Thread by @Faussenurse

A #LongCovid thread. I (likely) had Covid early in 2020. Now, almost two years later I’m stuck with some annoying (and scary) long Covid symptoms. I thought I would share in case it helps others. @brish_ti

On Jan 25, 2020, before there were supposed to be cases in #BC, my wife got real sick. Very high fever, severe muscle pain, coughing. We thought it was the flu. She was bed bound for 3 days. But she had a funny symptom: she lost the sense of smell.

We thought nothing of if because nobody knew anything about #Covid-19 at that point. A few days later I felt somewhat under the weather. Not really sick. Just not great. But no real symptoms. And that was it. We thought it was all over.

Fast forward some months and we connected the dots. A nasty flu in 2020 where one loses the sense of smell… It got to have been #Covid. Sure the date is too early. But there is a lot of international travel going on in academia. At that point we felt lucky: We survived Covid.

But odd stuff started happening. In June 2020 I walked on a bee, barefoot. That hurts. But I was a hobbyist beekeeper for several years so I have been stung a lot. However that one bee sent me in anaphylactic shock. I got out of the ER with prednisone. Thought nothing of it.

Two months later I completely lost the audition in my right ear while sleeping. I was diagnosed with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (or SSHL) and prescribed prednisone. Lucky me, after a few days I regained my stereo hearing. But hum… lots of prednisone in my life suddenly.

Reading the scientific literature is part of my job. I started to read what emerged about #LongCovid. Scary. And… hum… new allergies and SSHL are well documented long Covid symptoms. I started to consider that I could be affected. But I felt lucky: I had gotten over long Covid.

Fat chance… three weeks ago, almost exactly two years after my likely infection, I lost all the high frequencies in the other ear. Bam, there were there and then they weren’t. I tried to see a doctor but in full fledged #Omicron BC one has to be @jjhorgan organ to get care.

I was stuck self-prescribing myself my prednisone leftovers from 2020. I regained some audition but far from all. And I have a strong rigging. Many people are worse off, I know, but it still sucks. And the question now is: when is the next event? And what will it be?

A few lessons: 1) You can totally have #LongCovid even if you never realized you had #Covid. 2) It can hit you months or years after the infection. 3) The symptoms might be hard to align with a given cause until the clues pile-up.

I was already raging mad at the ghastly way the @ndpbc and @bccdc clowns gave up on their duties and are letting #Covid rip through. But now experiencing first hand how that virus can fuck you up YEARS after the initial infection I’m just out of my mind with rage.