Symptoms on A long dance with Rona

The loss of color 🎨

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What the hell is ADD?

It’s typically referred to as ADHD these days. I’ve gone through months of treating it with non-stimulants after LC and landed on a stimulant (more on this another time; it may not have been the best choice long-term for me). But that’s not what this is about. This is about the earlier months of long covid, when things were royally messed up with my brain.

I have started several posts because I have many ideas. Do I finish them in a timely manner, or at all sometimes? No. If someone has any idea on how to remedy this, I’d love to hear it!

The emotional loss of color

In the early months of long covid, my brain had changed. My mind had been altered drastically, yet I had no idea what was causing it. This in and of itself triggered massive anxiety. I would go to the ER and get sent home, being told I’m stable and don’t belong there. At one point I was told to go home, rest, and find a “long covid clinic, or something.”

On the spiral downward, it was strange. I had blips of myself that would come on randomly. I would tell myself that the gray, detached feelings were temporary. And then they just kept becoming more frequent until the color was gone. Day after day, I would wake up mid-to-late morning after hardly sleeping (its own unique hell). I could barely drive (shouldn’t have been for a period there). There was no joy or excitement. My sense of humor was gone.

Music, once a staple of my life, became extremely foreign. Love, jealousy, regret, mistakes, and passion had no meaning. The only emotion I felt was anger, and I was angry a lot. Angry at doctors and medical providers (this was, albeit, valid at times), family, friends, and, mostly, myself. This was all my fault. I was a massive failure. I couldn’t drive, parent, work, or be a husband. Likewise, I hated my life in this body, and I still do at times.

In a world of human wreckage

Music became a big part of recovery, and I’m still recovering. I started to write down songs that had meaning to me, those that I identified with during this void of self. I no longer need to use a notebook; I hear a song, and I’m reminded of the depth of hell I was in (alas, occasionally still am).

Furthermore, I started to realize that joy was working its way into the mix. Lost emotions were coming back, and not just the negative ones. If you have the energy and interest, see if you can find the emotions in the playlist below. Or, make your own. I appreciate listening to it periodically, when I’m feeling bad. I was in such a low place the first 6 months of long covid. It’s easy to forget that, but, to me, forgetting it would probably make my emotional state worse again.

Acceptance of these changes is nearly impossible

I hate how angry I got and sometimes how angry I still get. I don’t want to accept this.

Acceptance is a difficult thing. It is not admitting defeat, yet I cannot get that through my foggy head. Waves of failure still hit me hard. I can’t do what I could do before, and that needs to be okay, I know, but I haven’t really mastered this.

However, I am able to rationalize what I can do as a very positive element. I can still exercise. Walk. Run. Mostly talk okay without stuttering. I typically remember things better with aids and overall improvement from the early onset months. I can drive for now.

I miss my sense of humor from before; laughter is such a healer. I miss some friends I’ve lost. Yet, I still have a sense of humor at times, and it still continues to get better, 14 months in.

I’ve made many new friends during this. I can’t expect some of the ones I’ve lost to just come back, just as much as I cannot force myself to be the friend that I was before to someone who wants me to.

It’s okay to be angry. It’s how you let it out. Go to a smash room. Park your car and yell. Hit a punching bag. Stuck at home? Yell into a pillow. If you’re in therapy, use that safe place to let it out (assuming your therapist is okay with it, of course). I didn’t know what to do with anger at first, but now I mostly do (no one is perfect). The lack of control of a damaged body and mind is incredibly difficult and can be infuriating.

I want to say, with anger, it is an extension of sadness. I’m a guy born in the 80s. Males we looked up to constantly told us never to cry; it is a sign of weakness. I have never cried so much in my life before this (and I’ve not always had a great life for other reasons). It feels good and is okay, no matter what your gender is. Letting emotions out in a healthy manner is what our minds need.

Do you wanna leave, or something?

So, I look over this once in a while. I see the errors and mistakes I make, and I try to keep up on correcting them. The lack of focus too. My vision is still pretty screwy, and my nervous system is all over the place. Sometimes I want to give up on this blog, but it is a way for me to work on sharing my experience (secondary). More importantly, it allows me to keep track of where I was, where I am now, and where I would like to go with all of this.

I’m grateful that people read this, and I hope others can find their way forward to better days, regardless of how helpful or unhelpful this blog is for you.

You may find my long covid playlist here: Long COVID Playlist on YouTube Music

Talk of circadian rhythm 👨‍🎤

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Talk of circadian rhythm 👨‍🎤

Sleep has been something that eluded me, it was like falling down a cliff in December 2024. It started with waking up at a 6 am (instead of a minute before the 7 am alarm – almost always my norm). Then 5 am, 4 am, and landing on about 2 am. When that was done, it turned into falling asleep becoming a problem. When I thought that was the worst of it, the panic attacks started. Profuse sweating, heart palpitations, impending doom, namely death. My body was on high alert, but it didn’t know what to fight.

An invisible enemy, that Rona

I’ve always been a fighter of danger. Sick? Rest and exercise carefully, paying attention to my body. Spinning out on black ice in the car, calmly brake and make slow corrections. Someone with a weapon? Grab and clear the weapon, and fight. My brain didn’t even think, it just did these things before. But there was no black ice, person with a knife, or a normal viral infection to fight. Rona is an invisible enemy, I had to find a way to fight it for me.

Benzodiazepine the life preserver I hardly knew 🛟

What pulled me through this back then was a spouse who knew I needed it: Xanax. Nothing that worked before for addressing rare sleeplessness. This includes, and am certain not limited to, melatonin, Benadryl, CBD, CBN, THC, and trazodone (knocked me out while completely clogging my sinuses, so I’m forced awake). Gabapentin and Lyrica helped early on, but gave me uncontrollable tremors even on low doses, and their efficacy seemed to wear off within a week (I did not want to keep going up).

Back to Xanax: with two screw caps of 5 and 10 pills, it lasted me six months (with some to spare). It shut my mind down so I could sleep. At first, it was 3 – 4 hours, but inched back up to 7 (my normal) after adding a more long term sleep option.

Going to battle 🥷

In January and February, I hit the sleep thing as hard as I could. Sleep phycologist (and everything that comes with that) ✔️, inpatient sleep study (nothing found, other than poor sleep) ✔️, and a psychiatrist to prescribe heavy hitting sleep drugs ✔️

What I found for me was, it’s a very complex problem. Anxiety wasn’t and still isn’t helping, and it fed off insomnia and made it worse. Xanax is not a long term solution, so I moved on to Lunesta (or as some call it, baby Ambien).

After being on Lunesta for about 7 months, I switched to Mirtazapine 7.5 mg, and it is where I still am.

What worked for me, kinda

It is an ongoing deal with insomnia. What works for one, doesn’t work for all by any means.

In order to put myself in the best possible path to success with sleep, I hit every area I could. And, I typically fall asleep fast 90% of the time. I still have occasionally wake ups. No one thing solves this for me. If I don’t take Mirtazapine, I wake up around 2 - 4 am, and have trouble getting back to sleep (those buggers are small!).

Blackout shades
Foam ear plugs
White noise
Comfortable eye mask
Logging sleep with a tracker (if it doesn’t cause anxiety!), or written - helps with false insomnia, and to try to gauge what helps or hinders it
Night guard to address TMJ while sleeping
Keeping the temp cool (67 degrees Fahrenheit)
Getting up and reading or moving to another place if awakened too long
Mirtazapine 7.5 mg
Occasional CBD with low melatonin gummy (bumps up falling asleep faster, and increases REM slightly)

The bottom line

Insomnia is unique to the individual. It requires a ton of trial and error for each case. It is trying one thing at a time for a couple of weeks, which requires a bit of upfront work and planning.

I have met folks who say even Xanax doesn’t help. For me, early on, almost nothing worked. Time and having the brain heal are important too - that alone is a hard thing to accept, I still struggle with that.

If you’re struggling with sleep, I encourage you to reach out to specialists and address it. It was a huge weight pulling me down early on, and having it mostly controlled gives me time to address other symptoms.

A year later, here we go 🫁

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Our meeting 👋

In a few short days, I’ll be one year in with long Covid. I started working on this blog in May of 2025 - yes, it’s November 2025 now. I have finally gotten things like worsened ADHD and brain fog somewhat managed these days. Let’s rewind to the beginning with this first post.

One of my greatest challenges has been worsened ADHD from this. Oh hey, I could use Hugo to make a blog, and it will be super easy if I pace myself and take my time. It is, but enter the state of brain fog and poor attention. I want to put up a featured image. Oh look, it’s not working for days because every inch of energy used is spent overthinking how this platform works and overcomplicating every darn thing.

Nothing here will be perfect (deep breaths), and there is more to come here, but I needed to get this started, so here we go!

The Courtship 💃

On November 28, 2024, I was enjoying Thanksgiving here in the US with friends and family. It was the second year back at this, as COVID had disrupted in-person gatherings for a few years. The group is COVID conscious, and no one was showing any symptoms. I didn’t see Rona, but a presence was felt. As the night went on, I started feeling more tired than usual. Caulked it up to playing outside with the kids before dinner. I drove my family home - I remember that drive for some reason in vivid detail. The streetlights seemed brighter than normal, and the dusting of light snowfall was bothering me a little bit more than it did before. Nothing I couldn’t handle, though.

At home, I felt pretty wiped out. Kids to bed, and I went to bed soon that night. I awoke the next morning feeling like garbage. My first thought was, this is COVID. I need to test. It was positive and would be my third known infection of COVID. I started Paxlovid, as I have asthma, like I did the first two times.

The Rebound 🪃

December 7, 2024: After six days of working here and there, resting, and taking it easy, I felt almost 100%. Sleep wasn’t great; I was waking up early but falling asleep fine late in the week. I took an at-home test, and it was negative (clear it was a single line). This seemed to track; I felt good, and like before, this was about the course of having COVID for me.

I had energy and played football outside on Sunday. Sunday night I felt odd, sore, and fatigued. Chalked it up to intense physical activity during football. I was able to get to sleep and deal with the pain with a dose of NyQuil Flu. The next morning, I awoke feeling awful, like I had COVID again. So, I took the lollipop at-home test (pictured), and to my confusion, it was positive again. I took another one, different brand, same result. I went to urgent care a few days later for a nasal swab test, and that was positive.

Component results

Component	Your value	Standard range	Result Date	Result Time
COVID-19 INTERPRETATION	Detected	Not Detected	12/10/2024	4:01 AM
SARS COV-2 SOURCE	Nasopharyngeal swab

Narrative
Test performed by Transcription Mediated Amplification. TMA has been shown to be equivalent to commercial real-time PCR tests. This test has been authorized by the FDA under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for use by authorized laboratories.

And so it begins

I followed up with Urgent Care again, as my kids ended up having strep concurrently with this (I did not test positive for that). Urgent Care had nothing to offer me about rebound infections but a 5-day course of prednisone, which I accepted. I was told not to do Paxlovid again. However, I did go down that rabbit hole of did Paxlovid cause a rebound potentially? The answer appears to be likely not (What Is Paxlovid Rebound? 9 Things to Know).

What follows next is a hell of neurological symptoms from COVID along with coronasomnia, short-term disability off work, and a low quality of life I have never experienced before in my life. I will have the symptoms page up soon.