Covid and asthma

Three weeks ago, I caught Covid from a grandchild who got it at camp. My initial symptoms were fairly mild, and my doc didn’t think I needed Paxlovid, so I didn’t take it.

Ten days later, I was feeling a good bit better and had a busy day with the grandkids. Afterwards, I was exhausted again, and I haven’t really recovered yet, three weeks in.

I went to see my doctor, who did images and labs, which were all clear. I still have pretty serious fatigue, a mild cough, and some shortness of breath/low pulse ox on exertion. Not much exerting going on, therefore, still mostly lying around!

My doc initially thought I probably just had the virus hanging on. I explained I have somewhat uncommon asthma symptoms that pretty closely match the ones I now have - cough, SOB, low pulse ox, fatigue. So, he told me to use my albuterol routinely in addition to my other asthma meds, and put me on a course of prednisone.

I’m not 💯 certain this is asthma and not just Covid, but I’m hoping the meds help. In hindsight, I think maybe I should have started using my albuterol regularly when I first got Covid, not just when my cough got bad. Live and learn!

As has been discussed, sometimes it’s hard to know what’s going on when you have one thing on top of another, and especially when you don’t have obvious asthma symptoms, like wheezing. I was diagnosed with asthma late in life and am still learning to manage it; also, it keeps changing. Fun!