So I got better. You may have noticed the blog rather died on a wail of despair. But I didn’t actually! I did in fact get better. I didn’t know what to make of the whole thing for a long time. My fingers and in fact many things about my life froze.
I initially fell sick in October 2020. 10 months of hopeless stasis later I rolled down the road for jab two. My first vaccine dose had done nothing for me so hope wasn’t high. The next morning I awoke and something had changed, I don’t know quite how I knew. I still felt groggy and tired as I had for most of a year. The tenor of it was different somehow, I KNEW something was different. It felt more like a hangover than the permanent weight of fatigue and by the early afternoon I was bouncing. Energy at last. Still, when I went to sleep that night, I dreaded putting my head on the pillow.
If you read accounts from people with Long Covid many will mention a pattern. This is a sense of progress, of feeling better in the evening followed by a return to square one by morning. I’ve seen this put down to the body’s release of histamine overnight. It’s a trying way to live. You feel at your best as you go to sleep, like your recouvery might finally be progressing. Then morning comes. One remembers what it’s like to get better from a bad cold or flu, you start to wake up feeling better. With Long Covid it simply never happens. All the while the mind forgets to temper expectation. The disappointment each groggy morning never softens. It took months for me to stop making plans for two weeks time when I would be better. In retrospect, it’s no surprise that when I did get better, I struggled to believe it.
In a disorientingly short amount of time, the pattern shattered. I went for some exploratory bike rides. I worked a full working week. Quite by surprise, my life had been returned to me. Like a bloody miracle. I assumed this was temporary respite, that I should enjoy it while it lasted. But it’s a year and a bit later, my body is still mine. I’m back, I’m me. I won’t have to live my life as a semi-recluse, recovering for three days from a walk to get coffee. I’m back doing endurance events on my bike, I’m faster than I was before in fact. Progression returned to my life. I did not know what to make of it.
I asked my therapist if this counted as a traumatic experience. Emphatic yes. I suppose in retrospect it must have been. Ten months looking at the ceiling. How on earth I was going to survive? Is this now forever? With a whiplash crack, it was as though it never was.
I know exactly when I figured it was behind me. When I could stop living for the moment. It was the first time I surpassed something I did pre-illness. The Mallorca 312 is a 312km bike around the mountainous north of the island. In 2019 pre-Long Covid I got around in 11 hours and 37 minutes. In 2022 I did it in 10h:43m. That’s a big boy gain, I smashed it and it wasn’t even a smooth run, I crashed halfway around and it didn’t stop me.
I was utterly elated.
Two days later I got sick, stuck that thing up my nose waited 15 minutes and the test almost screamed at me. POSITIVE! Full of lurgy! Sick as can be but this time I healed like you’re supposed to after a miserable week and change. After that, I had all the evidence I needed. Whatever it was about Covid my body couldn’t handle pre-vaccine in 2020 it had resolved by 2022. My body was normal again.
So move on.
The manic push to experience everything I could faded. I found I had to process the two strangest years of my life. One half I’d spent flat on my back the other pushing as hard as I could. To feel good and live as much life as possible because the inevitable relapse must be coming and it’d kick hard. A lot of small things went ignored. My talent for not thinking about the inconvenient, I had honed to a soaring level. Unpacking it has been an interesting experience to say the least and I’m far from done. But the body is healed. Mostly. The way I concentrate has fundamentally changed. I used to have mild allergies now I have really bad ones, for which I have a permanent prescription of turbo anti-histamines. The booster knocked me clean on my backside for two months. Horror show! I thought it was back, but I did heal again.
My mind remains disoriented by the meaningless chance of it all. Still, my legs work again, my heart beats, I am more rested in the morning than when I lay down to rest. Slowly the mind catches up with the body, just the same as when you first fall ill, it takes a while to accept the change.
Zackonnabike 