I was not vaccinated and got hit hard by Covid. I am a 60 year old female. After nearly 3 years of super cautious behavior, I wonder if the new very contagious strain is what got me.
At lunch I was fine and by dinner I had the worst headache of my life, couldn't eat, and temp reached 102 at 1 am, the next day going up to 102.7 Tested positive on rapid covid antigen test I also felt like i had knife blades in my throat and my nose and throat were quite congested. I was nauseous and could not eat for a whole week. Urine output was minimal although i was drinking a fair amount of water. Temp fell and then rose again but not to as high a level. Remained feeling very ill and congested Noticed throughout my heart rate was elevated but i attributer that both to fever and dehydration. After a week i started eating but remained very congested. My pulse ox meter did not show any dip in oxygen saturation at fingertip. I was encouraged to go to ER for fluids but I did not go despite being close. I felt very sick.
Its now been two and a half weeks since covid onset and I've noticed something odd about my heart. First i saw on pulse oximeter that not only had it remained higher than usual, but it would speed up then slow down then speed up then slow down. It was not a stable rhythm. I used my kardia monitor and also payed for membership to get the advanced feature of a graph of the R-R interval. It was highly variable and Was able to determine that this was a a sinus arrhythmia. So not a fib or flutter but varying rhythm . Docs have been frustrating on this. If you look this up, you'll find it is fine if you are a kid but if you are older and get it as an adult, it usually signifies heart disease i do not know if mine is respiratory or non- respiratory sinus arrhythmia but either way in older adult indicates an underlying problem. Very frustrating to have a doc instead say “normal variant” despite this and despite never having it before.
Before covid i had Sjogrens Syndrome, dysautonomia, and a mast cell issue , so not in the best of health and knew i would get hit hard
Currently , besides heart (also 25 beats higher than normal) , temp still a degree higher than usual, lots of sinus pressure, anosmia, intense rib pain apparently from a few coughing fits, Headaches, sleeping alot, eating alot, and i Don't feel back to my usual self yet. I assume too soon for long covid
Anyone else experience a heart change? And still there 2.5 weeks past onset? It might be easy to miss this one if one weren't obsessively checking pulse ox meter. and noticed the odd jumping around was different than usual. Any comments? Input would be helpful. Will i feel better? What about the body temp and headaches? Etc. Thanks for any help. I don't have enough stories to know how typical or atypical my case was, especially from unvaccinated older people Would be helpful to compare. Thanks