Walk, No Dog — Living with a Mild Case of COVID-19
By: Dan Palevski
Tags: Health, Covid 19, Coronavirus, Exercise

I’m not used to just walking, with no destination. I see people with dogs going for walks all the time, but it feels a bit pointless for me to go for a walk, no dog. Occasionally, couples and small families will walk on nice days as I’ve often done with my family, but I feel the solo walker is a rare site on a grey, overcast day like today. True, the weather has warmed up a bit and the snow is thawing.

I tend to walk a lot in actuality, trying not to take the car out as much as possible. However, in those cases I have a destination and a purpose, so it’s different than this walking I’m doing now. I feel more like the diabetic, or individual battling heart disease, walking because they’re told to by their doctors. It feels like a sign of weakness, like I’m truly succumbing to this disease — which I’m reluctant to admit — to just go for a walk and not do the higher intensity workouts I’m typically used to.

Living in the pandemic and living with Coronavirus is markedly different. When stepping outside with Coronavirus, I never forgot to put on my mask, but I must’ve forgotten my mask at least a dozen times earlier in the pandemic. Stepping out now with a positive diagnosis of COVID-19 feels like I’m truly endangering others and the mask is the least I can do. Experts told us to always act as if we were positive, but now that I was I actually felt as if I understood what that meant.

It’s not the first time I’m going out since I’ve been diagnosed. As I’ve previously mentioned, I tried exercising a few times. On a relatively mild December day, one week after being diagnosed, I went for a vigorous bike ride of ten miles or so. Being on a bike seemed the best way to stay socially distanced, and although I wore a head sock, I did pull the bottom down off of my mouth and nose a few times to take a few big gulps of fresh air during my ride.

After that ride, I worked for three days straight, doing yoga and other activities — like riding my bike indoors in a trainer, and mostly I felt great. By Thursday, December 18th, my winter leave had officially begun, and as if my body knew, the energy simply drained out of me. I’d felt some other symptoms that morning as well, including sore throat, exactly a week after I’d first noticed symptoms. At the time, it felt like a head cold setting in; this time, it felt like I’d spent too much time outdoors the night before even though I hadn’t been out of the house once.

On Friday, after feeling a bit better, I took it easy but did a bit of yoga. My wife said that my body knew I was on vacation so it was telling me to relax. Over the weekend, I decreased my activity to a bare minimum. My wife complained that all I could do was think about food — an old joke that was becoming all too real. The hunger I’d been feeling while I was sick was unexpected, given that one of the common side effects was a loss of smell and taste which would seemingly correspond with a decreased appetite. But that was definitely not the case for me, so I must’ve had a relatively mild case.

Nevertheless, I could feel it’s lingering effects. I decided to go for the walk because I felt like I needed the activity. I was worried what lazing around and overeating was doing to my overall health. Nicely it wasn’t too cold out today and much of the snow had melted, or was melting, along the sidewalks and pedestrian paths. My heartbeat surely went up a few times as a climbed up some hills, but overall I took a slow and even pace as I listened to an audio book and walked around the neighbourhood.

I don’t know when I’ll get back to the level of activity I was used to. It seems that everyone is recommending I slowly go back to my old activity levels and not rush in the way I had potentially done following my first week. But then I hear about the long-COVID symptoms that many folks seem to be experiencing and I wonder how long it might take. Part of me wants to push myself and see if I could simply burn this virus out of my system, but the other part of me is scared to see what might happen if I do push myself too hard.

It’s fairly common for me to get sick in the winter. In more recent winters, when I’ve continued exercising intensely and taken up new routines like dry suanas, I’ve seemed to have fared far better. However, in the past, I’ve been in bed for days at a time and experienced slow recoveries, much worse than what I’m experiencing now. Is my fear of what this virus might be far worse than what it actually is?

I guess I can only wait and see at this point. When the clinic called me to give me my Coronavirus test results, they said I’d have to wait at least three weeks before I got tested again. I understood the purpose of this was to make sure the virus had left my system. This Thursday, December 23rd, will be three weeks since I first started feeling symptoms and when I plan to go back to the clinic for another test.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful for the relative mildness of my case. We all seem to be hearing the worse of it on the news, yet I think alot of people are curious about how the majority of people are getting through their illness; most people I know who’ve had it have survived with relatively little to no repercussions. I’m also lucky that my family isn’t suffering with me — they’ve either already had it or aren’t experiencing any symptoms — and that I’m able to get paid time off and work flexibly from home.

Photo by Morvanic Lee on Unsplash

I’m also thankful for the friends, family, and neighbours who’ve been reaching out and checking on me. This pandemic has been tough on everyone as we’ve been trying to make our way throughout in times of up and downs and virtual isolation. Yet, we’re getting through this and it seems to be getting lighter on the other side as we get past what is hopefully the worse of this thing. My only advice is to remember to walk, and not run, as we may still need to prepare for the long-haul.