It was two and a half years into the pandemic, and I hadn’t had COVID-19. I’d been vaccinated and boosted and had the occasional runny nose that turned out to be nothing. In hindsight, I was getting cocky.
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October 2022“I probably have a really strong immune system,” I thought after I escaped when my wife had it. Although my hospital’s daily COVID-19 admission census email showed cases had risen, they were still well below winter surge numbers. I stopped wearing masks on airplanes and in public spaces and thought that even if I did catch it, it would be mild.
Like countless other times in my life, I was proven wrong in my assumptions when I caught COVID-19 in late August. It kicked my behind.
As I look back, there were countless times my hubris as a physician, and worse yet, an otolaryngologist (and even worse—a rhinologist), probably made things worse. It all started with my kids going back to school. The next weekend, both boys had a brief headache and runny nose. Those symptoms quickly abated, and I never tested them, thinking it was likely fall allergies (mistake 1: misdiagnosis).
Two days later, I began to have a headache and a scratchy throat—fall allergies must have been affecting me too (mistake 2: plausible deniability). Later that day, while in a busy clinic, my wife said I sounded tired. “Hmmm—I must be getting old, I thought” (mistake 3: hubris or signs of burnout).
The next day in the OR I began to think I actually might be getting sick. My fatigue increased and I had a slight cough and throat irritation. Like any surgeon who prioritizes their work over their personal health (mistake 4), I pushed to finish my day and went home exhausted. Later that night, I developed chills and body aches, and the inevitable home COVID-19 test turned positive.
It’s interesting to get COVID-19 as an otolaryngologist. Unlike the original virus and delta variant, omicron and its variants largely affect the upper respiratory tract and much more transmissible. Ear/nose/throat symptoms dominate, smell and taste loss are less prevalent, and the most common symptom is a sore throat. Other common symptoms are headaches, myalgias, chills, fevers, cough, rhinorrhea, and nasal congestion. And for the next three days, I had all of them.
The problem with being an otolaryngologist is we can visualize what’s going on in our bodies. I would lie awake at night with a sore throat, imagining what my nasopharynx and pharynx looked like on endoscopy. Thoughts of my supraglottitis patient and all the peritonsillar abscess patients I lanced in the OR danced in my head. I imagined what my nasal congestion would look like on CT scan. I thought about how much better I’d feel if I just got my FESS and which one of my colleagues would do the surgery. I didn’t want to see my doctor for Paxlovid as I felt I was young-ish and could tough it out. Four days later, my symptoms finally improved.