Hi everyone,

As the pandemic is growing bigger and bigger every day, with more infections all over the world, this new normal is growing to be scarier than any of us imagined. As I am now currently in a second lockdown in the UK, my family were personally affected by Covid, me and my dad both had it a couple of weeks ago as I am writing this. There is a lot of media panic about this pandemic and many untrusted info sources spreading misleading details, so I thought it would be beneficial to share my experiences of having Covid 19, what I went through, what my parents went through and how to carry on keeping safe.

Me and my family continuously follow Covid rules, so we did not contract it by not wearing masks or not washing our hands, my dad simply caught it from a colleague at work. He is a mechanical engineer so they can’t wear masks while working and sometimes it is hard keeping social distance. So first tip, keep in mind even though you might be following all the rules, stay cautious, as you may still be able to get the virus. My dad brought it home, got sick, then I got sick and the 2-week isolation began.

I will discuss my dads experiences later on, as he is 40+ so he went through it differently to me, but first I wanted to explain my symptoms to you, as a 20 year old, who is completely healthy:

1. Coughing: This was the first to come, one day I went to bed with a sore throat and three days later it was fully developed. It was never so excessive that I couldn’t stop coughing or I couldn’t breathe, but sometimes I would feel heaviness in my lungs.
2. Breathing: This was common in the middle of my illness, normally I would be fine and breathe as I usually do, but if I used the stairs, for example, I would have to sit on my bed for 5 mins after to catch my breath. Not the best again, but it could have been worse.
3. Tiredness: I felt very fatigued during the whole illness, just had very little energy, I still did university work and attended online lessons the whole time, but I found some days to be very tiring, going to bed at 8 pm for example.
4. Loss of taste and smell: This came in the second week of being ill, it was more annoying than painful or difficult, I would eat and not feel anything, it was frustrating. It made me discouraged from eating really, works oddly on your brain mentality when you don’t really know what you are eating, but slowly I got it back nearing the end of the week.

These were the only symptoms I had, no temperature, nothing else. My illness was not as bad as my dads but I still did not feel 100% obviously, this just proves that being young and healthy does not give you immunity like some believe. You should still watch out for yourselves regardless. I tried to take off as much time as possible, as I was working on assignments at the time and did not really want to take extensions if possible, but still made sure to rest and look after myself.

(Doggy representation of how I felt because I looked too awful to take selfies)

There were not many things that helped, as commonly know, it’s just a case of sitting it out and resting through it. I did drink Lemsip and take paracetamol if I felt very weak or stuffy, but that was just a short term solution when I had my worse 2 days during the whole illness, where I generally felt bad and just stayed in bed, but no different to a common cold or virus.

My dad on the other hand, as mentioned, had a more difficult time getting through it, taking him nearly over 3 weeks to fully recover. Age does make a remarkable difference while getting through Covid as I have seen it personally, a 20-odd age difference between us and I can tell he felt worse than me by just looking at him. He slept all the time, did not want to eat, had a temperature, coughing, breathing difficulty etc. It just made me think that if he feels like this, I would not like to see what a grandparent would feel like or someone who is elderly. Oddly enough, my mom did not get Covid at all or went through it without symptoms, she was with us for the whole month of being ill and all she got was a rash on her neck, which I have heard that this is something that can happen when going through it symptomless.

All this just proves that anyone can get it and it is so varied for everyone, there is not a simple checklist we can put together of what everyone and anyone will go through. We all need to look out for one another and our selves, keep following the guidelines and distance as much as possible, regardless of how tired we are of it. The news about the vaccine is amazing and I do hope, like many, that we can get access to it asap.

I hope you have enjoyed my post on my Covid experience, and it gave you an insight into what someone my age goes through during the illness. Me and my dad are planning to go give blood to help others who are not as lucky as us during experiencing Covid, If you can and have been through the illness after 28 days, go to the NHS website and see if you can too. We have to stick together.

Love, Kasia x