For two-and-a-half years, I've wondered, worried, and fretted about what it would be like getting Covid. Like many people with chronic illnesses, I wondered if I would end up hospitalised, or worse.
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I thought that, knowing the universe, after months and months of working on my fitness and strength, I would likely get long Covid, and not be able to continue that work. I worried about passing it on to my flatmate, and that we wouldn't be able to look after each other, and we'd drown in tissues and half-drunk cups of tea.
If you're one of the other quarter of a million people in Aotearoa with type 2 diabetes, you might be wondering those things too. You might have heard words like "comorbidity", and read that people with diabetes are more likely to have serious complications from Covid-19. Being eligible for your vaccinations earlier than the general population might have freaked you out a bit. It certainly did me.
So it might help to hear from someone who's been through it. This isn't, obviously, medical advice. You should take that from your medical team. But here's what it was like for me, a person with, currently, pretty well controlled type 2.
I was lucky enough to know that I had been exposed, so when I started feeling ill, it came as no surprise. What did come as a surprise was just how quickly it happened. I hung out with a close contact on Sunday, they tested positive Monday morning, I started feeling pretty awful by Tuesday, and by that evening, my temperature had spiked to around 39.5C.
It was so fast, it was a little scary. In what ended up being really good luck (there's no way I wouldn't have given it to her), my flatmate was out of town. So I was alone with my spiking fever, wildly sore throat, fever chills and deep body aches.
The bonus of anxiety and having a bit of time to prepare is that I had everything I needed in the house. Bulk ibuprofen, sugar-free sports drinks, a pulse oximeter and a digital thermometer. I even managed to cook up a big batch of vegetable soup. (I never want to eat vegetable soup again.)
I tried really hard to stick to my normal diabetes diet - lowish carb, high protein, regular meals - but it was tough, mostly because I had no appetite at all. And when I entirely lost my sense of smell, I lost it even further. When you're sick and want comfort food, it's hard to look at a plate of baby spinach and feel inspired. Toast with honey was much closer to what I wanted.
I don't check my blood sugar regularly, nor do I manage my insulin, so there are people better qualified than me to talk about how Covid affected them. But being sick at all messes with blood sugar. When you're diabetic, that's a really fine balance that can be super hard to strike, particularly when you barely have the energy to make it to the kitchen.
My body let me know that it was struggling - some of my pre-diagnosis symptoms came back with a vengeance. It's hard to separate them out from the Covid, but as far as I know, needing to pee a lot and some tingling in the feet aren't usually symptoms of 'the spicy cough'.
Stupidly, I had run out of medication just as I tested positive - so if I have one piece of advice, particularly right now, it's make sure you have ample medication and supplies on hand.
It is now two weeks since I tested positive, and those first few days are a bit of a blur. Wake up, check temperature, take ibuprofen, drink as much as I could, go back to bed, repeat. On day three, walking down a flight of stairs lifted my heart to 130bpm, which is what my heart would normally be doing getting close to a run.
I emailed my doctor to ask if I was eligible for antivirals, and was told that I am "young and healthy," so, no. That's news to me on both fronts, but good to know.
People keep telling me to rest, and honestly, I didn't need that advice. Making lunch meant I'd have to sit down for an hour. I alternated between the couch and my bed, binging Parks & Rec and Grey's Anatomy. I ignored my email and took hours to reply to texts. My brain still hasn't returned to normal: over the weekend it took me six attempts to figure out the word relatability. I am still not entirely sure that's a real word. I've been over the worst of the symptoms for at least a week now, but I am definitely not back to 100 percent. Maybe 80 if I don't push it.
On the other side of all this - or at least being able to see the other side - I am grateful for that preparedness. Having blue powerade in the house used to be for hangovers. For the past two weeks, it was a godsend. I am grateful to my colleagues who sent a care package, and left me alone, and to my friends who sent home made lemon honey and ginger cordial and checked in via text and sent cat pictures to entertain me.
I am grateful that being boosted and having had time to get my diabetes under control likely means I was a lot less sick than I otherwise would have been. It was bad enough as it was, I can't imagine how it might have been if I hadn't had that six months to at least understand what was going on in my body.
