Mike_Aurelius
04-29-2020, 07:37 AM
This virus is a sneaky bastard. It starts by slowly attacking your blood and lungs. Slowly. You feel tired, don't want to do much except sit around. Exhaustion from even the easiest things starts to occur. Then comes the dry cough and fevers up to and over 102.
Don't ignore these early symptoms. I finally realized what was happening after a couple of days of alternating chills and sweats. Even so, I visited the ER twice and was sent home after taking the nose swab for the flu and covid. Both tests came back negative. Last Monday (4/20) I went back to the hospital triage center to be checked again, and my heart was in a-fib (dangerous arrhythmia) and was sent directly over to the ER (third time). This time I was admitted.
One of the symptoms of covid is called d-dimer. It is a measure of blood clot fragments in your blood. Baseline normal is below 500. My first visit to triage it was 679. My second, two days later, it was 980. The third test, taken the day after admission was 1450+. Covid seems to send a message to the blood system to start generalized clotting, which results in high d dimer counts. These clots are what generally seems to be the cause of death for many who get the virus.
My chest x-ray showed "ground glass" opacities -- shaded areas that look like ground glass. These spread out into a pneumonia-type infiltration of the lungs, leading to diminished oxygenation of the blood, another leading cause of death.
Additionally in my case, it was causing nearly continuous migraine headaches, which in turn caused multiple a-fib episodes (heart beat irregular, increased speed of heartbeat to 150 bpm average).
I was in hospital for seven days. It's going to take me at least a month to get back the strength and stamina I had before going in. I stopped in at work yesterday to try to catch up on e-mail, and was left totally exhausted with shaky and weak knees after only two hours.
The tests are not conclusive. They can only test what is a moment in time. You may not have the virus at that moment. The tests are also returning false negatives at the rate of nearly 30%. There is no immunization against this novel (new) virus. It is going to take at least a year before we have one, despite what our dear leaders say.
Don't be in a hurry to get back in the real world. And if you do go out, take the precaution of using a face mask ALL THE TIME.
I'm still coughing shit up out of my lungs. One of the covid tests damaged the sinus lining at the back of my nose and a week later, it's still bleeding.
So, to sum up, I went through hell and was lucky enough to survive. It's going to take awhile and delivery times are going to be stretched out a bit, but I'm still accepting orders and will fill them as I'm personally able to do.
Thanks for reading, stay healthy.
Don't ignore these early symptoms. I finally realized what was happening after a couple of days of alternating chills and sweats. Even so, I visited the ER twice and was sent home after taking the nose swab for the flu and covid. Both tests came back negative. Last Monday (4/20) I went back to the hospital triage center to be checked again, and my heart was in a-fib (dangerous arrhythmia) and was sent directly over to the ER (third time). This time I was admitted.
One of the symptoms of covid is called d-dimer. It is a measure of blood clot fragments in your blood. Baseline normal is below 500. My first visit to triage it was 679. My second, two days later, it was 980. The third test, taken the day after admission was 1450+. Covid seems to send a message to the blood system to start generalized clotting, which results in high d dimer counts. These clots are what generally seems to be the cause of death for many who get the virus.
My chest x-ray showed "ground glass" opacities -- shaded areas that look like ground glass. These spread out into a pneumonia-type infiltration of the lungs, leading to diminished oxygenation of the blood, another leading cause of death.
Additionally in my case, it was causing nearly continuous migraine headaches, which in turn caused multiple a-fib episodes (heart beat irregular, increased speed of heartbeat to 150 bpm average).
I was in hospital for seven days. It's going to take me at least a month to get back the strength and stamina I had before going in. I stopped in at work yesterday to try to catch up on e-mail, and was left totally exhausted with shaky and weak knees after only two hours.
The tests are not conclusive. They can only test what is a moment in time. You may not have the virus at that moment. The tests are also returning false negatives at the rate of nearly 30%. There is no immunization against this novel (new) virus. It is going to take at least a year before we have one, despite what our dear leaders say.
Don't be in a hurry to get back in the real world. And if you do go out, take the precaution of using a face mask ALL THE TIME.
I'm still coughing shit up out of my lungs. One of the covid tests damaged the sinus lining at the back of my nose and a week later, it's still bleeding.
So, to sum up, I went through hell and was lucky enough to survive. It's going to take awhile and delivery times are going to be stretched out a bit, but I'm still accepting orders and will fill them as I'm personally able to do.
Thanks for reading, stay healthy.