My Long COVID Story, Part 1

My Long COVID Story, Part 1. Pun intended 

Before I begin, let me explain something. "Long COVID" doesn't mean you have the acute disease,  but rather that you have negative physical and mental sequelae that can appear a year or two or three afterwards. I first caught the damned virus in March of 2020, but looking back in hindsight, I believe my Long Story started 15 months later. Because of this timeframe, I will break this down into several posts.  I will also call my first acute episode "COVID1" and the second "COVID2." 

The symptoms of COVID1 were annoying but not severe: fever and chills; muscle and joint aches ("myalgias" and "arthralgias" respectively); some nasal congestion and clear discharge ("rhinorrhea"); a minor sore throat ("pharyngitis"); a loss of sense of taste; and a strange change in olfaction. Everything smelled like smoke, eerily reminiscent of the time I went into the charred shell of a neighbor's house destroyed by fire. I would often awaken in a panic, thinking that something was burning up in my room at Motel Hell in Milwaukee. Needless to say, I lost my sense of smell for everything else, and it hasn't fully recovered over three years later.

I just recently realized how this ties acute and long COVID together. 

Stinky Snot

 My Quora Answer to:

Why does the inside of my left nostril smell?

"There are two major possibilities here, although there may be other less common ones. The first, and probably the most likely explanation, is that the first two antibiotics didn't work."

http://bit.ly/3lIFyrl

Elder Abuse

The truths still hold:

https://www.quora.com/As-a-paramedic-have-you-ever-heard-of-the-abuse-of-a-patient/answer/Michael-Mangold-4?ch=10&oid=146971040&share=5a43384f&srid=TCJzj&target_type=answer