Day 7 of having Omicron & my experience so far

Few days ago I was reporting my positive lateral flow test. It was a Thursday and I had been feeling a bit under the weather since the evening before: runny nose, fatigue, mild headache… I had gone to bed early, and funnily enough, the last thing that I had expected when I did a test the following morning was being positive. But I was.

I let my flatmate know, reported it to my manager and shared the result with the NHS. As the morning went on, my symptoms got a bit worse. The headache was still mild, but the fatigue was increasing and I had to stop working — fortunately, I have a very supportive company which highlighted that my health was first.

I moved my monitor so I could see some movies from bed and I spent the afternoon lying down and streaming Disney+ — watching the ten seconds that Brett Tucker appears on Thor 2 was the highlight of my day. When it was time to go to bed, I moved my monitor back to its place and prepared the desk for a working day.

On Friday I woke up at the usual time, turned on my laptop and checked my emails — not feeling great, but I was eager to make it work. I even managed to attend a (Teams) meeting. But before noon, the fatigue knocked me off again and I had to go back to bed. I made peace with the idea that I was going to spend the whole weekend in bed jumping from Netflix to Disney+ — as, anyway, I couldn’t leave my room — and I watched several Avengers movies, first two seasons of Private Practice and few episodes here and there of Grace & Frankie. I barely moved from my bed, and my room became my cave.

But the fatigue, the headache and the dizziness were not the only symptoms that I was experiencing. Suddenly I started to feel anxious, to question my decisions and to worry about time and where I was heading with my current life. Suddenly I was feeling exactly as I did during the first lockdown. Locked. Stuck. Hopeless. Without purpose. And I didn’t enjoy those feelings.

During the next few days, I couldn’t get rid of them. I felt lost. Am I really doing the right things to progress at work? Are my life choices the correct ones? Do I actually know what I want? Who am I nowadays?

Feeling weak physically but also emotionally was something I didn’t expect. My physical symptoms could had been much worse — I’m grateful they were not — but mentally, feeling that way caught me completely off guard.

Today, I feel physically better. I even managed to get up from my bed and work through the day. But mentally, I still have some noise in the background.

And I wonder — am I the only one who’s felt this way?

I’d love to hear from you.

Maria