If you couldn’t guess by the title, Melissa had COVID-19 after her birthday. I wanted to take this week to share my COVID-19 experience and talk about how Melissa and I got through the past couple of weeks. It was rough, but we made it through.

When Melissa first got sick, we thought it was an ordinary cold. She didn’t have any symptoms that were large indicators of COVID-19. There was no shortness of breath, chest pain, or losing smell or taste. But by the end of the weekend, her throat was in immense pain and she wasn’t getting any better. On Monday we took some at-home tests and she was positive. I was negative.

At that point, I still felt fine. But we decided it would be smart to start isolating. She scheduled a telehealth appointment to get some advice for soothing the sore throat symptoms. After her appointment, I went to a bunch of stores to get the sickness essentials that were recommended. I picked up cough syrup, decongestion spray, and a dehumidifier.

On Tuesday I started feeling sick. My head was in immense pain, and my brain was working so slowly. I napped that whole afternoon and decided to take the rest of the week off of work. (That was a good decision).

Wednesday morning, I felt little change from Tuesday. I took another home test, which was also negative. However, as the day progressed I got worse. I developed a fever that spiked to 101.8 degrees. The pressure and pain in my head increased, and my muscles ached. I did not sleep well that night I was so uncomfortable.

My fever finally dissipated on Thursday around midday. At that time, I developed a sore throat and a mucusy cough. My body and my head were not in pain anymore, but my appetite was still very small, and my energy levels were low.

My COVID-19 experience has been almost exactly what I felt after each vaccine. Each shot I got wiped me out for at least 24 hours with a massive headache, a fever over 101, and intense muscle aches. The only additional thing I experienced with actual COVID-19 was a sore throat and runny nose.

All in all, it sucks that we both got COVID-19 after avoiding it for two years. The whole experience was miserable, but we got through it. I am thankful that we were both vaccinated and boosted and it wasn’t any worse than it was. Now, we are taking it easy and slowly getting back to 100%.