My Experience With COVID

It’s been 22 months since I’ve gotten infected with COVID.

I have “recovered”, but it took me too long to realize that it’s been this long and I am still having trouble breathing even when I am sitting at my desk working.

I have been struggling with being told to “exercise more” and I have been feeling like I’ve lost a part of my life because I cannot do things I used to enjoy a lot.

I wrote this to help collect my thoughts, describe the worst period of my life, and maybe help someone else who may also be struggling but is not realizing it.

Background

Before COVID, I’ve been diagnosed with asthma back in the 2000s. However, I haven’t really taken asthma medication since then, and the worst that it was, was that during intense physical activity, I’d have some problems breathing, but it was very manageable. I’ve rode on my bike, and I went to ski with my family every year. I was almost never getting sick.

Pre-COVID

I had just started working at Splash Damage in September 2022. I moved to the UK. I was really excited for the move. I was excited to finally experience AAA gamedev after working in indie for 2.5 years.

Before I got my work visa and moved, I’ve been talking with soon-to-be coworkers. I was expecting to be working remotely, like I have been previously for REIKON GAMES, but then HR e-mailed me.

I was going to be working from the office.

Okay. I guess. Due to how long the visa process has been, my team members have been pushing to let me start fully remote, but I guess I can go to the office until I have a place of my own.

(There have been people that were allowed to work fully remote from the start and I found that out after I left)

So in late August, I moved. I also got to witness the country as the queen died. That was an interesting once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Come October, I’ve had a place lined up, but it was taking longer than I expected and I had to crash on my friend’s couch until then. Up until then also, I have been masking all the time outside, but I was starting to run low on my supply of masks. So I’ve decided that since I lived so close to the office and barely encountered any people, I could get more conservative with my mask usage.

COVID

A week later, before the Monday work day, I woke up in the middle of the night and I was coughing out mucus. Alright, I guess, nothing I haven’t dealt with before. As unpleasant as it was, I wrote it off as just something that happened once in a decade. I went to the office as usual, but then had to get off work after lunch break, because I started to get a headache. Alright, I guess, that’s also an annoyance, but it wasn’t usually a problem cause I’ve had it before.

Come Wednesday, I felt well enough to go back to the office. It went well. I got a call that my apartment keys were ready to pick up. Finally! I went there after work, and even took my friend to take a look at the place. We had a good time, and enjoyed the view from there. I was excited to start living on my own.

Then on the way back to her place, I started struggling to breathe. Oh well, it happens, I thought.

When we got back, I got on a call with my wife and we started watching some YouTube videos. I started noticing that even though I’m sitting still I was still struggling to breathe. Oh no. My friend suggested I take a test.

It came out positive. And I did not anticipate how bad it would get.

Additional note, since I figured it might be of importance: I have been triple vaxxed at this point, but my last vaccine was 11 months ago. I was on a waitlist for a 4th booster, but I only got the ability to set up an appointment once I moved to the UK. God damn it.

The next day my lungs were absolutely filled with mucus. I had a really bad headache. My brain felt like it was out of place. It hurt so bad. I was incredibly tired. My chest hurt so bad. I could not get any air in me.

It was easily the worst I have ever felt in my life and I thought I was going to die.

All I could do is rest as much as I could, and hope for the best.

I also had to send an e-mail to HR every morning before 10am saying that I couldn’t come cause I was still sick with COVID. Really hated having to interrupt my rest to do that, but I was too sick to figure out a way to automate this. I really would have preferred to stay asleep though.

I also almost got phished out of my Dreamhost account too, and was saved by my password manager (1Password) saying there’s no passwords available for that scam address. Phew. Thanks 1Password, you saved me.

Post-COVID

It took 10 days until I stopped testing positive. 10 days. The exact amount of days the CDC was saying to isolate for at the time. It was 10 days of suffering. Also I accidentally broke the couch I was sleeping on (sorry!!).

But I was starting to feel better. When I finally got to shower I just broke down crying there. Going through COVID was such a traumatic experience that has convinced me to keep on masking no matter what, because I would probably not survive the next time.

Someone on Discord told me I should see how I’m doing with breathing. I walked from the couch to the kitchen. Oh no, I was out of breath, and that was just 2-3 meters of walking. I was definitely not coming back to the office until I got better. So they finally started getting me a laptop so I could work from home. I also started preparing for the move in a few days.

My place was less than a kilometer away, and I could have easily carried stuff there in multiple trips, but because I just went through COVID, I had to get an Uber there. It went alright, but once we got there, I had to stop multiple times on the way to my flat to catch my breath. It was bad! Let me tell ya, online grocery delivery saved my ass, cause I really could not set foot outside my apartment.

Oh, what’s this, I need internet to work? That’s fine, the lady said this place has fiber and oh no, no one provides fiber internet here. Fuck it, I’ll try the 5G mobile internet. I remember back in the day, at home in Poland, we had 4G LTE internet and it was way better than cable. Surely it’d be good in Bromley, right? (no it was not)

I did put it off for a bit, but I needed to get this done at some point. Let’s see. Vodafone has a store 300 meters (328 yards for you Americans) away in the shopping mall right outside. I could get an internet plan right there. Sounds good!

This was about 5 days since I stopped testing positive. The walk to the Vodafone store was long and painful. There was a huge pain in my chest as I was walking there, and I had to stop to catch my breath multiple times, but looking back, I was pushing myself too hard for internet. I should have asked for help.

I should have asked for help.

My wife came over to visit about a week after I recovered from COVID. I am so thankful that still happened because I was broken and her presence was just what I needed. I also got my work laptop, so I could finally work from home. Yay! Oh, I have to use Parsec. Surely that will work well with the mobile internet. (Honestly, it was actually somewhat bearable. Wouldn’t recommend it though.)

Soon after my wife came over, she started getting sick with a cold (we think it was a cold). Over the weekend I got sick with a cold too. I’ve barely just gotten back to work that week and started trying to get into the rhythm of working, but I’ve been struggling a lot.

And now I had to rest again.

Oh, what’s this e-mail from HR. Wait, I need a doctor’s note for the time I was sick with COVID? Wait, I need a GP to get a doctor’s note? Fuck.

I didn’t know I needed to register at a GP but knowing what I know now about the process, I have not been in one place long enough to get registered. A registration could take 2 weeks at best. Oh and even though those 3 places were really close to each other, the very limited GP distance coverage meant that I could not use the proofs of address I’ve had acquired, because the GP that was in my area was not in the area I had the proofs of address for. This is such a fucking bad process, and if you need medical help in the very first months of moving to the UK, you’re fucked. This further delayed my registration by at least another week or two, because they were very slow at responding to e-mails.

Fortunately, HR told me that I could get a doctor’s note from my Polish doctor. Awesome! I could contact her no problem from the UK. Oh no, she can’t backdate it further than 3 days. Fuck. At least I was able to get a note for my current ongoing cold from her.

All I could do, now that I’ve sent the stuff to the GP to register, is rest more, and spend time with my wife. We had a good time at least.

My wife eventually decided to go to the ER for her cold, because unfortunately, she cannot recover from it on her own, she needs antibiotics. She wasted a few hours there, the doctors were no help. She went back to San Francisco days later, sick, and finally got the medication she needed there. US healthcare is truly bad most of the time, but when it works, it’s great.

Meanwhile I was finally recovering from the cold. I want to point out here, that because of both COVID and the cold, I have not been able to work for a month at this point. I have used up 18 of my 20 paid sick days per a 12 month period in just the first 2 months! That is truly fucked! And that’s not counting the time I’ve waited for the work laptop!

The day I thought I was gonna get back to work, oh no, I suddenly got a pain in my lower back, and that sucked. I ordered some warm patches and they helped. But fuck, that’s another day out of work.

Fortunately by the time I was finally out of the worst though, and could get back to work. But all that’s happened in that month has unfortunately killed all energy I had when I was excited to work there.

The GP was incredibly difficult. They eventually did send me the doctor’s note. But it was for the wrong month. I told them that. They never responded to any of my e-mails I sent.

To Splash Damage’s credit though, even though I never received the right doctor’s note from the GP, they still paid me the full salary. Whoever was handling that part of the payroll, thank you so much for that. It really helped.

But the ongoing months would prove that I could not endure an 8 hour + 1 hour lunch workday. I would be bedridden on some days. I would be completely exhausted from all the meetings in a day. I was struggling with severe depression and anxiety.

I was burnt out. I could not function by myself.

I did not make it past 8 months and had to move back to Poland. I wasted so much money I could have been saving up, all because they forced me to work in the office.

The Now

So here I am, 22 months after COVID. A lot has happened. I got married to my wonderful wife, I have moved to the US, and I have been doing some freelance work while (still) looking for full time work.

I only wish that I had been more honest about how things truly sucked back then, but I was too focused on trying to meet expectations at work I couldn’t meet anymore.

What also sucks so much about this is that there were so many people there that were incredible human beings. I finally felt like I had a community where I belonged.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to the so-called “normal”.

I cannot enjoy skiing anymore. I can no longer look forward to that every year.

I need to spend money on an e-bike if I ever want to bike comfortably again.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to regain what little physical stamina I had in the first place.

I may have to get used to the new normal where I can’t enjoy those things anymore.

Before You Go

To companies that force their employees to come to the office or force them into hybrid situations, I want you to ask yourself:

Do you really want to risk losing employees and their precious work time to sickness?

Do you really want to risk losing what precious senior employees remain?

Do you want to miss out on the incredible workers that can’t work in an office or aren’t in your area?

Do you want people to not be their best at work?

We’ve seen what is possible when remote work is supported and encouraged.

When people aren’t forced to live in expensive cities they can’t afford.
When people can spend more time on their hobbies and interests.
When people can be there for their families.
When disabled and marginalized folks get the chance to contribute when they usually couldn’t.
When people have more control over their work environment and their time.

When people are happy to work for you.

You have undone all of that progress that you’ve made since 2020.

Fucking do better.

If you enjoy my writing, please

And if you wanna help a queer woman survive and need animation-related Unreal Engine help among other things, hire me! Check out my website at vivi.the.enbywit.ch and send an email!