After Nearly Three Years...

via Unsplash

... COVID has finally gotten me for the first time, as far as I know! I felt a tiny bit off this past Saturday, but tested negative on a home COVID test. Then, by Sunday morning, my symptoms suddenly intensified to nasty cold level (sore throat, headache, general feeling of malaise) and I tested positive. 

Luckily, my COVID symptoms never got too intense, though my congestion and cough still sound really gnarly and worse than I actually feel. I never got a fever, and my symptoms already feel like they're improving, so fingers crossed I continue to avoid getting a fever or anything worse! Because third trimester already involved a moderate amount of shortness of breath, at least for me, that's gotten a bit worse while I have COVID symptoms. (I had my second COVID booster, with one of the new bivalent vaccines, around five weeks ago. K had his around four weeks ago.)

K started getting cold symptoms the day before I did, which he totally thought was a side effect from getting his annual flu shot the day before that. He's actually still testing negative on home COVID tests though, which hasn't been unusual for my colleagues and friends whose significant others tested positive for COVID in recent months. 

This turn of events hardly feels fair because I continue to be religious about masking in public indoor settings except when actively eating or drinking. That's even while at work in a very small office where I generally have only minimal or fleeting direct contact with my colleagues most weeks, including last week (legal practice can be a surprisingly solitary affair, even when done in-person at the office). At this point though - now that masking is essentially no longer required almost anywhere in NYC except in some health care settings, including my OB-GYN's office - the masking rate most places, including on crowded buses and the subway, is generally only around 20-30% here. 

K and I did eat out once last Tuesday, but that restaurant was nearly empty, We also ate out once somewhere busier the weekend before that, which I guess might be the more plausible source if I first got COVID symptoms roughly a full week after? But I don't think most people in NYC who need to go to the office and use public transit like me can ever know for sure when and how exactly they caught COVID these days, since there's generally always a fair amount of it going around. 

Like some other gestational diabetes ("GD") patients, I found that COVID caused some chaos with my blood glucose numbers. My blood sugar spikes weren't as extreme as some I've heard about, but on my first day of testing positive for COVID, my after-meal numbers were significantly over what they'd normally be for meals I've had often since I started testing daily. Thankfully, it seems like that particular effect of COVID is also subsiding quickly for me. That's despite losing my sense of smell, which also mutes my sense of taste somewhat, which does make it harder to fully keep up with my recommended eating and snacking schedule with GD. But my glucose numbers haven't been too badly affected by that. 

Having COVID during my third trimester isn't the most fun. The occasional pregnancy insomnia has made it difficult for me to really sleep in and get as much rest as I'd like. I'm also still trying to run down whether having COVID while fully vaccinated and boosted will require me to have more follow-up appointments with my main OB-GYN or the specialist team I was referred to for my GD. (But at 36 weeks next week, I was already due to start having weekly appointments with my OB-GYN regardless.)