Well. It’s safe to say I jinxed myself in my last post. Our Christmas holiday spirit was short lived my friends. Last week Jamie woke up with a fever and it of course turned out to be covid. Therein began our 7 day isolation period, just before New Year’s Eve and our big road trip to Victoria.
It would be just our luck to have yet another holiday postponed/cancelled/changed at the last minute due to Covid related issues. It felt almost comical at this point, but what could we do? We just accepted our fate and strapped ourselves in for the week long isolation.
Emotionally, it was tough some days. It was hard to not spiral into negative thoughts when you have nothing else to do with your time. It also very vastly different to just being in lockdown, because while you have all the time in the world, you just don’t have the energy to do anything. My usual lockdown crutches of gardening, macrame and cooking, all seemed near impossible to do. So it was a lot of laying around, watching netflix and a bit of reading when I didn’t have a headache. Not a lot of mental stimuli unfortunately, so boredom sets in very quickly.
Physically, it was interesting to see how differently we both experienced the symptoms. Jamie started with a fever, headaches, body aches and fatigue for the first few days, as well as sporadic chest pains and loss of taste (fortunately the taste one was very intermittent and didn’t linger for too long). He definitely had it worse off. His fever seemed really awful to go through, and I’m lucky I didn’t get that.
When Jamie had first started feeling sick, I actually had zero symptoms. I thought I would be lucky and would somehow get through it relatively unscathed. How incredibly naive of me to think that would be the case! A day later, the slight tickling in my throat became a sore chest and throat, a chesty cough, headaches and fatigue. I think I could’ve handled the rest if the fatigue wasn’t so bad. We were both just so drained, and all we could do was rest.
Pictures: Watching Friends while waiting for our PCR tests at 5:30am / ambitious grocery order / Vitamin C / necessary pillow washing / New Years morning / my emotional crutch / the day I had enough energy to clear out my wardrobe / our first homegrown eggplant and cucumber / backyard bbq when we finally had energy / plate of goodness.
Overall, we got through it ok. We followed the medical advice, which for us was rest, lots of water and panadol/ibuprofen for the fever, headaches and body aches. Alongside that, there are few things other things I would also highly recommend:
1. Prioritise self care: I’m not talking bubble baths and face masks. I’m talking your basic needs kind of self care. Showering. Washing your face. Brushing your teeth. Feeding yourself. All the little things you normally do every day to look after yourself. I know this sounds obvious to do, but believe me, when you’re in your 50th hour of laying in bed and wallowing in self pity, sometimes these basic things get forgotten about. But for such small tasks, they were so important. I always felt a little better afterwards, both physically and mentally.
2. Order frozen or ready to eat meals: We went into isolation during the busiest time of year for grocery stores. When I went to go make an order for delivery from Woolworths, their next delivery date wasn’t until after New Years. We were lucky enough to have close friends pick up our grocery order for us so we didn’t have to wait days for our food to arrive, however what I didn’t take into account when I was making the order was that I simply would not have the energy or motivation to cook. I wasn’t displaying symptoms at the time, but by the next day the fatigue and headaches set in and I truly couldn’t picture anything worse than standing in the kitchen for an hour preparing and cooking up all the meat and veg I had ordered. In those first few days we relied heavily on meal delivery services for our main meals, and then things like eggs on toast, instant ramen, fruit, chips and crackers for in between meals. In hindsight, had I known how unwilling I would be to cook, I would definitely have added more frozen or ready to eat meals to my grocery order like lasagnas, dumplings, pizzas etc to save money. Door Dash definitely made a killing on us last week.
3. Wash and change your bedding: On a day where you have the energy to do so, strip your bedding and get it cleaned. Wash your pillows and comforter and change the linen. Trust me on this. It seems like a big effort at the time, but when you think about how much time you have spent laying in bed, sick, coughing, sweating (that fever is no joke)… you’ll be grateful for fresh sheets to sleep in after a few days.
Our time in isolation is coming to an end now, with today being our last day. I’m so grateful to feel well and healthy again. I’m also grateful to still a little bit of time left in our holidays to enjoy. Here’s hoping for some smoother sailing over the next week!
Stay safe everyone!
Laura x
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