I thought it might be useful to share my Covid experience for the benefit of my friends and family around the world who may or may not have had Covid.

I will start off by saying that I was someone who did not believe in the efficacy of the Covid vaccine! I have been fully vaccinated since childhood for all mandated vaccines but somehow I did not believe in a vaccine that I believed was developed in a few months. My story demonstrates how wrong my beliefs were!

My husband and I both didn't believe in the efficacy of the Covid vaccine and therefore decided to push taking it for as long as we could. We wanted to wait and see side effects and so on. In the meantime, my husband's employer made it mandatory for all employees to be vaccinated or provide a negative PCR test every week at their own expense. So that took care of his decision to stay unvaccinated. He went ahead and got vaccinated.

Around the same time the UAE government made it mandatory that we be vaccinated to enter government premises and it also became mandatory to be vaccinated to travel. I needed to travel so I decided to keep aside my reservations and take my first dose. One week before I was due to get my second dose, I invited 5 friends (all of them fully vaccinated) to my home for tea. One of them tested positive 2 days later and the following day I started feeling a constriction in my chest. I didn't think much of it and kept drinking lots of hot water and lemon juice etc. Few days later I had a full blown cough and started feeling breathless. Got a test done and it came back positive.

Thank God my chest was clear and I was sent home to isolate for 10 days and start with a bunch of medication. In the next few days I lost my sense of taste and smell completely and started to feel extreme tiredness. Before the 10 days of isolation was up I started to experience some inflammation in my legs - being diabetic and getting cellulitis on and off I put it down to that. In the next few days I got 4 more painful, inflamed lumps in both my legs. Started a 10 day course of antibiotics. During this period the painful lumps started to appear on my hands too. My doctor, an internal medicine specialist, explained to me that even they were baffled as to the different reactions presenting after Covid for their patients.

Anyway during this period, I decided to try Ayurveda (alternative medication using herbs, oils and massage therapy). 3 weeks of Ayurveda helped to reduce the inflammation but it still refused to subside fully. Went back to my doctor, who then prescribed another set of anti-inflammatories. Throughout this period I was experiencing intense anxiety, heart palpitations, insomnia and a general sense of lethargy all the time. Also my diabetes levels were skyrocketing even though I was doing nothing to escalate it food-wise! During these months the only thoughts in my head were about dying and I was constantly crying for no reason at all. I never shared anything with my family or friends because I was embarrassed about what they might think about me. I have always been someone with a positive attitude and full of faith in God and could not believe these feelings of anxiety and worry that I was experiencing, having never ever felt like this before!

Finally I decided to talk to my doctor about it and he told me I was experiencing what they called Long Covid. He assured me there was nothing to worry about and that I would eventually start to feel like myself. However the sleeplessness was killing me (I hadn't been able to sleep in months since Covid) but my doctor was reluctant to prescribe medication for sleep. He suggested I start some form of physical activity, even just going for walks to get my blood circulation going. My mum then suggested I try homeopathy and by then I was ready to try any and all treatments to just start feeling like myself again! It's been 4 weeks on homeopathy and exercising and I am starting to feel like myself again, thank God!

My husband caught Covid from me but being fully vaccinated he had a slight flu for 2-3 days and pretty much that was all he went through! We have a housekeeper who lives with us and from the moment my husband and I tested positive, we isolated in 2 separate rooms and the housekeeper would always wear a mask throughout the day in the house and sanitize regularly. He never caught Covid from us! So I guess getting vaccinated and wearing a mask helps - certainly in our case it helped!

I would not wish what I went through on my worst enemies and hope that good sense will prevail and folks will get vaccinated and stay safe. I hope that sharing my story will benefit at least a few. Stay safe everyone!