I don’t get sick. At least not in the ‘common cold’ or ‘seasonal flu’ kind of way. I can’t remember the last time I had the flu at all.

It certainly isn’t that I take extra precautions to avoid getting ill, I should get sick more often. My best guess is that constant exposure to foreign dirt and grime and tap water over the last 13 years of travel has kept my immune system sharp.

Other than the occasional stomach bug or intestinal infection — almost always attributed to questionably-prepared street food — I rarely get sick.

The last time that stands out was in February of this year, in Bogota. Something inexplicable came out of nowhere and completely rocked my system. I spent two days in bed, exhausted and constantly pouring sweat.

Before that, I can’t recall the last time I was really sick.

Three Weeks Ago…

When I started coughing without any obvious reason, I was curious. The cough wasn’t the kind that suggested that my body was trying to get rid of a foreign element. I wasn’t choking and I hadn’t just taken a bong rip or a deep breath of freezing winter air.

My lungs just didn’t want to let me breathe in. Breath seemed to be cut short at random and I would start coughing. Throughout the night it continued, now accompanied by chills.

I felt fine otherwise but it was strange enough that I decided to get tested first thing the next morning.

By that afternoon, I was bedridden.

All mental and physical energy had vanished from me. My body ached and my head pounded. The cough continued and my chest felt tight. Occasional waves of nausea crept like the changing of the tide.

I don’t recall the fever, though my wife tells me it accompanied my unconsciousness.

Over the next 48 hours, I couldn’t stay out of bed for more than three or four hours at a time.

For one arduous stretch during the night I was completely lucid. I had slept so much that my mind could no longer stay unconscious, yet my body remained paralyzed with exhaustion.

I lay in bed for hours, feeling every discomfort, focusing on every shallow breath and fighting off every distracting thought that prevented relaxation. It was a Vipassanā retreat from hell.

There was no surprise when the results read Positive.

The cough soon subsided, as did any aches and pains. But the exhaustion remained for another few days.

And just while I thought I was on the upswing, I woke up on Saturday — the morning of my birthday — having lost my sense of smell.

If that isn’t the most 2020 birthday present…

My sense of taste technically still worked. In the sense that I could register sweet, sour and salty things. But without smell, you can’t taste any flavour.

Honey and maple syrup had a rudimentary sweet taste, nothing to distinguish them from one another. The same goes for orange juice, lemon juice or straight white vinegar — they just tasted tart.

Everything I ate registered as varying degrees of dulled sweet, acidic and salty. Without those subtle notes, I might as well have been eating cardboard.

Energy started to return about a week after the first symptoms showed, and for a couple of days, I felt better than I had since it started. And then the coughing returned.

Soon came a second wave of exhaustion, chest pains and shortness of breath. When lying on my back it felt as if there was a kettlebell resting directly on my diaphragm. I was constantly out of breath and breathing itself seemed to take physical effort at times.

So there I was three days away from my quarantine being complete and I felt worse than I did when it first hit me.

The last time I felt such a lack of physical energy was when I contracted Dengue fever in Vietnam over a decade ago. And that really fucked me up.

One Week Ago

Once my two-week quarantine had passed, I was cleared by the health department to leave isolation and return to the world.

What I didn’t take into consideration was that just because I was no longer at risk of spreading the virus, being cleared didn’t mean that I was ready — that my body was ready — to go back to normal life.

Returning to work was a mistake that became clear almost immediately. Six hours into the shift I had to pull the plug out of legitimate concern of collapsing where I stood. I spent the entire afternoon and night unconscious in bed once more. And worse, the next day the coughing had returned with a vengeance.

I hadn’t realized how badly this thing had affected my ability to take in oxygen.

Thankfully, due to a combination of my shift and the Christmas schedule, I had the last week off. And I’ve spent most of that time relaxing and trying to regain my energy.

Today.

It’s been three weeks since my first symptoms showed. And while the symptoms themselves have passed, I still feel the effects of what the virus did to my body.

Smell has returned slightly, though it’s a long way from normal. Taking a deep, full breath of air is still cumbersome; and I struggle to be up for more than a few hours without rest.

Yet I’m incredibly grateful that I only had it as bad as I did. By comparison to what this thing can and has done to thousands, I am by far one of the lucky ones.

Now I’m not here to discuss face masks or lockdowns. And I understand why people have their reservations with regard to those issues. But I can absolutely appreciate the seriousness of this virus. And considering how many people are still skeptical, I felt like sharing my experience.

So if you’re one of those cynics who “doesn’t know anyone who’s actually had it,” — now you do.