My first positive COVID-19 test was May 22, and I had the virus until mid-July. I have allergies year-round, but I had a bad feeling that I needed to get tested. After waiting four days for the results, my test came back positive. My boyfriend and I both got it at the same time, but after a week he was okay. My initial symptoms were headaches, sore throat and a runny nose.

My major symptoms were loss of taste and smell, body aches and pains, chest pains, headaches, fatigue, nausea, mental confusion and shortness of breath. I couldn’t get out of bed for the first two weeks. My sense of taste and smell left during the second week. The cough and the runny nose eventually went away, but the body aches and pains were constant throughout. At night I had the worst body pain, no matter what position I slept in. My chest, ribs, back, sides, head and legs all felt like they were covered in bruises.

I’d never experienced a migraine until I got the coronavirus. I had a migraine for three days straight and laid in bed in the dark, because any light made it insanely worse. Shortness of breath hit me around three weeks into being sick. I couldn’t walk more than 10 feet without seeing spots or partially losing vision. I’d have to sit down for a couple minutes and then get back up and continue walking. I would walk up the stairs to use the bathroom, and instead of seeing in front of me, I would see completely to the left. It got to the point where my boyfriend would have to help me walk in case I fell.

Since I was sick for two months, I had to find things I could do indoors to keep myself from going insane. When I wasn’t stuck in bed I would paint, play pong, clean and sanitize my room and facetime my friends and family. I was so bored that I dusted the entire basement twice.

Mental confusion was, and still is, a huge issue for me. I couldn’t remember what I had already said to someone, so I would repeat myself until they reminded me what I had said. When I texted a friend, I would have to sit and think about how to spell words, or until I gave up and used voice to text. Most of the time when I was going to do something, I completely forgot what I was doing. I would even forget what day it was, or I would wake up in the middle of the night and not know where I was. Even now I’m still having trouble spelling words or remembering what I need to do.

The symptoms I’m still experiencing are constant fatigue, headaches, pain in my ribs and chest and muscle pain just from walking to class. My sense of taste and smell has yet to come back to me. I can’t smell at all and can only taste when something has sugar or salt in it. So, if I eat ice cream, I can’t taste the flavor, it just slightly tastes like sugar.

Since I was sick for so long, taking classes in person is definitely making me have anxiety. Having COVID-19 was the worst two months of my life, and I’m still having a lot of issues recovering from it. I’m trying to take all of the precautions I can, but I can only do so much when all of my classes are in person. I strongly encourage anyone who feels sick to please go get tested.