Someone recently sent me this article. In it the author writes a letter to his young self on how to grow as a musician and songwriter. The article is appropriately named, Letter To A Young Songwriter. It’s a good letter with good advice that can be applied to all creative endeavours. And while I have tried to follow much of the advice given in the article, I haven’t ever tried to write the worst song you can, or, when applied to this site, the worst article I can.
So, this is what I’m doing. I’m going to write the worst article I can.
I have COVID
I recently came back from South Africa. About 48 hours after landing I started noticing a mild cough interfering with my jet lag. I did a rapid antigen test which came back positive, and for the past 5 days I’ve been in enjoying the prickly embrace of COVID.
Since the pandemic started I believed I would be one of those people who’d be completely asymptomatic when they contracted the virus. I’m healthy. Mentally I’m around 15 years old, which on good days I can convince my body is my physical age (this tends to require me not looking in a mirror for a few days). I’m stubborn, when it comes to illness I adopt a mind-over-matter approach – I’m not sick until I say so. And I have avoided COVID for two years. Hell, forget asymptomatic, maybe I’m completely immune.
Why I’m telling you about my COVID?
This is a public service announcement.
Since Omicron became the variant the world decided will be the variant to (almost) end all variants I’ve been curious about how it will effect me when I finally get it. As soon as anyone I knew mentioned that they’d had COVID I’d interrogate them. I’d ask them how sick they felt, how long did they feel bad for, where did it hurt, on and on.
And now I have it. So, for anyone who’s still left out there who hasn’t had COVID, or anyone who has had it, and wants to compare notes, this is what the experience has been like for me.
Day 0
I arrive home from the office. I’m knackered. I remind myself I landed 24 hours earlier from a 12 hour flight where I spent most of the flight trying to get my son to sleep, or listening to the lady sitting next to me telling me her life story, which was not, not fascinating.
And the time difference between Cape Town and Sydney is 8 hours. It stands to reason I’d be tired.
I have a tickle in my throat which I ascribe to one of several annoying habits I have. This one is a compulsive need to clear my throat. Most of the time it feels like I’ve just finished drinking heavy cream milk and that greasy milk layer is coating my oesophagus. Ahem…
Day 1
I didn’t sleep well which had a lot to do with my son being awake between 12:30 and 03:30 in the morning. Jet lag.
I’m coughing properly now and I have a mild headache. I call into my first meeting for the day and sound like I’ve had my tonsils removed with hedge trimmers. This isn’t good. After the meeting I do a RAT. The one line comes up, but there is not indication that the second line is planning to make an appearance. I walk away, thinking I’m just tired.
Twenty minutes later I go into the kitchen to make myself a coffee. I glance over at the test strip, and there it is, a glimmer, a sprinkling of red across next to the letter ‘T’. I take the strip to my wife. My eyesight isn’t great and I’m not wearing my glasses. She’s sleeping.
“What does this say?” She sits up and blinks. Jet lag.
“You have COVID.”
An hour later I have a break in my day. I feel exhausted. My wife has a meeting that she needs to take in our bedroom. I lie down on my daughter’s bunk bed and sleep for four hours. I then dial into another meeting, and sleep for another four hours.
My wife wakes me, asks me if I’m having dinner. I get up. I feel like a frozen steak that someone’s tried to defrost in a microwave; I smell funny, I’m cooked in some places, frozen in others.
Everything aches, my head, my skin, my eyeballs. I’m not hungry. I go back to bed.
Day 2
I wake up to the worst headache I’ve ever had. It is so severe I’m sure it could kill a small donkey. And it’s strange headache. It’s not a concentrated pain. Instead it’s broad. It’s as if someone took a paintbrush, dipped it into a can of pain paint and then proceeded to coat the inside of my forehead.
We don’t have any Nurofen in the house and my wife has a similar headache. My wife makes an emergency call to the pharmacy. We need Nurofen, Armaforce, vitamins for us and the kids along with sleeping pills. Jet lag. And we need these delivered now.
The delivery comes at 16:30.
Through the course of the day I sleep for 7 hours. It’s the only way to escape the headache.
My kidneys hurt.
Day 3
I’m not getting better. The headache has subsided, but my body still feels like someone has been beating me with an iron pipe while I’m been suspended upside down from the ceiling.
I have a shower and contemplate the fact that I’m supposed to be isolating for 7 days. If I’m going to leave my house at the end of day 7 then surely something needs to change today or tomorrow? Surely I have to turn a corner soon?
My daughter tests positive for COVID. She’s crying her headache is so bad. We ask a friend to bring us some kids’ Nurofen. Later in the day she vomits all over the guest toilet. I clean it up. I have another shower.
Later, the family are asleep, I find myself binge-watching Reacher on Amazon Prime. It takes my mind off things. I fantasise about how big I’m going to get once I’m back in the gym.
I don’t notice how bad the acting is.
Day 4
It’s Sunday. I wake up early for some unknown and surely stupid reason; I can’t go back to sleep. I feel better. Things might be looking up after all. I make myself a coffee and sit down to do a little writing before the kids get up. After the writing I do a little reading. Still feeling okay.
The kids get up. My daughter feels more human as well. This might be it.
I start coughing. Genuine coughing. And when I lie down I wheeze. By 10 in the morning I’m back in bed.
For fuck’s sake.
Reacher is bad, but I keep watching.
Day 5
It’s a public holiday today, so I don’t have to dial into any meetings. I’m up before 05:00 and can’t go back to sleep. Coffee and writing time.
I’m tired of being in bed. Being confined to my house is driving me a little nuts now. I also notice I’m angry. Not at anything specific, just at the world in general. And my anger spills over into my midlife crisis, and I go on-and-on about how I’ve squandered my time and how I should have cured cancer, ended world hunger and made a real impact in the world. Instead I’m a marketer with a fucking blog. Ugh.
And I pee all the time. I haven’t mentioned this, but COVID makes you pee. Nobody told me this. All the time, your bladder seems to absorb water out of thin air, like a dehumidifier. My wife Google’s to see if it’s a symptom. It is. You heard it here first.
I sleep for most of the afternoon. I think my wife is getting frustrated with all the time I’m spending in bed. I decide not to ask, instead I notch it up to COVID insecurities.
Day 6
Disappointed to report that I still have symptoms. My nose is runny and I have a hazy feeling in my chest that makes me want to cough incessantly. I check government websites between work meetings. I can only come out of isolation after 7 days have passed since I had my positive test result and on the proviso I don’t have any symptoms.
The RAT I do is emphatic, I still very much have COVID. In fact, the postive test line comes up like a red welt within 10 seconds of my squeezing out the 3 snot drops from the makeshift vial.
I don’t believe I’m coming out of isolation tomorrow. I have a short nap in the afternoon. I fantasise about going outside, going to the gym, attending a meeting face-to-face, buying a coffee from another human being.
My wife and I buy a new bed online. We agree that this is an investment into our sleep and therefore an investment into our health. Secretly I suspect we’re just bored.
I’m trying to convince myself that my nose isn’t running and that I don’t need to cough.
I feel better.
Maybe I do another RAT tomorrow.
It impacts everyone differently
I have spoken to a heap of people about their symptoms and how they experienced COVID. Many of them had very different experiences to my own. For instance, my wife was far less ill than I was, and we both tested positive on the same day. My daughter, who is 9, she was sick for one day.
My experience won’t be the same as yours, but I wanted to write this so that you might know that in most cases COVID isn’t any worse than a bad cold, or a mild case of the flu. Granted, some people die from the virus, but for the vast majority I hope that my experience is as bad as it will get for you.
On another note. I wouldn’t have stopped an economy for 5 months in response to the illness I’ve just had.
Just saying.