Some blood tests and a chest x-ray today.
It’s fun going into a hospital building when you have Covid but you aren’t infectious anymore (which is apparently where I find myself at the moment). All those questions to which you’ve routinely answered “no” for the last eighteen months now, suddenly need affirmative answers. Yes, I have those symptoms. Yes, I’ve been in contact with someone with Covid. Yes, I have a cough and shortness of breath.
But I’m not infectious, I promise.
Of course, we’d all still test positive if they were to swab us again today, but that’s also not a measure of our potential infectivity. And so thank you to all the staff at the doctor’s rooms and the hospital who understood that and allowed me to get my tests done and get out of there really quickly. I don’t think they wanted me around them any more than I wanted them around me – it’s amazing where that little “+COVID D17” on your forms can get you.
Upshot: Inflammatory markers all up, but nothing that was going to break the machine (I have some history with that); Covid pneumonia with delicious “ground glass” lungs, and a change of treatment to oral prednisolone and another new fancy, expensive TURBOHALER with an expensive steroid/alcohol metered dose. No vacuuming, no walking the dog, nothing strenuous at all. Sleep when you need to, don’t expect to do anything for at least the next fortnight and call me next week to tell me how you’re doing. And a conversation (because microbiologist) about just how weird and fascinating and amazing and scary this virus is in rather unequal measures. You choose where your opinions lie.
How wonderful, then. It looks like Youtube, test cricket and lots of dozing. Sounds idyllic, if it weren’t for the crappy symptoms hiding just behind it all.
I’d really rather be out and about.