger to him, (because he'd been working from home for the duration of our isolation, and he forgot it), and oh my goodness, my lungs must've given up on me about three times during that 10 minute run. It was awful, and I'm terrified that this could be more long-term than I'd like if it turns out to be long covid and this is just my life now, but hopefully not.
TW: body dysmorphia.
I also feel like the perception I have of my body is falling back into the negative which is incredibly sad. I've struggled with body dysmorphia for the longest time, and have been able to manage it and begin to move over to body neutrality, but since I am now in my mid-20's and going through my 'second puberty' as it's been dubbed, that is hard enough for someone with body issues, and not being able to workout properly is really making it worse.
2. I'm also experiencing a strange anxiety-based side effect, where I look at photos of my friends on Instagram out and having a great time, as they very much should be and deserve to be, but it makes me feel scared because we still have no idea how we caught covid, especially as we weren't doing anything risky or taking our masks off at all, so we're now both really frightened of catching it again - especially in the space between now and when I'll be allowed to have my first vaccine because you have to wait a month after your positive test result (although, good news: research is suggesting that natural immunity can last up to six months, so phew because I definitely don't need to wait that long for the vaccine!)
Everything is just kinda freaking me out again the way it did back at the start of 2020, and I hate it. I hope I get back to being more excited than fearful about plans again soon, because I have so many coming up!
3. My sleeping pattern is well and truly ruined. When we were in the pits of our illness, we really couldn't stay awake at all and we both slept SO much during the day, which meant we weren't sleeping at night, (insert Paolo Nutini joke here), because we were wide awake due to sleeping most of the day/evening. I've been up until 4am the past two nights in a row and I really don't know how to fix it. I very luckily work from home, and very rarely have camera-on meetings so nobody knows how tired I am, but trust me, I know. If anyone has any advice on this, I'd love to hear it! I've struggled with insomnia before, but the main advice which worked for me then was doing activities which wore me out, but that's so much easier to do now, and I'd much rather not be able to sleep, than not be able to breathe, so that advice is out of the window, now!
4. Another issue which we've now managed to fix, but it was hard at the time is that we were finding it hard to spend actual quality time together. We pretty much watched a movie or two a day while we were unwell, so movies don't really feel like 'date night' activities anymore, and the same goes for cooking together/for each other. We live together, and we were allowed to see only each other for two whole weeks, and we've gotten very used to each other, so we were very much looking forward to going out yesterday as it was our first weekend in two weeks where we weren't isolating, and it was even more exciting as it was the only weekend that I had free during August. Due to that, it was really sad when Stephen had to physically go back into the office to cover someone's shift because it felt like that was our last chance this month to spend quality time together which wasn't just because we literally weren't allowed to do anything else. Luckily though, we actually spent today doing some odd little bits which we've been putting off due to being ill, and we finally finished our wedding album. It's so lovely to have all of the photos in one place, and they look so gorgeous together in the album - if you're a close friend, please feel free to invite yourself over to sit and peruse with us, because it's so much fun, and we love it. We also managed to book our minimoon which we've put off for ages because we had too much brain fog to figure out what we were doing for it, which leads me on nicely to my last point...
5. Finally, covid-related brain fog. The absolute worst. It is definitely getting better but I would be lying if I said that I haven't noticed it, because I well and truly have. I do think I'm getting back to carrying out my work duties at my usual speed now, if not just a little bit slower than usual, but it's definitely improved a lot in the past two weeks. It's not just work though - we've both been struggling to plan things that we both actually want to do, such as our minimoon as mentioned above. We both cried the other day because we have wedding blues, (if you're married, please tell me that this gets better because it is unbearable - I miss our wedding day SO much), and you would think that planning our reception for next year would make us happier, but we've been putting that off too because of our brain fog, and not really knowing what we want to do, and how we want to do it. We're definitely excited to plan, but simple decisions become so much more overwhelming when you're in a state of perpetual confusion and don't have the capacity for it at all. Luckily, we still have nine months to go so we definitely have time to recover fully and still have a wedding reception that we, and all of our guests, have the time of our lives at.
In the words of Daniel Bedingfield, we just gotta get through this.
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