Well, as if this year had not been bad enough, I can now add COVID-19 to the list.

After having two bouts of appendicitis in April and June causing a total of 6 weeks out and then tendinitis in my knee from October – now causing at least 12 weeks out, catching COVID just tops this year off. One positive I guess, catching it whilst out injured means I am not missing any further weeks. Missing 18 weeks was certainly not on the plan for 2020.

So last weekend my wife started to come down with what we thought was a cold. Cough, sneezing, running nose and feeling run down. Just as you get each year. With having a runny nose we did not think it would be COVID. It wasn’t until Tuesday morning when she lost her sense of smell and taste that we realised it was COVID so she went and got tested at 7pm. The three of us then went into self-isolation whilst we awaited the test result.

During Wednesday I started to get a really bad headache and my nose started to feel stuffed but not runny. My temperature peaked at 37.2’c.

My wife got her positive test result at 9pm.

Given her positive result and how I had been feeling on Wednesday, I booked a test for my daughter and myself on Thursday morning. I was 100% convinced I would come back positive and most likely my daughter would as well. Thankfully, she was not displaying any symptoms and was not complaining of any illness or feeling down.

In fact, she was still charging around the house as kids do. She was more pleased to be off school for the next 14 days.

Taking the test was not a pleasant experience, poking a swab down the back of my throat made me gag and then waving it up my nose had my eyes streaming. My daughter wasn’t impressed with having it in her nose either but she was a brave girl and got through it.

We got our results back at 3am Friday morning, which I read at 7:30am once my daughter woke up. Both came back positive. Now my daughter has come back positive, her class bubble is now off self-isolating for 14 days in case she had passed it on to anyone.

Since I started to show symptoms 4 days ago, I have gone from feeling ok Wednesday morning to having a really bad headache a moderate temperature and really low on energy later that evening. Thursday I continued with the headache and lack of energy but started with a bad throat as well. Friday was slightly better, the headache was clearing and temperature coming back under 37’c.

Then Saturday I noticed that I could not smell my morning coffee and could only just slightly taste it, which is a very weird feeling. Besides that, I mostly felt fine on Saturday.

Sunday (today) was much of the same with the addition of my chest aching and feeling tight. A similar feeling to what your chest feels like after a big upper body session the day before.

Hopefully, I am recovering and the symptoms seen a few days ago are as bad as it is going to get for me.

My daughter is still doing fine. My wife has not been doing too well so far, she has been in bed for the past two days suffering from a bad migraine on top of the COVID symptoms.

At the beginning of the week, I had a feeling something was not right and I was starting to come down with something.

I use my resting heart rate and stress score from my Garmin watch as a way to track my health and pick up signs of illness early. I noticed that my resting heart rate suddenly started to increase (blue line below) and at the same time the stress score picked up (orange line).

Both of these started picking up before I felt any symptoms or both I felt ill.

Where did we catch COVID? I haven’t left the house since I did the 100,000 steps challenge last Thursday (6 days before showing symptoms). Looking back on that walk, I did not come into contact with anyone face to face on the walk. The people I interacted with in Costa and Starbucks were behind screens and I had a mask on in store so we do not think I picked it up during that day.

My wife was in work Friday after four days leave, it was just after that when she started showing symptoms so we believe she picked it up at work. She works in a semi customer facing role at a car dealership.

My daughter has been in school last week and Monday & Tuesday this week, however, no other kids in her class bubble or their family members have shown symptoms, so we don’t believe she has brought it home from school.

I feel gutted catching it, I have literally left the house 8 times since mid March, besides my running and cycling. I have followed the guidelines and done what we have been asked to. I guess we are only as good as the weakest link, which appears to have been my wive’s semi customer facing work.