When COVID hit, my husband lost his job and at the same time I lost my old website, MastCellDisease dot com because without his income I couldn’t continue to pay the cost of upkeeping servers as well as paying for the security that website needed since it had been hacked multiple times. Popular websites are always targeted and mine was no different.

It was just before the lockdowns, when I was still active on Twitter and before the pandemic really took hold when the hubs got sick first. He usually recovers quickly from things but this time he was really, really sick. It was at the end of January 2020 and I remember we were concerned he’d need to go to the hospital because his lungs were so, so bad. So we figure he had COVID then looking back now.

I also started to come down with whatever he had before his got bad and even tweeted about it (which is probably still there if I log into my old account to look). I mentioned it was unusual because since my MCAS has gotten worse, I don’t get sick. I’m always sick, of course, but I no longer get flus or colds because when they come around, my hyperactive immune system seems to fight them right off.

So I put this tweet out that it was weird I was feeling like my first cold was coming on in years, and actually thought it was maybe a sign I was actually getting better (sounds weird, I know) and had a reply from one of the doctors I used to interact with there who told me to use salt water in my netti pot right away because he found it to be the best remedy to stop a cold in its tracks.

So I took a hefty dose of my regular meds before bed (quercetin, aspirin, h1/h2) and I flushed my sinuses out and woke up completely normal. No hint of a sniffle, except my normal morning pre-med mast cell one.

You can tell the difference between a cold/flu sniffle and a “normal” one for us lol.

While the hubs continued to deteriorate I went on like normal, taking my meds and feeling just fine. Had I known my mast cell stabilizers could have helped him immensely I’d have given them to him but he pulled through eventually and recovered, almost fully.

He still has residual lung problems and you could say he had “long covid” afterwards for several months but overall he’s back to normal. Neither of us have ever had COVID again (if that’s what it was to begin with).

I’ve not had a cold or flu again since then, either, but neither has he so hmmm… 🤔