Jan Erik Moström

It’s now been 3.5 weeks since I got Covid and my health have had its ups and downs. When I first got Covid I got exhausted and didn’t have much concentration/energy, but after a week it felt OK to go back to work again (I should probably have stayed home for another couple of days). While I didn’t get really sick, my wife got it much worse, I’m struggling to get back to “normal” again.

I quickly get tired, and I feel like I’m losing my breath much faster than before Covid. At first, it was just a feeling, but then my Apple Watch helpfully pinged and told me to look in the Health app. I, of course, opened it and was told there was a trend change in the number of breaths per minute, turns out that I take approximately 15% more breaths now than before Covid.

To make things worse, this Tuesday I felt exhausted after work … in fact, I felt exactly like 3 weeks earlier when I first got Covid. My first thought was, “You can’t have Covid a second time in three weeks, right??”

It wasn’t Covid, so I assume it’s a common cold … but it has hit me harder than any cold in a very long time. To be honest, I feel quite exhausted and basically just want to sleep … no, not really because that means that I would be coughing all the time. Today I got another ping from my Apple Watch with a new suggestion to look in the Health app. And surely enough there had been a change in my pulse, a 15% increase.

Fortunately, things are a bit better today, so hopefully I’ll get rid of this cold soon and just have the remains of Covid to deal with. But no ju-jutsu sessions, no long walks, or anything exhausting in the near future.

Tip: avoid Covid if you can.

A couple of days ago something quite frightening happened, I suddenly lost my vision on my right eye and I can tell you it’s really scary to suddenly not being able to see.

What happened that a couple of weeks ago I got a very light blow on my eye during practice, it wasn’t hard at all but for a few days after I couldn’t see those circular “flashes” that are so typical for “vitreous detachment” (this is what the dictionary says it called in English). I knew what this meant so I didn’t worry much, it continued like this for a few days and then they disappeared. Then 5-6 days later I was out driving the car when I suddenly saw something that best can be described as paint poured down in some liquid (not surprising since it was blood “pouring” out in my eye - we’re talking drops of blood). I’ll try to describe how it looked like. This is how I, and most others, saw things before this happened.

And this was how it looked like when I was driving the car

When I finally could get out of the car this was how I saw things with my right eye

Things got worse during the evening and later I saw even less

The morning after things had improved a bit, it was almost impossible to see anything in the “middle” but there were areas where I could see stuff. It was like looking through some kind of cloth. For the next few days things improved and I could see more and more. It was still difficult/irritating trying to read something.

On friday it had become much easier to see things, but still difficult to read or do similar stuff. On friday morning I had an appointment at the eye clinic where they discovered that there was three places where my retina had became damaged. In other words there was a chance of retinal detachment.

The first doctor said that they needed to do “laser bonding” of my retina but that he wanted to consult with another doctor. She took a look but became a bit unsure if it was enough with laser bonding or if they needed to do actual surgery. So a third doctor was called in, the one with the most experience, which said that it would probably be enough to use the laser.

“OK” I said “when are you going to do this?”, “Now” was the answer. So I had to sit down and he got started right away. If you’ve never done “laser bonding” before I can tell you that it’s a rather unpleasant experience. No, it doesn’t hurt and when they stop you get back to normal, or at least close to normal, within a couple of minutes. That’s the good part, the bad part is that it like having a strong flash fired a couple of hundred times at close range directly into the eye. That’s not that fun (but I much prefer it to going to the dentist).

Anyway, this is how my eye looked like when they were done

The interesting part happened later in the evening, it was like a part of the “fog” suddenly disappeared and I could see much clearer. It looks like more and more of the blood residue is absorbed by my body … I hope that almost everything will disappear but I’m very grateful that this much is gone.

Anyway, the only thing left for me now is to wait for the next examination to see if the laser bonding actually worked. Needless to say I’m not very fond of the alternative !!!