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Hello, I’ve not been here because I am on day 33 of #Covid 19, and for the last 26 I’ve been the sickest I’ve ever been in my life. I feel really lucky not to have had any respiratory symptoms, mine have been purely gastric, but even with mild to moderate symptoms, it’s horrible.
For the first ten days, my symptoms were really mild, summer cold, once a tiny temperature (37.2), feeling under the weather. Then on day 9 I started to lose my sense of smell, and on day 10/11 I went down hill really fast. It was like I’d been poisoned.
Full body shakes and aches, serious dehydration (6 litres of water a day plus dioralyte), overwhelming nausea, awful diarrhoea, extreme fatigue. You feel so, so ill. And it’s terrifying. I don’t remember much of the next 14 days.
In terms of medication, I took paracetamol and metoclopramide for the aches and the nausea, which helped, and after 16 days most of the worst symptoms lifted, the only thing that’s not better is my stomach. For this I’m using Enterosgel, which is making things more manageable.
The things that stand out to me is
1) I haven’t had a temperature at all since things got bad. It’s been a steady 36.3/6 degrees, dropping once to 35.7 when things were at their worst.
1) I haven’t had a temperature at all since things got bad. It’s been a steady 36.3/6 degrees, dropping once to 35.7 when things were at their worst.
2) I am on a 4 day cycle. You get a bit better, a bit better, a bit better, then on day 4 it sends you all the way back to square one. This is incredibly frustrating.
Happily my sense of smell came back after 9 days, and as of the last few days I’m able to stay hydrated and not take any of the other meds, but I’m still stuck with bad stomach issues, 23 days after they started. It’s exhausting.
My GPs have been amazing, as has my OH, but there’s very little info on gastric only Covid 19. For anyone getting scared on the internet, this write up of two studies on it is calm and clear https://www.newsweek.com/diarrhea-coronavirus-symptom-covid-19-patients-study-1495667?amp=1
Coming out of this now (
) a few things concern me:
1) Intial reports seem to say gastric patients remain infectious and sicker, for longer. What am I supposed to do when I can’t get tested to know it’s passed, @MattHancock.
) a few things concern me: 1) Intial reports seem to say gastric patients remain infectious and sicker, for longer. What am I supposed to do when I can’t get tested to know it’s passed, @MattHancock.
2) it seems no study in the uk is apparently looking at how Covid 19 attacks just the gut, and there’s no way of joining any of the current studies to offer either antibodies or samples, like those being conducted at @TheCrick, unless you’ve been hospitalised.
Surely mild and moderate cases, gastric only cases, and everything in between, need to be part of both our antibody tests, our vaccine tests and our attempts to find medications that work.
In my experience this virus is a long, drawn out, debilitating thing and you do not want it. You do not want your loved ones to get it. Stay Home. Protect the NHS.
