2 years in, 1000s of masks, 100s of nose swaps, 3 shots, and multiple lockdowns later, I get COVID! Figured perhaps this is an adept closing to the Quarantine Series, so should be detailed down.
It all started with an HK-style milk tea. I was enjoying a homemade silky milk tea on a sleepy Saturday afternoon, when my throat started to tickle. I attributed it to being out of practice and over-sweetening with the condensed milk. Didn’t think much of it, nor was it too bothersome.
By Sunday evening, I concluded I had a slight sore throat. I’ve had worse sore throats before, so went about with normal home remedies of honey lemon tea and lozenge drops. Mild symptoms started overnight — I slept restlessly and alternated with sweating and chills throughout the night. In the early dawn of Monday, I made the very rare decision to stay home from the office. The lack of sleep made me tired enough to hope for the extra hour without needing to get dressed and office ready. After notifying my boss, I started to reconstruct my work from home setup, as I have not worked remotely since the beginning of the year. I hadn’t done much puttering around when I became more conscious of the sore throat pain and started to cough. Nevertheless, I had plenty of work to do — it was the start of a new week after all, so I logged in and powered through the day, while drinking lots of water.
Monday evening came around, and I didn’t feel too terribly. Honestly, I think there was more stress from work than stress from being sick. I decided to take a COVID test just to see. After all, this was the reason I continued to stock up on the antigen tests. It came back negative, to no surprise, as there was no risky activity where I could have gotten it from. I figured I caught an early season cold. As I got ready for bed, I took an Advil for the sore throat just because I wanted to get some sleep and slept super well, managed almost 10 hours.
Tuesday went pretty much the same way, although the coughing increased. I drank more than 3.4 liters of water (x2 the water kettle) during the work day. I was glad that my regular grocery shopping and meal prepping meant there was plenty to eat in the apartment during this rather unexpected home stay. I can’t say I missed the office, but it did take me some time to get used to working from home again. Nighttime came around and I could not sleep. The coughing was terrible. It felt mostly like a dry cough, as I didn’t have any phlegm. Probably coughed every few minutes. My boyfriend helped prop up some pillows and eventually the only way for the coughs to subside was for me to sit up. I managed a few hours of rest while sitting on my bed.
Wednesday woke up tired given the lack of sleep. It was not an easy week for remote work. Generally, my gripe probably is that I couldn’t take the sick days as that would miss too much work. The sore throat had mostly gone away, and during the day, my coughing was less. Generally, I was on the mend. On the other hand, I had most definitely given the cold to my boyfriend. He commented a slight throat tickle… That night, I hoped for a normal sleep and debated going into the office as actually there was an event the next morning. I slept normally, finally no coughing disruptions.
Thursday morning when I woke, early enough to get ready for the office, feeling generally better, I decided to take another COVID test just for good measure before heading in. So many times had I done this antigen test, with the single pink line result, that I almost by reflex glanced at it to confirm, then fluidly toss into the trash. To my complete shock, it was double pink lines. I couldn’t believe it, especially since Monday’s result was negative and subsequently assumed I had a normal cold. In addition, I mentally backtracked the last 5–7 days, and there was no increase exposure risk. I immediately took a second antigen test, and it also came back positive for COVID as well. My boyfriend seemed fairly calm, although his symptoms started to catch up. By evening, he had a full sore throat, fever, and running nose.
So, there it was, I got COVID. Most hilariously, I seem to have caught COVID in the most anticlimactic way possible. It wasn’t going out to dinner, wasn’t a concert, flight, or wedding, it wasn’t any of the more “high risk” activities we had been more alert with in the past. Instead, I seem to have caught COVID from the regular routine of walking between the office and apartment, and the usual office environment — granted no masks for months already — but no other ill colleagues or particularly close proximity. In fact, I still jokingly blame the condensed milk tea. It’s been a full week now, and still not fully recovered back to normal, but hoping and grateful that it’s not more than the mild cold symptoms.
