I've not posted in a while, but thought it time for an update on my covid pneumonia recovery after a month in hospital, i'm now just in week 7 of recovery.
I've been staying with my parents for the last 3 weeks to aid in my recovery, and it has helped. However recovery is much slower than I expected, but when I spoke to my physo on my 6 week checkup, he seemed to think I was doing ok. Next checkup is 12 weeks, and I have to be mobile enough to make it to hospital myself. Quite daunting for someone who has only just enough energy to climb the stairs or walk for around 6 minutes.
So, in the last few weeks I have made some progress. Breathing has improved, and as I said, I can manage stairs, however I do get breathless and need 10-20 minutes to fully recover from the climb! I can stand for several minutes now, and walk for around 5 minutes. Its a slow walk and my heart rate is still rather higher than I remember when I walked prior to my illness.
I go back to work in a month too, thankfully a phased return and just working from home. I'm lucky that most of my job can be done from home.
I still find pacing a little tricky, and only have a couple of rest breaks for meditation during the day. Luckily i've not experienced significant fatigue recently, this week I had one night of aches and raised heart rate, but was so tired I just fell asleep! Yesterday, aching back as i'd unpacked food shopping the day before.
In fact my physo suggested that I could count rest during the day as simply relaxing in front of the TV.
I do wish I had a hotline to him, so I could ask questions, i'm always full of them.
I still do get moments when i'm anxious, however i've not had a severe attack as my recovery has progressed. Mindfulness and talking to people helps most with anxiety for me.
I'm still hugely dependent on friends and family for help and suspect I will be for another month, until I can walk to the shops myself.
Getting fit again takes ages! My exercise level is fairly low, but seems about right. I long for the day where climbing stairs does not make me breathless. The not knowing gets to me. I still have days where my mood is low unfortunately. I do hope they will become less and that my recovery continues.
I was so unlucky to get as ill as I did with covid in the first place. I hope in respect of long covid that I do not have it and that all I'm managing now is a recovery from post viral fatigue and pneumonia.
I have to get my car MOT sorted and get it back on the road as it will give me the ability to drive to the shops and then have the energy to walk around them.
I wonder what the next 4 weeks bring? Once i'm back at work, I get less time to rest. Having said this, I use a computer screen a fair bit during the day. My Macbook tells me my screen time.
I do wish I could lose this hospital time though, waking up at 6am most mornings. I suspect this will come with exercise? Getting to sleep has been a problem for me for a long time, but it became even harder when I got ill. I hardly ever feel sleepy at bed time, before this all happened, I can remember feeling at least sleepy before my bedtime! I'd love to return to that, as sleep is important to my recovery!
Anyway, others in similar situations, how did you feel this far into recovery?
I hope it keeps getting better. I hope that starting work makes me tired for my bed in the evening and that in a months time I can go for a 20 minute walk, stand in a shop browsing for food shopping, and manage stairs without getting breathless.
I'm told that getting breathless is good though, as I need to train my body that it needs to improve my muscles!
Pneumonia Recovery
