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What It’s Like Having COVID When You Have Really Bad Anxiety

At the end of September, I went to Oregon and had the time of my life. But, I came back with COVID.

Towards the end of my trip, I started to get a sore throat. And of course, after having gone through this god damn pandemic, my first thought was lol I probably have COVID. But, I didn’t want to buy a test because I barely had the money to be on vacation.

I hiked miles and miles at Crater Lake National Park with my sore throat because I was on vacation and I was going to experience it as long as I was not bed ridden. I mean, how often am I going to be in Oregon exploring a beautiful National Park?

⬇ peep my highlight Reel of my day at Crater Lake National Park below ⬇

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Anyhoo, I continued vacationing it up outside where I wouldn’t be putting others at risk (besides my brother, who was in the car and hotel with me). Ended up having to get a mask because I wasn’t trying to infect the whole plane, even though someone had the nerve to infect me on my flights over. I also bought cough drops, so the smell of those probably gave me away as being a carrier of the plague.

I was supposed to go to the 1-Up Event at Post University the day after I got back from Oregon, but due to being sick, I knew I couldn’t chance it. As soon as I got home at like 11:30pm, I took the test.

Well, I guess not immediately, because I spent like 20 minutes trying to read the instructions because I was so nervous about messing it up and I really just had no idea what I was doing. It was my first at home test.

After studying the instructions like I would for an important exam, I finally got the courage to open the swab. I was so stressed out, I dropped it on the floor. Not even kidding. So, I had to open my second, and last test, to use that swab.

I did the thing, timed the 15 minutes while staring at the test the whole time. I was studying the images of “positive” and I knew I had to have it based on what I was seeing with mine. Instantly, I start to panic.

I start to get all weird, asking my boyfriend if I should sleep in the guest room because I didn’t want his gift from Oregon to be COVID, but thankfully he didn’t seem too worried. However, I was very worried.

Despite feeling not too under the weather, I started to panic because you know, we all consumed all of the news for the last couple of years about how it is killing people and how it’s causing all kinds of health problems along with long COVID. So, I start convincing myself I’m going to become a statistic, one of the ones that dies.

I start thinking to myself that as much as I loved my trip to Oregon, it was NOT worth dying over. I start to plan for if I die, what will happen to my things. All the while, I’m not that sick, but I’m terrified it’s going to get worse like when I had it last December (and back then, I really did think I was going to die because I felt that awful).

A couple days goes by, and it never gets any worse. In fact, I started to feel better. But, even though I felt better and was seemingly fine, I ended up with a lingering cough that showed up after I felt better. It took almost nothing to trigger it. And, I went to Google for answers, and then convinced myself I must have permanent lung damage.

It’s been a couple weeks and I’m happy to say I appear to be completely back to normal and that annoying dry cough is gone. So glad my brain had me convinced I was going to be another victim of COVID. The anxiety really just makes me think the worst of the worst is going to happen. Thankfully though, the worst case scenario doesn’t happen. But if it ever does happen, my brain will have prepared me for the worst LOL.

-Kailey

Be sure to read my post I wrote about living with health anxiety to read more about how my anxiety always convinces me I’m going to die 🤣