Ten days ago I was ambivalent about catching Covid.
I figured it couldn't be that bad, these new strains with seemingly milder symptoms were fine and I may as well catch it.
Now, a week after first testing positive, I realised what a dumb idiot I was.
The first hint I had caught the spicy cough was a scratch in my throat on Monday morning. I'd assumed this was simply a result of having a pedestal fan blow directly into my face for about six hours while I slept the night before.
Unbothered, I popped down to Maroubra for a pre-work swim. There was some sweepy, messy swell on Monday and when I got out of the water I was surprisingly out of breath. I didn't think too much of this but by the time I'd gotten home, I noticed pains in my back and legs.
After working for an hour or so, I started to get a headache. Fortunately I'd managed to swindle a few Rapid Antigen Tests and the little plastic rectangle confirmed that I had Covid.
At first, I was almost excited. It was this weird feeling: "I've gotten the virus that had shut the world down for almost two years".
I told my folks and my partner about my diagnosis – in the process shutting them down for seven days as they were close contacts – and went off for a PCR test.
The first of my rolling fevers kicked in while I was waiting for a test, I had tried two different drive-through clinics and waited hours before being eventually turned away.
Coming home coincided with the first feelings of brain fog I had. I couldn't remember whether I'd had any paracetamol.
After hedging my bets and taking more of the tablets I started a log of my symptoms and medication.
Over next few days the notes section in my phone was filled with: "4.30am woke up sweating with chills" and "9.20am threw up Codral pounding head ache".
By Tuesday, which was also my birthday, (how lucky), I had been hit hard by the virus.
After finally managing to get my PCR test, I carried a towel with me as I moved from the couch to mop up my excessive sweat, with the fevers lasting for around two hours before I got the chills.
I kept track of my fevers through the use of my handy meat thermometer (I did not own a medical one) at my worst I was recording around 39C – which is still around 10C off the internal temperature of a rare steak.
These continued into Wednesday, and by the middle of the week I'd also picked up a sore throat.
Sore throat feels like a huge understatement – I had taken to describe it feeling like a chemical burn (I have never had a chemical burn but it sounds pretty serious). The pain from breathing had me grinding my teeth and swallowing was not even a consideration.
The pains in my throat, fevers and congestion continued well into the weekend – much longer than the "day or two" of symptoms which seemingly all my mates got when they contracted the virus.
By the weekend I was shattered. I had no energy. This I knew because as a complete cricket tragic I could barely scream with excitement when Usman Khawaja peeled off two centuries during the SCG test – see you in Hobart Uzzie.
The brain fog lingered and as the fevers and sore throat fell off on Monday, a week after I first tested positive, I repeatedly asked my partner what she was up to, I lost the TV remote about 45 times and struggled to make a cup of tea (the kettle wasn't plugged into the wall, so you tell me how you'd figure that out).
This, paired with crippling fatigue, rendered me more or less lifeless on whatever soft surface I could find for the last 48 hours.
It is now nine days since my first symptoms appeared and a lot of these are still hanging about.
This morning, a hacking cough woke me up, and as I type this self-indulgent and whingy story my neck and shoulders ache.
My opinion of the virus has completely changed since being infected. It is not funny, and not something I would think of just "going out and getting".
Before the virus, I was the healthiest, and fittest I had been for years. I am a double-vaccinated, (relatively) young person who had followed the guidelines for medication, food and water but it still left me exhausted, hunched over on a couch using a sweat-soaked towel as a blanket.
The current health advice is that symptoms are worse if you are unvaccinated, and they ease the more jabs you have.
So from this whinging 28-year-old, please go out and get your boosters. Covid's nothing to mess with.