The first time I had covid it kicked my arse. I really didn’t want to get it again. A trip on a cruise ship always came with the possibility of catching covid again, a fairly small space and umpteen thousand people from all over the world makes for a nice vial breeding ground. We did well to avoid and infection for the first week or so, but judging from the increasing coughing after the first week, it was clear something was certainly going through the cruise ship. We reverted to using serious masks and staying in a state room or on open decks as much as possible. It’s quite likely we were infected on an excursion towards the end of the trip.
The 11th hour flight home was awful, really do not fly with Air Europa – just don’t – but we didn’t realise at this point we had covid. I blamed my tiredness on the horrible flight, slept like the dead on Sunday and work up feeling not quite right on Monday 4th March – a bit of a sore throat and a sort of body weariness. I did a covid test, more to discount the possibility rather than because I thought I had it – the test appeared even before the buffer fluid made it to the control line. I’m not sure how quantitate these tests are, but I think that’s pretty indicative of a high viral load.
Monday I just felt increasingly crap, as if I was coming down with a bad cold. Next morning I slept until after mid-day and ached, I started coughing too. Wednesday was similar to Tuesday and I only started to feel like I was recovering by Thursday, but the test still showed a bold line. It wasn’t until Friday that the positive line took some time to develop, and this morning for the line to not show at all (I confirmed it with a second test from another batch).
All in all, the second visit from covid didn’t wipe me out as the first did – I attribute this to an increased number of vaccinations, and a much more recent booster I had towards the end of last year, there’s probably also some remembered immunity from the first infection. I did not lose my sense of smell or taste, and I don’t seem to have lost any lung capacity, but I’ll find out once I get back on the bike. I did completely lose my appetite, consequently, I lost about 3 kg in four days.
I definitely don’t recommend catching covid.