In November, Blade journalist Orion Solstice caught a breakthrough Covid-19 case. This is the story of his ordeal — and recovery — as a working class trans person in Asheville

Above: The positive covid test result the author received in November. Photo by Orion Solstice.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a flurry of information across all types of media with contradicting thoughts and experiences. But one bit of information of note that is difficult to find is what to expect when contracting the virus while fully vaccinated and the impact — short-term and long-term — it can have on your body. What follows is my experience as a working class individual living in a communal household with other working class adults. While my case was fortunately not fatal and did not require hospitalization, the experience was not the walk in the park some media seems convinced is automatically the case for vaccinated individuals.

This account of my personal experience with Covid-19 is not to be used as medical advice or as a guide on what any individual’s experience will be like. Everyone is going to have different experiences depending on a variety of factors. If you think you have Covid-19, while vaccinated or not, seek testing as you are able and to seek out whatever treatment is made available to you. A large part of my motivation in writing this is as a reference for those who may experience the same thing, as there is limited information available as to what to expect when having a breakthrough case.

I personally got Covid-19 while working with the general public in early November, presumably the Delta variant.

I was vaccinated with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in March 2021, and was scheduled to have a booster on Nov. 3 2021. I had to cancel that due to the infection, though I would later get the Moderna booster. I was living with two people at the time, one of which was vaccinated with Pfizer in March, and the other which was vaccinated and boosted with Moderna and boosted two weeks before I unwittingly brought Covid-19 into our home.

Day 1

It is important to note that the symptoms were not what I was expecting. Through the years we have faced with this pandemic the symptoms of sore throat, cough, fever, are all what we were drilled to be on the lookout for. So when I started to get a runny nose and congestion, I didn’t think very much of it other than potential allergic reaction (which I am prone to) or the onset of a common cold. I went to bed that night unconcerned.

Day 2

I woke up the morning the next day continuing to feel congested. I was snotty and sneezing a little but I assumed it was something minor and continued to an in person educational program I was a part of. Despite the pandemic this class had very strict attendance policies; if I did not attend I would lose my place. So I made the choice many are forced into, and still went.

I did not feel good about it, but at the time I had no reason to believe it was covid and I could not afford to not attend. Everyone in my class was socially distanced and wearing masks. As a result nobody else got it. Throughout the day I began to feel increasingly worse, getting a little light headed with worsening congestion. In the evening I noted that my skin felt sore on contact, any amount of pressure or touch was unpleasant and partially painful in a way I had not experienced before.

At this point I started to become aware of a very low-grade fever developing alongside a headache and decided to take a covid test before going into work. I cannot stress enough that I was not expecting a positive result based on the symptoms I had.

But then the blue line of a positive result popped up and my stomach sank. As the night went on I googled trying to find out the chances of a false positive. But while a false negative is somewhat common, unfortunately a false positive is not. Almost as if to try to dispute the results with myself I walked around the house smelling candles I knew to have a strong scent, and realized just how muted they had become. That was when the full feeling of grim acceptance finally sank in: I had covid.

Day 3

On the third day I continued to be congested, which I have since found out is the most common symptom for those who are vaccinated to have, as well as the beginnings of a cough, fever, nausea, generalized soreness and further loss of smell.

It was incredibly off-putting to put strong-smelling things in front of me and get little sensory feedback. Everyone in my house became very nervous but at this point nobody else had tested positive despite the outright exposure that comes along with shared living spaces. I spent a lot of my time researching, trying to find any idea of what I should expect as a breakthrough case coming upon little results. Almost all of the information I came across was directed to those who were unvaccinated. I found the majority of the information relevant to my experience via forums of people talking about their own experiences. But this was extremely disorganized and difficult to get any kind of supposed timeline out of.

Despite this pandemic raging for over a year I had genuinely no idea what to expect.

Day 4

On the fourth day my congestion continued to worsen along with my cough, producing mucus from my chest that had streaks of blood, fever, sweats, significant nausea, overall dizziness and lightheadedness began with brain fog. I felt body soreness especially in my lower back, loss of smell entirely, and pain in my joints.

This was when everything became significantly worse. It felt like no matter how many different types of cold or pain medication I took it wasn’t putting a dent in my symptoms. Losing me sense of smell also killed my sense of taste. I was only able to discern salty, bitter, and sweet in my food.

I experienced severe nausea, so bad that it made it nearly impossible to eat. My body was in a lot of pain and there was no comfortable position to be in, which also made it nearly impossible to sleep.

In my experience, thought, the worst part was the overwhelming fatigue and light-headedness. Any activity, even as simple as walking down the stairs, made me feel like I was going to pass out. Just a basic act like that drained all my energy.

I wasn’t able to do very much other than settle down and play on my phone, trying to bury down the anxiety of having Covid-19. The people I was living with at the time had their own anxiety, understandably so, both due to the financial strain of everyone being out of work and the stress that they were most likely going to get infected too.

One roommate’s work demanded they come in despite living with someone who actively had covid, as their policy was to keep people in work until they personally produced a positive Covid-19 test. We felt like this was horrifically unethical. They ended up staying home anyway without any pay.

Day 5

Day five was better than day four, but it was still extremely unpleasant. I continued to experience significant fatigue and light-headedness, almost passing out during small amounts of activity. Nausea and complete lack of smell were deeply stressful and still made it extremely difficult to eat.

Coughing continued though it never got severe, as well as soreness and pain all over my body. I’d heard people talk about having brain fog with Covid-19, but never fully understood what they meant. It was difficult to focus on anything, whether it be getting up to do a task, scrolling on my phone, or having a conversation. It was hard throughout the entire sickness to hold my train of thought, which added significant stress. I couldn’t even keep my attention to any of my usual distractions or company.

Day 6

On the sixth day the cough moved lower in my lungs, making it more painful and more difficult to get a productive cough (i.e. one producing any kind of mucus). The fatigue returned, worse than the previous day. I was back to lying around unable to do very much, other than wonder how long it would be until this passed. On day six was when someone I lived with finally caught it and tested positive, the person who had received the Pfizer vaccine in March. The other person I lived with — who had the Moderna vaccine and was boosted two weeks prior to me catching Covid-19 — never got it at all, much to our mutual surprise. We saw up close that boosters work.

Day 7

Day seven is when things started to genuinely improve despite continued nausea, a lingering cough, and significant fatigue. Overall, I felt better moving about my house. The person I lived with who caught Covid-19 started worsening in symptoms and developed a cough much more rapidly and severely than I had, as well as losing their sense of smell within a day as opposed to the slow onset I experienced. They never got the level of nausea I experienced or lightheadedness, and recovered much faster than I did overall. Their acute symptoms only lasted about three days.

From that point forward I slowly improved without fever and the cough disappeared within the next week and a half, and by two weeks my sense of smell slowly returned. As of March 2022, I still experience more fatigue than I previously had, lower quality of breathing, lingering brain fog as well as a long lasting symptom called parosmia, a smell disorder in which smells become distorted. Some smells that were previously extremely pleasant to me, such as patchouli, parsnips, or soaps I am familiar with, instead smell foul and like something is rotten. It is additionally of note that with this experience, the smells coming across as not quite right has been sudden and sporadic over the past few months as opposed to being off from the time my sense of smell returned. I do not know how long this will last, or if it is going to be permanent, but I am remaining optimistic.

When medical professionals describe the experience of getting Covid-19 while vaccinated as “mild,” they say that to mean that you will not get hospitalized as a result of it. This does not mean that the experience is anything one can shrug off.

I was still incredibly sick and weak, coupled with the deep anxiety of wondering if my breakthrough case would be one of the few that did result in death. Both the other person who got Covid-19 and myself recovered, though their sense of smell came back much slower and much later than mine while also continuing to experience fatigue, difficulty breathing and parosmia.

The experience of having Covid-19 as a working class person highlighted the mishandling of the pandemic on a national and personal level. When you have to work for a living and are not financially well off, the opportunity to isolate yourself from others is not available to you the same way it would be for someone with expendable income and more secure housing.

Because of this my household had to accept the fact we would all spread it to one another. This is a reality that is impacting every single household with more than one person, which is extremely common in Asheville due to skyrocketing rent prices and economic disparity. One person getting Covid-19 is enough to have a devastating impact on an entire group of people’s health, financial position, housing, and employment.

I was personally in a financial position and had the community support to be able to leave the job that I contracted Covid-19 from in the first place. But this is not the case for the vast majority of America.

People should not have to experience financial devastation for making responsible choices such as declining going into work, as my roommate had to do. It should be a priority to protect the safety of the public, especially in food service which is unfortunately notorious for harsh attendance policies in response to illness.

Despite being in a position to leave my job to quarantine, I was forced to attend in-person classes despite feeling unwell, which also should not have happened in the first place. Strict attendance policies with little leniency have no place in the world we are currently living in.

As mentioned previously, the third person I live with did not contract the virus at all, almost certainly because of their booster shot a fairly short time before direct exposure. This provided indisputable evidence that the boosters do work, and as soon as I was eligible after recovery I personally got mine as well. I cannot voice strongly enough how much I support and encourage everyone to get vaccinated and boosted, I do not want to imagine what devastating results we would have seen without having been vaccinated, so we could better fight off this illness that has devastated so many.

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Orion Solstice is a queer trans activist dedicated to bringing truth and beauty into this world through various mediums, with a focus on photography. He is a full time artistic freelancer of a wide variety of arts and loving father of an elderly cat companion and five fish.

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