I Survived Covid

Well, it had to happen sometime. We all got covid. Not my idea of fun at all, however we survived and got over it fairly quickly by doing all the things the best doctors tell us all to do (the ones the big mean dudes are trying to silence.) We’d been taking 1,000 mg of C, 5,000 IU of D3, 50 mg of zinc, 1,000 mg of quercetin, with selenium, elderberry, and a few other herbs for the past year and a half. It comes in a single supplement you can get on Amazon. That was our first tier of protection. 

It started with two days of scratchy throat. Which I often experience when my body is fighting something. When I started getting the headache, I used my nettie-pot and rinsed my sinuses with warm distilled water and ¼ tsp. each of sea salt and baking soda with two drops of iodine added. I was told this brings down the viral load in your sinuses and keeps the majority of that out of your lungs. It did ease the headache, and my lungs never got bad. The headache and body aches were the worst part for me. 

The cough was an uncomfortable dry one, and I did strain my abdominal muscles (that’s miserable.) I wet a hand towel folded it in fourths, put it in a gallon zip-lock baggie and popped that in the microwave for 30 seconds for an instant hot-pack for my belly muscles. I put a few drops of lavender oil in my palm with a few drops of vegetable oil (or carrier oil) and rubbed that on my belly, then wrapped the warm pack in a thin dishtowel and put that on my tummy. It felt so good! 

Cold packs on my neck and forehead eased the headache and fever. I used whole flaxseed in three, quart-baggies in the freezer to switch out so I always had a fresh, cold one. It’s what I had on hand! Rice works great too! 

I listened to audio Bible and audio books to keep my mind busy. Whenever I got up to change the warm and cold packs, I boiled water in my electric tea-pot and made a pot of mint tea (it helped the nausea I had at first). I’d keep the pot of tea and a mug by my bed, so I could stay hydrated without upsetting my stomach (plain water made me nauseas!) Chicken broth was the only other thing I could stomach, but boy did it taste good! Mark got it after I did and was still well enough to make bone broth in the insta-pot with chicken bones we’d saved in the freezer. 

All these symptoms were at their worst for about three days. The first bad day and night the headache and nausea were the worst. It took a couple of days for my stomach muscles to heal enough that it didn’t pain me badly every time I coughed. During this time, we started taking the dreaded horse de-wormer (actually, we got the cattle and swine stuff.) I used it according to our weight, using a medical chart. For Mark and me, at 125-130 lbs (yes, we’re lightweights!) that was 2 ml in a little grape juice once each day for about five days. 

After two days, I started feeling much better, but was so exhausted I just traveled from the bed to the couch and sat outside to get out of the house and watch the chickens scratch, the little chicks are so cute! After a couple more days I started taking short walks on our acre, to the gardens and back. The cough continued but not so bad and my energy level improved over week two. I started reading paperbacks, went over to my daughter’s trailer (they were sick with it too) and played Chinese checkers with her, chatted and hand sewed patchwork for a quilt. 

Week three, I started getting back to my writing. My walks got longer, and I started puttering in the garden, pulling weeds and smashing pests. I had a minor relapse for a couple of days after getting overheated in the garden. Now I feel good. All together it has taken about a month to get back to normal life. I still can’t sing very well, I still have a gravelly voice and an occasional cough, but that will right itself with a little more time.

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