The following is graphic account of sickness.
A few days before the end of 2019 I woke up feeling crappy. I took the day off work and figured I had a bad cold. A stack of medications on my bathroom counter and four surgeries later I’m still dealing with that day.
This isn’t about Covid. Except that it is.
What I would come to know in the weeks after that day is that I had contracted Whooping Cough. The symptoms are similar to Covid. Though the cough and cause is different. The doctor I say when I realized I wasn’t getting better told me I didn’t need a test cause it was expensive. He also told me to go home and check my oxygen. If it goes below 80%, go to the hospital. Otherwise antibiotics, don’t cause yourself to cough (ie: don’t move if at all possible). When I asked him about my vaccination, because I had been vaccinated, he noted I was due to for a booster, and that, unfortunately because I had been traveling (3 airports repeatedly over 2 weeks) I was probably around anti-vaxxers…and whooping cough is highly transmissible. Just be aware, he said. You’re gonna cough for at least 6 months.
I couldn’t breathe and I was in pain, but it would get worse.
Over the weeks I violently coughed, I became incontinent, I dislocated 3 ribs, my eyes became alarmingly red. My period no longer stopped, and I was often so exhausted I couldn’t think. I couldn’t walk more than few steps without coughing. The world began to close down or at least pretend to as Covid became apparent. I saw little to no change in my life. I was already isolating; I work from home and so continued to work with no break except when I just couldn’t stay upright. I had just moved so I knew next to no one.
I couldn’t stop coughing. I had a daily regimen of Severe Dayquil and Nyquil. I was in Walgreens every few days. It was so bad that when folks started buying all the cough syrup, someone at Walgreens put some aside for me cause they had seen me cough and knew I would in for more and need it. I drank so much, I damaged my liver. I couldn’t laugh, talk, or breathe. I know I keep saying that.
I was often in bathroom. Every cough was usually a flood. When everyone bought up the toilet paper, my cousin and parents sent more. I needed showers several times a day.
My blood pressure rose. It had never been high in my life but Whooping Cough damaged blood vessels and I needed medication to bring down my suddenly very high blood pressure.
I lost my apatite. I barely eat.
Things get harder I as am in a constant fog.
My doctor put me on anti-anxiety meds to see if that would keep calm enough to help all of these issues. Short answer?—?they didn’t.
After 6 month a doctor looked down my throat and told me I had permanent nerve damage. The medications started piling on. My cough go better as long as it wasn’t dry. It still hurt to breathe. I will have a cough the rest of my life.
A few days later, I was in the operating room so a surgeon could try to stop my period. He failed, and I had under went a hysterectomy a few months later. Afterwards I was in continuous pain. I kept getting infections because now I would be more prone to them.
The prospect of getting Covid scares me. Even a slight cold and I had long, painful coughing fits. What would Covid do?
By summer 2021 I thought I was better. I had a medication, and the pain was manageable. Sure I had coughing fits but I could mostly handle them. Or at least I though so, until after a coughing fit, I torsioned an ovary that had a cyst on it. Another surgery…in which the doc noticed all my bowels and other ovary were stuck together and he tried to fix that but forgot to tell everyone. I woke up in screaming pain for a surgery they all assumed I would have none. The doctor didn’t stick around to tell anyone what had happened, and it wasn’t until late that night that they got him on the phone. Which they held up to me and called his explanation good.
More infections followed. More pain. Pain so bad I couldn’t walk. I dropped my new phone after an episode. I fell over. After more infections, and several scans, it was discovered my organs where still stuck together. My remaining ovary was wrapped in them again. Another surgery, this one less a painful, but with worse news. My bowels had moved and had to be put back into place, and after the hysterectomy, I had developed endometriosis. They removed my remaining ovary and gave me estrogen. I read the packet that came with the estrogen and declined to take it.
Then my right side started going numb. My doc upped my nerve damage medication. Which seems to help, but the next question we get to ask is can we stop it?
This brings me to today. Today where I needed to have a shower after having a coughing fit. Today where I had to sit out for a bit from work with pain. Today when I didn’t notice I hit my right hand. Today when I sat on the toilet and coughed for 15 min… at least twice. Today when I forced myself to eat. Today when I had sit and force myself to thing about what I meant to do.
When I hear someone won’t get vaccinated, because they don’t believe in them, don’t like mandates, think they are poison, what I hear is that you don’t care about anyone but yourself. Imagine your child?—? as a child or an adult?—?with a collapse lung after cough, with brain damage, on a ventilator. Whooping Cough, Measles, Covid, in that order. And you continue to lie about doing your research (you didn’t), know better (you don’t), think it’s a hoax (you’re delusional), you’re afraid of needles (suck it up and get sedated so you can put up with it). At best you are willfully ignorant, at best you are malicious and enjoy causing other pain. You are destroy people with real reasons for not getting vaccinated.
I won’t be kind to you. You don’t deserve kindness. You are putting other people in danger. You are causing pain. You are maiming people. You are killing people.
If you are okay with that for any reason, you are not human. You are a monster.
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