r/COVID19positive

I’m absolutely distraught. I got COVID for the second time four days ago. I’ve been isolating and am still recovering however, now my grandmother has it, and I’m extremely worried about her. Her symptoms are similar to mine she’s tired and doesn’t have much of an appetite, except she’s also vomiting, which really concerns me because I didn’t have that symptom. She’s always been very healthy and active, I jsut hope she gets through this. I’m just so distraught right now, I feel like it’s all my fault. I just want her to get better I don’t know what I’d do without her.

Wife had heavy fatigue for several days, went down thursday with fever, some body aches. We were treating it as a cold. Developed sudden congestion, it dropped down into her chest same day Friday I got severe fatigue, by Saturday I started getting terrible, full body aching. I could feel all the bones in my wrist. Sunday night we ended up in the er for her. She tested positive for covid( got the battery of tests & a chest exray for pneumonia) , I got test a few hours later at an urgent care and also came up positive. Both places said covid was on the rise, the urgent care said that all of her cases were covid. No one's been talking about this??? She's getting absolutely destroyed, i'm better off with covid plus TWO ear infections. Watching her is terrifying. Please be careful. The congestion feels... sticky? It's like cement in my sinus. My treatment is more for pain management then anything else but my wife's is more congestion and nausea related. Both of us are having issues with temperature regulation/& fluctuations. This came out of no where? We are both vaccinated & have the booster. Wtf is going on?!?!

I’m moving into week 5 of COVID recovery and today my heart rate has suddenly been running noticeably higher again.
I’m seeing approximately:
Sitting: 100–102 bpm
Standing: around 125 bpm
This is from my Apple Watch.
What’s strange is that this is really just happening today. Earlier in my COVID recovery I had episodes of my heart rate shooting up significantly with standing/activity, but that had gotten much better. Overall, I’ve actually been gradually improving.
Fatigue is still my biggest problem. If I do too much — appointments, driving, phone calls, errands, several hours without breaks — I can really crash afterward. I’ve been working much harder on pacing and inserting actual rest periods throughout the day.
Last night I also woke up around 3:30 AM with pretty significant anxiety and took buspirone, so I’m wondering whether poor sleep/anxiety/buspirone could also be contributing to today’s higher HR.
I’m hydrating and resting and I’m not planning to push myself physically today.
For those with Long COVID/post-COVID autonomic symptoms:
Did your heart rate improve and then randomly flare again around weeks 4–6?
Did you find that fatigue, poor sleep, emotional stress or doing too much the previous day made it worse?
I also happen to have propranolol that was previously prescribed to me for another issue, but I’m hesitant to just take it without checking with my doctor since this is a new post-COVID situation.
For anyone who was prescribed propranolol specifically for post-COVID tachycardia/POTS-type symptoms: did it help, and what did your doctor look at before deciding to prescribe it?
I’m especially interested in hearing from people whose HR eventually settled back down as their recovery progressed.

First got COVID back in 2022. I have had my two vaccines and a booster.

I went out this Saturday to a games convention. I never really go out unless it's for wild swimming, biking, running, going to the shops, etc. I am usually home most weekends and I work from home.

I woke up this morning with watery eyes and a really bad sore throat. I chalked it up to allergies and hayfever. I figured it must the drop in temperature. By lunch time my chest hurt when I coughed.

My husband came home at 4:30pm and presented me with a test kit. I got a positive within five minutes.

I feel awful. My throat is sore, my eyes burn, my back aches, my chest is sore, and my nose is stuffy.

My boss said to phone him in the morning to see if I feel better, but I doubt I will.

Doc wants me to be on a strict 5-day quarantine. Is this common?

I’m going to just throw this out here into the void in case someone experiences something similar, because the last two weeks have been without a doubt one of the most traumatic and bizarre experiences of my life.

For background, I’m a moderately healthy 38 year old woman and am vaccinated although not up to date due to adverse reactions from previous boosters (was advised by my physician and a pharmacist to defer subsequent boosters). I tested positive for Covid for the fourth time in my life about two weeks ago and had the usual symptoms - loss of taste, feeling like crap, dry cough. Nothing too crazy. I was prescribed paxlovid and a 10 day course of steroids due to preexisting medical conditions and completed the course for both medications.

Things got kooky about 5-6 days after I tested positive. I started having nighttime hallucinations - and I mean full on hallucinations of bizarre stuff happening in my room that I was interacting with - for several nights in a row. While I have some garden variety depression and anxiety, I have not teetered close to this type of mental illness in my life. This was coupled with very severe depersonalization and derealization during the day. I felt like I had been dropped onto a movie set of my life and nothing was real. The brain fog was horrific and I had no real sense of time. I was dizzy, my vision became significantly worse, and even though I was alert and oriented during the day, familiar places (my local Walmart for example) looked and felt like places I’d never been to. I cannot adequately describe how terrifying this experience was.

After about 4 days of this going on, I admitted to my friends and family what was happening (I had been trying to hide it because I was scared and embarrassed) and was evaluated at the ED to rule out meningitis. They had no real advice other than to follow up outpatient with my primary care physician. I also was fortunate to get in with my psychiatrist (who manages my depression and anxiety). She advised me to take some sedatives I have prescribed for panic attacks throughout the night to essentially force my brain to sleep through the night and hopefully begin to recover. She was also flummoxed and said she had not seen any patients react to having Covid this way.

Her plan did eventually work. The hallucinations stopped, my sleep improved, and the daytime neuropsychiatric symptoms began to abate. There is still a degree of brain fog but I am 98% myself again. I just cannot get over the extent to which this virus scrambled my brain for a solid two weeks. I wanted to post this in case someone ever experiences something similar. I had a hard time finding stories of people dealing with these types of symptoms in the acute post viral phase, although there is plenty of information about patients who deal with cognitive and psychiatric issues as COVID long haulers. My heart goes out to them!

I’m moving into week 5 of recovery from COVID and would really like to hear from people who had a similar timeline.
My symptoms started July 14 and I tested positive July 16. I took Paxlovid and eventually tested negative on July 24. Afterward I also developed what seemed to be a sinus infection and needed a Z-Pak.
The acute COVID symptoms are gone, but the recovery has been much slower than I expected.
My biggest remaining symptoms have been:
Significant fatigue, especially after several hours of activity
Crashing after doing too much — driving around, appointments, errands, etc. can wipe me out for hours
Brain fog and forgetfulness
Periods of feeling lightheaded
Earlier in recovery I had significant heart-rate spikes with standing/activity, although thankfully that has improved substantially
Needing much more sleep and rest than usual
Some days feeling noticeably better and then having a much harder day after I’ve done too much
There has been improvement. I’m able to do considerably more than I could during the first couple of weeks. I’m having better mornings, my heart-rate issues have improved, and sometimes a 15–20 minute rest or Yoga Nidra helps me reset.
Sleep also seems incredibly important. When I shut everything down early and get to bed around 9–9:30, I seem to function much better the following day.
But the fatigue can still be overwhelming. For example, I recently pushed myself from about 9 AM–1 PM with a lot of driving/activity and basically needed to rest for the remainder of the day.
I’m learning that feeling better doesn’t necessarily mean I have my normal stamina back. I’m trying to pace myself and take breaks before I become exhausted instead of waiting until I crash.
For those who had significant post-COVID fatigue:
What did weeks 5–8 look like for you?
Did your stamina gradually come back even though you were still crashing at week 5? Did pacing and sleep make a noticeable difference?
I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who continued to improve over time, because I’m trying to understand what a normal recovery trajectory can look like versus when people started considering Long COVID.
:::

What is the current incubation period ?

How long should I take precautions at home after visiting my dentist ?

I am asking in order to proctect my old parents.

4 Days ago I woke up with very mild cold symptoms. I just got over a cold a month ago and tested negative while I had that cold before.

Started with 99F temp, body aches, and a scratchy throat.

The scratchy throat has disappeared except now I have congestion and can't taste or smell anything at all. What prompted me to take a COVID test was the fact that I couldn't taste my coffee at all this morning.

My mother keeps telling me to call a DR and ask for Paxlovid, but I'm not sure.

I'm a healthy 30 year old male.

Current symptoms:

- 99F temp.

- Congestion.

- Can't smell or taste anything.

Update:
Today is day 5 and I was finally able to get a good nights rest being able to breathe through my nose in my sleep. I no longer have body aches, or a slightly elevated body temp. I just don’t have a taste or smell.

As it stands (knock on wood) this is more mild than an average cold for me.

hi all I’m 32 and for the last 5 years since 2020 I occasionally wake up or as going to sleep at a night either straight pass out for 30 seconds or feel sick in my stomach and then pass out, can then be really warm and sweaty and then goes away and then is fine for a period of time, has happened 3 times this year all around 3 months apart, had ECG and heart is fine and blood tests and drs haven’t so far been able to find anything wrong, has anyone else had this?

I tested positive Tuesday but been having symptoms since Sunday. I finally feel a lot better just congested. I have a faint positive on my rapid test. Doctor gave me a not saying I could go back as early as Thursday (yesterday). But everyone online is saying mask and stay isolated even if it’s faint. I called but doctor isn’t in. I have to work tomorrow, any advice??

Hey guys! For the past six years I’ve been flaunting how I survived the covid outbreak without ever getting it. Now here we are in 2026 and I just tested positive yesterday….. honestly it’s not going horrible but today I woke up with the most horrible throat pain in the entire universe! Every time I coughed I thought my lungs were going to explode or my trachea was going to pop out of my neck!

My thing is, would frozen yogurt help with the pain? I haven’t eaten anything all day but about half a bowl of baked potato soup (stayed away from the bacon to prevent irritation) and once I was finished I attempted to drink water and I nearly died! It felt like shards of glass were going down my throat!

I started a no sugar diet about a week ago and really don’t want to give into it but if frozen yogurt will take away the pain, I might have to….please help me make a decision!

Also: I have drank medicine and dried some remedies! Honey and lime has been my favorite so far, it soothes my throat instantly! I have drank pills like Tylenol and NyQuil at night to sleep but I want to put a little more food in my body that won’t irritate my throat too much

I tested positive for covid and i think this is the first time I’ve had it. The pain and vivid nightmares is sucking me in. You never think how strong something is till it affects you.

It's been pushing 2 and a half months since I lost my taste - and I've been on most everything recommended under the sun online + a plethora of antioxidants & anti-inflammatories regularly (many of which way before this symptom propped up)

Zinc being one that I added in very early June (which I upgraded to picolinate as time went on - ongoing): Super Omega 3 I've regularly been taking way before I caught this suspected case of COVID, been taking COQ10 around/before this occured (and upgraded to Ubiquonol about a month ago iirc?) - tumeric, milk thistle, trident gum, nicotine patches, various hot sauces (including different variants of Frank's hot - down to the XXtra flavor), soy sauce (something about umami activation potentially helping?) CBD, manuka honey, garlic extract & cloves, metaqil oral rinse: and a bunch of others I can't name on the very top of my head - and still no restoration yet.

Got any other supplements/remedies/methods to suggest? is there anything insider tier that is incredibly effective? If it's something I haven't already tried/am already regularly on - I'll look into it.

Otherwise yeah, as everyone claims - time is the major factor here...sucks that it appears to be taking longer than the expected few weeks on average. I'm hoping that I won't be among those unfortunate cases where it extends to a year or longer...

Started feeling icky last Friday and tested positive Tuesday. Tuesday night was the worst. I feel like I’m on the mend now as my sore throat is gone and my nose stopping running. But now the gums behind my front teeth just slowly keep getting more and more swollen.

What the heck. Is this normal???

Just got back from Hawaii. I stayed masked on the flight over but not masked on the flight back. Sat behind a large man who coughed a lot (he was also not masked). 2 days after the return flight started feeling sick. The day after that, had fever of 100.1 F, severe fatigue and body aches, painful congestion. Could not get out of bed. Felt better the day after that, and got on Paxlovid. But now I can't stop coughing. I dont want to blow out my ribs or throat with a deep or forceful cough so Im doing little dry coughs that are very unsatisfying. I have an elevated heart rate and can't take the good cough meds.

Any tips for helping with the cough? I've got cough drops, and tea with honey already.

I am now day 10 and still getting occasionally nauseous if I don’t eat. Is this normal? My cough is almost completely gone and everything else back to normal besides feeling randomly nauseous if I don’t eat for 6-7 hrs.

I’m not sure if I chose the correct flair or not, but here it is. This isn’t actually now, this took place in December of 2019. I had multiple doctors tell me that it was most likely a severe case of COVID-19 that I had (apparently it was discovered that it hit the states earlier than 2020). That’s why I put presumed positive, because they didn’t have a test at the time but I had multiple doctors say it was likely severe COVID. I just wanted to see if anyone else had similar or the same experience as I did.

(Reading this you might be wondering why we didn’t go to the hospital - long story short, we didn’t have enough money for it lol). I didn’t have health insurance at the time.

So I don’t remember how it happened. I don’t remember if it was quick, or gradual, but I do remember a solid ground of what happened when I was sick.

I was living with my parents at the time (I have Epilepsy and could not live alone), so they were the ones taking care of me through this. I was bedridden and throwing up everything that was put into my body. Even an otter pop (flavored ice bars) was causing me to vomit. Water, crackers, you name it - it went right back out, usually immediately. It also happened without any triggers as well. My fever was 104 for around two weeks straight, but I felt absolutely freezing during that time. Couldn’t sleep properly because of the fever, but also couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom so I got gas pains from that to add onto the high fever. I needed help to get out of bed and stumble to the bathroom because of how weak I was. It was so embarrassing but I needed someone next to me while going to the bathroom to hold me upright. I have a vivid memory of crawling out of my room to my parents’ room splayed out on the ground, asking to go to UrgentCare. It was like midnight so urgentcare wasn’t open, which meant I would have to go to the hospital. As we didn’t have money for it, they were relieved when I told them nevermind and they helped me back to bed. I had gone to urgent care before this, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They tested for basically every illness in the book with numerous blood tests, but of course nothing was coming up because it wasn’t a known illness at the time. I was hooked up to two IVs because of the dehydration and given medication to stop the nausea, which worked.

However after two weeks of this, my fever went from 104 to 92 overnight. My parents called a Doctor immediately, but they were pretty useless. After finding out that my thyroids weren’t expanded, they just said “well she should have been in Septic Shock, but she’s not so there’s nothing we can do”. They just told my parents to keep an eye on me. The lowest my temperature dropped was 89, but it fluctuated between 89 and 92. This lasted another two weeks, and I swear it was even worse than the fever. No more throwing up, and I could walk short distances, but I felt like I was burning alive. I was cold to the touch and my parents kept covering me up, but since I felt so hot I always ended up kicking the covers off and trying to turn my fan on. Immediately my parents would turn the fan off and cover me up again, which usually made me cry because in my not-properly-working mind it felt like they were hurting me with heat while I already felt like I was boiling alive, despite being freezing to the touch. It was only blankets and having the fan off (I forget if a heating pad was involved), but it felt horrendous.

I was delirious and when my parents tried to warm me up with a shower (it was barely even warm water, it was nowhere NEAR hot), but since I felt too hot already it felt like they were absolutely torturing me and the delirium didn’t help at all.

So after two weeks that went away. I was able to walk on my own, my body temperature was higher, I could eat and drink just fine, no delirium, I still had some trouble breathing and a cough though so I was given an inhaler by a doctor which I had to use for two months, and apparently my lips had a purple tinge for a while. My resting body temperature had changed from 98 to 95 though, it only recently started going back to 98. Almost 7 years of still being affected by it. I still have issues with losing my breath quickly - long runs or holding my breath underwater for longer than 10 seconds has me panting, even running up the stairs. Granted it’s not like I’m dying, more just how someone who was out of shape would be. However I was always doing sports, walking and running. I was on the swim team my whole life, and could hold my breath for over a minute. I could do that all perfectly up to the point I caught COVID-19.

Has anyone else had similar or the same experience? I know hypothermia is a rare case in COVID-19, but it does happen if the infection is severe enough, and that was definitely severe lol

I first got sick with COVID on July 15, and I’m now going into week four of recovery. I took Paxlovid and tested negative on July 24, but I’m still having lingering symptoms.
My main symptoms now are:
Significant fatigue and weakness
Brain fog and forgetfulness
Lightheadedness
Sensitivity to noise, light, and too much stimulation
Feeling exhausted from talking or interacting with people
Temperature fluctuations
Sudden crashes after doing even a small amount of activity
Needing to lie down and rest during the day
Some days I feel a little stronger and can do more, but then I worry that I’ve overdone it because the fatigue hits me afterward. I’m trying to rest, stay hydrated, eat well, and avoid unnecessary stress, but I’m having a hard time knowing how much rest is enough and how much activity is safe.
For those who had a similar recovery, how did you balance rest with gradually increasing activity? Did you follow a pacing schedule or use your symptoms or heart rate to decide when to stop? Should I take very short walks and do light daily activities, or focus mostly on resting until the crashes and lightheadedness improve?
I would really appreciate hearing what helped others avoid setbacks during weeks four and five.