This is a ICU nurses experience with mild covid, and the science says the damage is cumulative, how many infections does it take to disable and eventually kill?
I had a mild case of COVID. I’m back to work & looking from the outside very much back to baseline. I’m the “99%” that so many like to reference. But like many who also had mild COVID, much of my existence is different, shifted, not quite right & just “off.”
I get bouts of fatigue that knock me out, sometimes after minor physical exertion & also sometimes out of nowhere. I was a big time runner before COVID - I’m still not able to really get back to it. My endurance with just walking or taking stairs is significantly affected.
I get brain fog, my thoughts heavy, slow & sluggish, like the wheels are rusty & can’t keep up with a normal pace. I have a hard time concentrating & I am more forgetful than before, losing things, misplacing items I’ve never misplaced before.
I feel overwhelmed by a speed of life that is honestly much calmer than pre-COVID. The smallest decisions are both paralyzing & exhausting. I work so hard to appear normal & functional despite new challenges that I am left drained dry at the end of every day.
My sleep in general is still off - tired all day, awake in the evenings, trouble falling asleep, groggy in the morning no matter how much sleep I get. My dreams are bigger, bolder, more vibrant, more intense & more realistic. Not always scary, just VERY real.
My appetite is mostly gone. I eat one big meal a day, otherwise have a few very small snacks the rest of the day. I’m typically a voracious eater, three meals plus snacks, but I’m just indifferent to most food now despite no changes in taste or smell.
And there are many more things - of course I forget them but they impact every part of my day. I’m functioning, yes, but I feel out of sorts. People ask me how I am and I always say “fine” but really, so much is still different.
I don’t have many of the more dangerous & well known long COVID symptoms - no heart rate issues, my asthma is about the same as before, no taste/smell changes, my brain fog isn’t disabling. And the more I talk about it, the more people I meet feeling the same.
So while the vast majority of people do survive COVID, that’s truly a horrible benchmark. My life may never have been at risk but my quality of life afterward has been changed significantly. In many, small, consistent, impactful ways I feel considerably different.
If you know someone who has had COVID, please be gentle with them. They make look & even act like they did before but many of us are grappling with significant invisible changes. We FEEL very different. This is the unspoken reality of life after “mild COVID.”
