[dTal]

If you were "training" 2 weeks after the fever went away, congratulations - you didn't have long covid.

You cannot exercise your way out of Long Covid, or other postviral fatigue syndromes - it presents identically to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Any attempt to exercise - even something as small as a short walk, or in severe cases merely taking a shower - results in a hard crash that feels completely unlike exercise fatigue, and can effectively confine you to bed for days. And every time you provoke a crash, you set back your recovery, potentially permanently. And you can't really tell by feel what your limits are, you just have to work it out analytically and be conservative. And the whole time, your brain feels like mush.

It's really no joke.

[journey_16162]

I think there's something in-between though.

I have been sick for 1.5 weeks (which is an extreme time for me by itself), afterwards I did not feel quite normal and got right back to being sick just after a few days, progressively getting worse. After another 1.5 weeks, I almost felt normal, only super-tired, I got to rest all day, only to wake up in the night feeling sick again. Another 5 days went by, to get back to the point where I feel tired but not sick and again, I went back to feeling generally unwell, although it may be better than the last time. It goes for 4 weeks now.

Most recently, I woke up, felt sick right there in the morning, feeling like I should rest rather than work but with great mental exertion I overrode it and carried a full day, with little to no rest, every minute pushing against that feeling and doing some light exercise too. At the end of the day, I felt like I did not sleep the entire night and as I went to sleep, I slept like a stone. The day after I got that tiredness feeling without feeling sick I wrote about earlier - which felt like progress.

I don't have extreme tiredness like you describe, but something is clearly wrong and it cut my weekly work capacity by half. I never had something like. I also have been hearing about friends of friends also feeling unwell for 1 month or 2 months.

[journey_16162]

Actually, I have long covid. The sick feeling / malaise were some sort of early PEMs I think. Soon afterward, after I pushed it a bit too much with no awareness on the issue, I had a huge crash that did not feel like being sick, more like beign drained from all energy. I used to work a bit and play a video game when I was sick previously, now I am not able to watch more than 1h of a movie without resting.

My whole life is suspended. I hope I will get to recover. I will try to rest as much as I can. I believe I got this because I was working while being sick. Who the fuck know something like this was possible. They should fucking teach about this in school... don't work while you are sick or risk ending up disabled. Instead most doctors don't even know such illness exist.