The Slow Return Very extremely slow return

I decided I was ready to go back to work and so I got up in the morning just to see how things were. I went for a socially-distanced masked walk outside with my wife and daughter, and my son and noticed I was lagging behind them a little farther than usual. When they went up a steep hill in our neighborhood, I was way back, and checked my pulse and O2 sat. My exertion saturation was jumping around between 86% and 90%, clearly not too good. At that point I decided I was maybe not really ready to go back to work.

I spent the next 7 days just slowly recovering at home, getting my appetite back a bit, although my sense of smell and sense of taste had not returned, so everything still tasted pretty much the same. At one point I was helping my daughter while she made dinner and she asked me to open up a new jar of chopped garlic. Immediately, from across the kitchen, she commented how strong the smell was, whereas I was convinced that it must have gone bad since there was no garlic smell at all to me.

My son who is 5 months will tell you that he definitely had a milder form of the disease than I did, and while for him a few days were pretty bad, he definitely bounced back quicker than I did.

Our daughter, who has been living with us since my ex wife abruptly dropped her off and she came out of her bedroom and said, "I don't feel well." But what she had, one day of sniffles, congestion, and sore throat, was what we hoped was the healthy soon to be 10 year-old version of COVID-19, although we won't know for sure until we get an antibody test.

As I said before, I feel blessed that I didn't need to be admitted for longer than overnight stay and that I didn't need to be intubated, that I didn't suffer any of the horrible complications, and I consider myself lucky that I'm out the other end, that although it was horrible, I know it could've been much, much worse.

I'm still pretty tired, and my walk to the car from work and then walking around the house, leaves me pretty wiped out, and I'm ready to lie back on the couch at the end of the day. I'm starting to sleep a little better, but I still have quite a bit of exertional dyspnea, and what we're all calling the "COVID cough."

Back at work, we're all COVID-19, all the time, manning the cough, cold, and fever It's amazing and terrifying seeing the decimation of our team members, battle Covid 19 even after the custodians came in with all of the protean symptoms of this vicious disease, the fear in their eyes, the hope that they are going to be okay while sanitizing everything.

We're glad that we're able to provide the services to take care of our customers and our community. And I'm certainly glad to be out the other end, alive and all in one piece.

Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay home if your feel iLL of any kind.

Bryan G.