St. Louis: My COVID-19 was not the mild case I expected. And I’m not alone

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After diligently avoiding COVID-19 for two and a half years, it finally caught up with me. Like most people who wear masks, respect public health, and are fully vaccinated, I first thought the tickle in my throat was probably just a cold. A few hours later, I was too short of breath to speak in full sentences.

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From then on I went downhill rapidly, developing body aches, chills, and a cough that sapped more energy from me with each wheeze. Despite my worsening symptoms, I was surprised when I finally saw the “T” line turn pink on my rapid antigen test. Not only because it took three days of symptoms to test positive, but because by all accounts, he should have barely had any symptoms at all.

I am a 29 year old vaccinated (and boosted) male with no underlying health conditions. I eat well, exercise regularly and have been running for over a decade. Based on what I had seen in the media, COVID should have been little more than a mild cold for someone like me.

Instead, I battled through 10 full days of debilitating symptoms, where each day seemed to present something new, and each night I wondered if things might get worse to the point where I wouldn’t wake up. Call me sensitive, but I wouldn’t consider it a “soft” thing.

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It was only when I returned to work (after using more than a week of medical leave for the first time in my life) that I learned that my experience was not unique. Colleagues began passing on countless stories of their friends and family who, like me, were hit very hard by COVID despite being fit, healthy, and vaccinated.

The more I recovered, the more resentful I felt. Why is no one talking about the very real possibility that COVID will leave you in the gray area, somewhere in the vast space between mild symptoms and death? Somewhere that might not land you in the hospital, but leaves you feeling like a decaying, low-oxygen shell of your old self, weeks or months after you’ve recovered?

For one, there is nowhere to report it. Those desperate enough to spend the day in an overburdened emergency room may ultimately log hospitalization data, which seems to be the only criteria for a noteworthy case. Otherwise, mom is the word. In this context of a rapidly mutating novel disease, where long-term effects are as unknown as the rate of people experiencing them, why are the most extreme cases the only ones worth hearing about?

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Reports on COVID deaths and hospitalizations are important, to be sure. But for every person seeking hospital care, there are others who, for various reasons, choose to wait at home. In the absence of those numbers, I’d settle for some public acknowledgment that they exist.

Still, we continually get the message that if you don’t check any high-risk boxes, COVID is a minor inconvenience at worst. I can’t help but think that if people knew more about this densely populated middle ground, they might consider getting vaccinated, wearing a mask more often, or being a little more careful in general.

In my case, it has been a little over a month since I recovered from COVID. While I am grateful to have rejoined the world, I have not fully returned to my pre-COVID self. Every time I run, I am reminded of how far my lungs still have to go. Every time I work, I am reminded of the extra sleep I need to fuel my brain. And every time I reflect on this experience, I am reminded that despite our collective COVID fatigue, this virus is not done with us yet.

amber saint louis is a writer living in Ottawa.