Sick and Tired.
How a random strain of Strep throat knocked me down hard, yet taught me how to stand up for myself
“I’m sorry to say, Jocelyn, but I’ve examined you and you seem fine. Healthy, even.”
I stared at Dr. St Claire, a lovely doctor practicing at One Medical, perplexed. Fine? HEALTHY?! That is absolutely, unequivocally not true.
“That’s not possible,” I say as tears run down my eyes. “I feel terrible. I’ve never been sick like this before. Something is wrong with me. You can’t tell me what’s happening?”
This is the conversation I’m having with a doctor. Not my usual doctor, you see, but a doctor. In my eyes, this was an emergency. I had felt terrible for days. All the rapid tests we’d run had come back negative. COVID? Negative. RSV? Negative. Strep Throat? Negative. Common cold? Nope.
The problem was I was sick. Super sick. Sicker than I’d ever been in my whole life. But this sickness didn’t present in the classical ways. I had a sore throat, sure, but only for a day at a time here and there. I hadn’t once run a fever. There was no sniffling, no sneezing, no coughing (though I had suffered from a cough-variant-asthma-caused-by-GERD/acid reflux-cough since the Canadian wildfire smoke made New York City look like Gotham in May 2023).
What I did have, though, was extreme fatigue. The kind of fatigue that makes your heart race and sweat run down your entire body from simply walking. I’m talking about the kind of fatigue where the only safe position one can assume is laying flat down in bed. If I were to attempt venturing out of the safety of bed, my body would revolt and I’d experience a dizziness oft reserved for waif-ish maidens in a tuberculosis sanatorium.
What started off as a 3-day fatigue fest laden with negative COVID tests on Day 1 and Day 3 turned into an 11-day ordeal, start to finish. Whatever this sickness was, it definitely was something. And that “something” rendered me completely useless in those 11 days.
Here’s how it went:
Day 0: Slight tickle in the throat. I had hoped it was all in my head. That I was imagining it. I couldn’t afford to get sick. I had a trip to Mexico City in less than two weeks.
Day 1: Fatigue sets in. Full-blown sore throat. It presented itself on my commute home. Too tired to stand on the train, too tired to walk home. Sweating profusely the entire time.
Day 2: A Friday. As I began my work day, I realized that sitting up in a chair was an impossibility. I tried, bless my heart, but called it a half day. Had an emergency virtual doctor’s visit. They say it’s probably just a bad cold, but that I should come in for tests. First COVID test: negative.
Day 3: Fatigue persists, but not as bad as it had been. I feel recovery on the horizon.
Day 4: Feeling right as rain. Second COVID test: also negative. But by that evening, the sore throat was starting to rear its ugly head again.
Day 5: A Monday. Fatigue returns. This time, it’s driven me to the point of tears and abject panic. What is this? How did it come back? Why did it come back? I’ve gotta see a doctor. I race to the doctor’s office to get tested.
All the rapid tests come back negative, but they assure me they’ll send my swabs out for further testing. In the meantime, I’m probably not sick, they say. But I am sick. Feeling unheard and unhelped, I start crying in One Medical’s Upper West Side location. Could they PLEASE get me in to see a doctor right now? Something is very wrong.
By some Christmas miracle, they were able to fit me in with Dr. St. Claire, but I had to make it to the Columbus Circle location in 15 mins. A challenge, indeed.
Making it there only 5 mins late, Dr. St. Claire shows me into his office. I’m a sobbing mess. “You see, I’ve never felt this sick before. Ever,” I say to him. He offers me a tissue and recommends I lie down on the exam table.
After he completes his exam, he declares that, from what he can see, there’s nothing wrong with me. Then, he delivers his diagnosis: “It looks like you just have a bad upper respiratory infection,” he says calmly and casually. Too calmly and casually for my taste. Why won’t anyone help me?! He sends me home to “ride it out.” By Day 11, he asserts, everything should be fine.
Even the lab didn’t know which exact strain it was, but they did know without a shadow of a doubt that they could not prescribe me antibiotics for it. I just had to, you guessed it, “ride it out.”
Let’s continue counting the days, shall we?
Day 6: I wake up and attempt to work. As expected but hoped wouldn’t be the case, I cannot sit up without feeling dizzy and shaking. I have to take a sick day. I sleep practically all day. I’m meant to leave for Mexico City Friday night, and I hope to God I’m better by then.
Day 7: See Day 6 for more details.
Day 8: A Friday. Same as the days before. The only differences are that I’ve had to cancel my Mexico City trip and have cried a river of tears in mourning of the Trip That Might Have Been and that, by the end of day, I had received a message from the lab. It was the final verdict: I had a “non-Group A strain of Strep throat.” Even the lab didn’t know which exact strain it was, but they did know without a shadow of a doubt that they could not prescribe me antibiotics for the strain for it. I just had to, you guessed it, “ride it out.”
A strain of Strep throat? Implausible! I’ve had Strep throat plenty of times and there’s no way you could convince me that this was that. Regardless of the diagnosis, I just knew I had COVID. Had to be! This was a sickness unlike any other, truly in a league of its own. Not nearly like anything I had ever had. But somehow, this diagnosis felt comforting to me while I lay in bed, practically imprisoned in a vertical state. At least now there’s a reason.
Days 9-11 went by in a blur. A blur of inconceivableness. How was it possible that I was that sick for that long?
To this day, I don’t know. But what I can say is that despite all the obstacles of negative test results and unreal diagnoses, I stood up for myself. I took the time I needed to heal and recover while laying down. And I wouldn’t stop looking for answers, fatigue and dizziness be damned.
x, Jocelyn J