So, funny story: it was COVID after all.
I had convinced myself that it wasn’t, because (a) the home tests said negative, (b) I didn’t feel that sick (or so I kept thinking to myself, as much trying to reassure my own brain as anything else), and (c) COVID would just be really bad, and I didn’t want really bad, in the grand scheme of things. And yet, after going to the doctor at the weekend, the test result came back and… there it was.
To be fair, “there it was” ignores the fact that I actually read the email notification three times, because I had managed to convince myself so well that I was convinced that I’d misread something and there was actually no way I was testing positive. “Oh, maybe it’s just saying that positive was an option,” I thought, as if that was actually something that would be listed under the all-caps heading “RESULT” just for fun. (“Did you know you could test positive for COVID? It’s true!” would be the helpful, jaunty, explanation.)
When it comes down to it, I think I knew the whole time. I hadn’t been sleeping well for a few nights by that point, and when I’d wake up in the middle of the night, my brain was freewheeling like during my last COVID-experience; during the day, my concentration was gone, and I felt perpetually dizzy, outside of all the other (many) physical symptoms, and almost everything felt like a chore that made me generally grumpy to have to deal with. I’d felt like all of this before, even if I’d rather have told myself that it was just con crud and everything would sort itself out the next day, if only I got some sleep.
Of course, by the time I eventually got the diagnosis, it was apparently too late for medication to help. (There’s apparently a deadline starting from the date of first feeling symptoms.) Instead, all I could do — all I’m still doing, as you read this — is relaxing as much as possible and hoping for the speediest recovery possible. Sometimes, it’s 2020 again after all.