I was chronically ill, and then (perhaps) I wasn't

Part 1

“I had big dreams, big dreams don’t you know?”

In December of 2019 I felt awful and there was no particular reason why. I was tired and dull and no energy, needing to get the family all set to travel for Christmas and also host at my parents’ house in Texas because they were in their late 70s and don’t cook. The whole prospect seemed incredibly overwhelming. The days started with some energy but as the afternoon began I crawled through the hours at work and home and just wanted to curl up in my bed and sleep.

Was I depressed? I’m a psychiatrist and I’ve been talking to acutely and chronically depressed patients for 20 years. The two cardinal symptoms are depressed or sad mood most days and anhedonia, or lack of interest or motivation. This certainly described my feelings in the midst of the day. While there wasn’t any particular reason to be depressed or new stressor, maybe my lifestyle finally caught up with me. I was a busy working mom in charge of a mid-sized clinic and a lot of people depended on me to be okay. I wasn’t sleeping as well as I could be and my diet and exercise regime could always be improved…maybe I’d just finally collapsed under the pressure.

Maybe I was depressed, but I felt totally fine in the morning. In general people who are depressed feel the worst in the morning.

Eventually when I felt hot and like my eyes were burning and exhausted it occurred to me to take my temperature. 99.5 one day. 100.1 the next. These are not “real” fevers according to the annals of medicine but I’d never taken a temperature before when I felt well that was higher than the 97s. After that I carried a thermometer around with me and discovered that my temp was climbing into the high 99s and low 100s Fahrenheit every afternoon, and these ‘not a real fever’ temps correlated with my exhaustion. I ruled out depression.

At first I thought I had a cold, but just with a low grade fever and fatigue and no other symptoms. We had two teenaged daughters and I ran a busy clinic…we were exposed to colds all the time. A cold lasts two weeks despite the common lore that we get over them quickly. As December went on I felt better and then fine. We went to Texas and got everything done, and I came back home in January of 2020 feeling normal, going forward with my clinic and writing and speaking jobs (there were so many jobs then, how did I even manage it all…) and forgetting about the December cold that slowed me down so much.

“And then imagine all those names stretched out forever, like the rays of light from some long dead distant star”

In early February 2020 I started paying attention to a respiratory virus that started in China and spread out of control to Iran and Italy and then everywhere else…I began to tell patients to stockpile food and hand sanitizer (they laughed at me) and I made plans for the clinic to close or go to virtual, which was unheard of at the time because insurance wouldn’t pay for it. The first Massachusetts COVID patient was at the end of February and a traveler to China…but things started to get out of control and hospitals would be overwhelmed by April. In my life by the middle of February my husband and kids were all sick with a bad cold. I had been well for about 6 weeks then all my old symptoms started again. We had vacation planned with nothing in particular, maybe skiing, maybe a visit to a museum, but we went nowhere as we all felt awful.

Everyone else had coughs and headaches, I just had my weird low grade fever again every afternoon day after day for three weeks. After the February break my husband and kids got better and I had a health exam for a life insurance policy. I was fine. All the labs and metrics were right on point. My policy was approved with the lowest rate.

A few weeks later both my kids got “COVID toes” so I always wondered if we all had early original COVID that just happened to get us in late February. I wrote myself a lab slip for an antibody test that was negative, but they weren’t that good at the time. I didn’t have any respiratory or cough or other symptoms myself. Just the fatigue and fever.

Life changed after that. The kids were at home and coping with a strange online existence. My work too was all online. I got better again from my fevers after a few weeks but I was very stressed in the sudden transition from a busy in person clinic to all of us existing on video and with no regular interaction. I was used to seeing all sorts of people day after day and walking up and down my clinic hallway and shaking hands, and now I was huddling in front of my computer day after day.

And then, weeks later, I got the fevers again.

By the summer we were traveling, and by the fall I had taken on some speaking engagements…but my weeks of fevers interrupted everything. I was fine!! Fine except in the numerous afternoons then I needed to rest. And I couldn’t predict when the fevers came back and I couldn’t keep up with my busy clinic schedule. I never called out sick. But I wouldn’t. I was the Wiley Coyote running straight towards a brick wall but no one could stop me except for…me.