I wanted to get past COVID-19, thinking it would feel like a bad flu. I was so wrong.

“I just want to deal with it.”

I admit that this thought came to my mind often in 2020, since I first saw the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreading rapidly in China. Before any cases were even reported in the United States, I remember telling my husband that people aren’t paying attention. He may have thought I was a little paranoid, but as someone with a chronic illness – who was at the time doubting whether to take immunosuppressants – it felt important to keep an eye on it.

That was over a year ago, and while part of me would have wanted to contract the coronavirus, hopefully I could get past it and treat my rheumatoid arthritis (which isn’t on the Federal List of High-Risk Comorbidities) without so much fear – nothing could have prepared me for the reality of experiencing ‘moderate’ COVID-19 symptoms for myself.

Some people may think that it is inevitable to get this virus, and we all experience severe COVID-19 fatigue. In my rural community, I still regularly hear people claim that COVID-19 is a hoax or that it’s “just the flu.”

Many argue that they do not need to follow safety protocols because this coronavirus “only affects people with pre-existing conditions and the elderly” (as if they are somehow expendable?). I hear people around me express more fear about the vaccine than about getting COVID-19.

This attitude is ubiquitous in Utah, where we’ve made headlines conspiracy theorists storm hospitals, which requires access to ICUs; mothers who follow a code not to test their children for COVID-19 in an effort to keep schools open; and protests against masks

Unsurprisingly, the number of cases in Utah has skyrocketed and our hospitals have been on or nearly full for weeks.

Although some people are blessed with mild symptoms (or even asymptomatic), the so-called moderate symptoms of COVID-19 can still be terrifying and traumatic, and severe symptoms are an emergency. I never thought COVID-19 was like the flu and have done enough research for health articles I’ve written to know what harm it can do to the body, including the incidents of organ damage, the risk of experiencing “long-distance” symptoms and the growing body of evidence that the virus can cause psychosis in some people.

I’ve also had a lot of disease progression in the past year with my RA without treatment, and my body is starting to show signs of permanent joint damage, which cannot be reversed. This is why part of me is just “talking about” in the hope that it wouldn’t be serious for me.

In the end, I hoped that if I contracted it, COVID-19 would to feel flu-like for me because I’m in my 30s and not considered high risk.

Although I was careful and tried my best to follow the safety guidelines, I contracted the coronavirus in mid-December.

The fight against COVID-19 was completely different from what I imagined because the symptoms were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Yes, there was a fever, a cough that felt deep and ominous, and extreme muscle aches and fatigue, but it was so much more than that … and it didn’t look like the flu.

What I didn’t expect, and nothing could have prepared me for, was the pain and pressure in the chest and the relentless feeling that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It made me feel like I was out of my skin, like I was going crazy. I could see my body running at full throttle fighting an intruder who was strange and ruthless.

Sometimes I worried that my body was losing the battle. I was afraid to go to sleep at night. What if I woke up gasping or didn’t wake up at all? COVID-19 is not only a physical illness, it can also cause a lot of anxiety.

I was given a pamphlet when I was tested. It had a list of warning signs to watch out for, with symptoms such as bluish lips or face, an inability to wake up or stay awake. My lips weren’t blue and I could take a deep breath, but I still felt like my body wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I couldn’t take more than a few steps without getting extremely weak and dizzy as the world spins around me.

I was in that strange place of being very sick, but maybe not quite sick enough to go to the hospital. I didn’t know then either, but your body can be dangerously low in oxygen without experiencing classic symptoms, like gasping for breath.

Although a steroid I had on hand for rheumatoid arthritis temporarily relieved my symptoms, the chest pressure and the struggle for oxygen kept coming back, and I wondered what kind of damage this constant bout of inflammation could cause me internally.

My body fought an all-out war, and while I could see I was getting a little better each day, the stress of the battle on my immune system caused me to develop shingles about two weeks after I tested positive for COVID-19. Shingles was miserable, but nowhere near as scary as the coronavirus.

We often hear about death rates related to this virus, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. There are no guarantees with this virus, and there is no way to know for sure how your body will respond to it. This does not mean that we must live in fear, but rather that we must live with attention to others, and do our best to protect the most vulnerable and ourselves from contracting this virus. COVID-19 should never be brushed off like the flu or any other illness that people are familiar with.

I am so grateful to be alive, but I don’t feel completely ‘recovered’. To this day, eight weeks after receiving a positive test, I still cannot stay on an elliptical machine for more than 10 to 15 minutes without getting chest pain. My stamina has dropped dramatically. I struggle with persistent chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, and other strange symptoms, such as dry mouth and insomnia. Unfortunately, ‘recovered’ with COVID does not always mean ‘healthy again’.

While our family was in quarantine, a child in our neighborhood wanted to play with our son, and she relentlessly banged on the door until my husband on the other end yelled that we have COVID-19.

“COVID is fake!” she called back.

“No, that’s not it!” my husband replied. It’s real, and for a lot of people it doesn’t feel like the flu. I learned this the hard way.

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