As it took hold, at first I thought, did I drink something with caffeine in it? I could feel a buzzing in my body, but it didn’t start till I got into bed. From there it was an awful night of squirming fever and it hadn’t occurred to me what was happening till I was some way into the night and still not able to sleep. After about five hours of this, I realised I needed to get to the pharmacy across the road to get some medicine, a bag of masks should I need them and a COVID test. It was 10 AM, a strange time for me to be up, but I knew that I had to get to the pharmacy before noon as it was Saturday and they close early. I came back and opened the test box – all the instructions were in Portuguese, so I painstakingly translated them to make sure I did it right. At this point I had bad muscle aches, a cough, runny nose, a headache and no sleep.
After translating all the instructions, I took the test and it came up positive. I got worse. Luckily, I had food in the house after one of those trips that I didn’t need to make but made anyway because I had a little time in an otherwise busy schedule. Having said that, I didn’t have much of an appetite and cooked with difficulty, I ate a bit of it and then put the rest in a container in the fridge. That was good for today because all I had to do now was heat up what I’d cooked for my recovering appetite. I watched The Fall, not the band.
It was something of an uneasy day with broken sleep, I was in bed early, up in the middle of the night and then up again in the morning. I had breakfast and as the afternoon came I realised I was falling asleep, so I went back to bed and slept into the afternoon. When I finally awoke I checked my mails to see lots of lovely messages, thank you for that, in a physical sense, perhaps it’s better to be sick alone, nobody can do anything and you just infect those around you, words are a comfort though.
This weekend was sesh-free and was supposed to be rehearsals and mix listening sessions, but I just couldn’t do it – still aching, coughing, sneezing, runny nose, but happily less of a headache. I was reading about the difference between COVID and the flu and in my experience, COVID has been much milder than the terrible flu that I have had over my life. I know that’s not true for everybody, but apparently, it comes from a different virus, although they are both respiratory infections. This COVID was worse than the first time I had it but not as bad as the bad flu I’ve had and that’s really how I knew it was COVID and not flu, I’m not sure if the test reacts to flu too.
So today, I’m not right but better than yesterday, so hopefully I’m already on the mend. Thank you for all your kind comments, onward and upward.
Music today has been Julia Jacklin – Pre Pleasure (2022), her third album. She is from The Blue Mountains in New South Wales. We saw her live in Dallas supporting First Aid Kit. Another great contemporary singer-songwriter.