I did no know this thread existed before someone gave me a nudge ;-)
As I guess someone might find it helpful, both to judge his or her own situation but also to feel calmer or not alone. Hence I will outline my story.
To make it brief, after weeks with a whole bucket of symptoms ramping up I was finally diagnosed with Covid-19 a week ago. As I live in the far North or Europe, a region of Sweden the size of North Korea but with a population of a mere 250 000 with only two fully equipped hospitals, no-one is tested who is not working in health care or close to death. Therefore my diagnosis was purely based on my combination of symptoms and their development over time. I was passed through three independent "interviews" with different authorities and each of them came to the same conclusion: "Extremely likely Covid-19".
week 1: I was most likely infected 4 to 5 weeks ago. No symptoms in the first week.
week 2: First symptoms: a hurting stomach and mild diarrhea, feeling weak. Impact on my life was low as it was only bad for a couple of hours now and then. I actually thought I just caught a stomach bug and the symptoms got much better again.
week 3: No more stomach problems or diarrhea, but now came the headaches, sometimes like a really bad migraine, sometimes with a warm forehead. I was still doing sports though on days where I felt OK. Later that week extreme pain in the eye and I felt a bad sinusitis developing. Some sneezing but not too often. I thought I had muscle sore in my breast from training. I stopped all sports and training. End of that week I had a first afternoon with mild fever and sweat, my heartbeat was doing the rollercoaster with the pulse rate going up and down. I felt extremely exhausted The fever and sweating disappeared after 4 hours as suddenly as it came, my tiredness disappeared.
week 4: First day that week the headache was getting much better, the sinusitis almost gone, just a dry cough sometimes and a warm forehead. With sometimes I actually mean rarely, like 2 or 3 times a day just one cough, nothing to be concerned about. I thought whatever that was, maybe a really bad sinusitis, it is almost over now. But then on day two when out with the dogs I realised that our small hill suddenly felt like an expedition at an altitude over 10 000 feet, without proper preparation. I know how low oxygen levels feel in the mountains and this was exactly it – just without any mountains. Although not training for several days my breast muscle pain was not disappearing but developing into a constant pressure giving sometimes rise to slight pain when breathing in. At this point I knew it was not unlikely that I got infected and that all the symptoms potentially were not isolated but connected.
The rest of the week symptoms were coming and going randomly. Moments with light fever or slightly raised temperature, two hours later it was maybe a high heart rate or headache or body pain or just almost no symptoms at all. Totally unpredictable. Only the pressure in my breast was always there but varying in intensity. Every kind of activity led to breathing problems and high-altitude syndrome of varying intensity.
week 5: I got my diagnosis after I finally contacted the health care institution on Monday morning. Symptoms kept coming and going. During this week I developed a dry mouth and a partially numb tongue getting worse from day to day. Also my heartbeat went into rollercoaster mode more often. I woke up at night with extremely high pulse rates which calmed down again after a while. No more fever though.
On Friday I felt like I was getting recovering quickly. All symptoms got less and less and for the first time in weeks I felt relaxed. This extended into Saturday. But then after lunchtime the headaches were back, the pressure on my breast came back and I felt thrown back a week or more. The night I woke up freezing although it was not cold. Today on Sunday most symptoms are better again, but not as good as on Friday.
Summary: It did at no point feel like a flu or a cold. I had only little coughing and never a running nose. I have had my share of virus infections in my life, even the swine flu, but none of them felt as strange. Normally you get something, you get worse until it peaks and then the symptoms get better. But with this it was a nerve-wrecking up and down. Also it seems to take forever, without being so bad that I was confined to the bed longer than maybe 4 hours when the fever was worst.
Given the first symptoms I would not have guessed it would be Covid-19. I was however told that my story was quite typical.
I will see what surprises the coming week will bring. As we live rather isolated we have not to take too many special precautions to avoid spreading the disease.
By now I know several people from my closer regional peer-group who have developed similar combination of symptoms with varying intensity though. Most of them I have not met personally under the last 6 weeks so I have to assume there are many spreaders who remain invisible. My case cannot be traced back. But then again we have had many tourists from the hot spots in China and Italy in the region until march. So it is likely we have a high spread of the virus in our community.