chronic illness and covid recovery.

Hey, friends. It feels like it’s been awhile, longer than I had planned for sure.

This Covid recovery business has really been something – as I know it often is for everyone – but I’m finding that working on getting back to 100% for an autoimmune patient (at least this one) is a drawn out process, full of good days and not so great ones, steps forward and back.

I thought, as it may help some other spoonies who have to deal with Covid, I would share what I have noticed so far with the lingering symptoms – and then also I want to get back on track with our Lenten posts as those have fallen so far by the wayside with my illness.

While I am accustomed to spoonie days of body aches and generalized pain, since Covid, some days I randomly feel as if I have the full blown flu (or Covid) – as in that level of illness – again. What is so odd is that it is really unpredictable and the next day may be a normal spoonie day. Having Covid also seems to have made things that are usually unpleasant – like RA pain with weather systems coming – much more intense. It’s like my autoimmune symptoms are amplified right now.

Among those symptoms is the spoonie/Covid brain fog which has been oh-so-challenging – and fighting that while trying to catch up my classwork from being ill has been a real treat. I am so grateful for amazing professors this term who have been so understanding as I’ve been working my way through all of this and trying to make it to Spring Break to catch up and rest up too.

There are plenty of other random symptoms that are coming and going – that I really hope will soon just be. . . going – including increased headaches, more pronounced allergies, and a return of night sweats in a way I haven’t experienced in some time. However, none of these other symptoms can touch the one that is just kicking my tail from here to Texas – the absolutely overwhelming fatigue that has yet to let up.

While spoonie fatigue alone is no joke, adding the Covid recovery to it has just really sent my energy level into a tailspin. I am requiring ridiculous amounts of sleep and am still absolutely exhausted at times, even more so than usual.

I hope this will pass soon though, considering the information that I have read and what my PCP said she has seen in her autoimmune patients post-Covid, I understand that it may unfortunately be with me for some time.

(In the time I’ve written this, I am so tired – after having taken a four hour nap – and honestly need to lay down again. Good grief.)

Still, I am better than I was overall in that the respiratory part of Covid seems to have lifted and I am testing negative now.

I am so grateful for those shifts in the right direction and will keep resting and believing that the remainder of my symptoms will improve as well – it is just slower than this impatient spoonie would like sometimes. 😉

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Finally, as I have been ill, I have gotten all kinds of off track with our daily Lenten scripture posts. The last one I posted was Day 7 of Lent and it is now Day 18. Rather than post a long list and have many verses sort of get lost in the shuffle, I am just going to select some favorites of mine from the days we missed to get caught up going forward:

Day 12: In You we live and move and have our being. – Acts 17:28

Day 14: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. – John 14:6

Day 17: Weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning. – Psalm 30:5

And, then tomorrow’s verse is one of my very favorite:

Day 19: Be still and know that I am God. – Psalm 46:10

Today we’ll wrap up with a prayer of St. Patrick since St. Patrick’s Day is in a few days (and one of my nearest and dearest is in Ireland so it is particularly close to my heart):