Living in Limbo

Having COVID brings great uncertainty

Am I still positive?

If there is one thing I’ve learned in the past weeks, it is that there is a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to having COVID.

You may remember that I was tested as positive a little over 2 weeks ago. At the time my test showed positive I had no symptoms of the virus. Over the past couple of weeks, I did experience some periods of extreme fatigue, and a few dizzy spells. Both of these are symptoms of COVID. Some time back I also had a loss of the sense of smell, which is also a symptom.

But now I have no symptoms at all again. Do I still have COVID? Well, I’m not sure.

CDC Guidelines

After testing positive the hospital gave me a paper showing the CDC Guidelines to determine if you have already beat the virus.

The Paper I received says:

When to discontinue Home Isolation

1. You have had no fever for at least 72 hours, AND
2. Other symptoms have improved, AND
3. At least seven days have passed since your symptoms first appeared

Well, those guidelines make me very uncertain about whether or not I still have COVID. Firstly, I have not had a fever since I was sick in February. The few symptoms that I ever had were very minor, and have not only improved, but they have also disappeared. I have been isolating (to an extreme extent) for about 17 days now.

A week or so ago, I thought that the virus was totally gone. Then, a few days later I started coughing one evening. Nothing extreme, but coughing a bit. I thought to myself that the COVID was back. I canceled a medical appointment that had been scheduled for the next day. But, the next morning when I woke up I was not coughing anymore at all. That was 4 days ago, and I don’t think I’ve coughed a single time since then. So, do I still have COVID? Not sure.

I guess I should be tested again!

Should I be tested again? I think so. Problem is that once you’ve been tested they won’t let you have another test. They say that if you meet the CDC guidelines that I outlined above then you are virus-free and no need to worry.

However, the medical appointment that I canceled the other day cannot be rescheduled unless I have a clearance from my doctor saying that I now test negative for the virus. But… as I said, they won’t let you have a second test to confirm that you are negative. The clinic where I need to reschedule the procedure did say that if I wait 14 days again, they will reschedule me without a second test.

But, am I negative? I think I am, but I’m just not certain. I do wear a mask everywhere I go. I stay away from my wife because she is negative. I stay away from our two sons that live with us because they are positive and still sick. I was told that having multiple people in the house who have COVID could cause us to pass the virus back and forth to each other.

I don’t mind isolating

I don’t mind isolating from the public, but I want to be able to be with my wife, Feyma. But, since I don’t know for sure if I am positive or negative, I don’t want to take the chance of infecting her, so we maintain at least 6 feet apart, and we don’t sleep together anymore.

If you have had COVID and recovered are you immune?

There has been a lot of talk in the media that once you have had COVID and recovered then you are immune. But, are you? I’m not so sure. I do know that some of the doctors who are working on the task force have said publicly that we need more testing to know if you become immune to COVID, and how long the immunity lasts.

The reason this is a concern to me is that I was pretty certain that I had COVID in February before testing was common and available. But I tested positive in April. Was I not immune? Maybe I just had bad flu in February. Maybe the reason I was asymptomatic when tested and then developed only very minor symptoms means that I caught a second, but a mild case of COVID in April. How can we know?

The thing is, there is a lot of misinformation out there. There is a lot of information that is simply speculation and with no degree of certainty.

If you have tested positive for COVID, it is like you are living in limbo, because you can’t really be certain where you stand after that. That is my experience anyway.