In mid-June I caught COVID-19 for, I'm pretty sure, the first time. The current dominant variants are transmissible enough that they got past my defenses. I believe I caught the virus either while wearing an N95 mask in a public indoors space (such as the post office or a work gathering) or outdoors unmasked while eating dinner in a bit of a crowd.

I'm still recovering, as I've been documenting in this Fediverse thread. From 11 days after the first positive test:

I still feel more fatigued than I did before catching COVID, and am behind on correspondence. I'm gradually increasing how much I physically or cognitively do in a session or in a day. Audio-only phone call conversations take less stamina than do videocalls, because I can lie down flat, close my eyes or let them wander, etc. I do have the capacity to reflect and converse, but sometimes need to stop because of a kind of exhaustion that previously only happened after many hours of intellectual labor, or when I was falling-asleep exhausted.

I'm still working out how I'm going to modify my infection control protocols going forward, given that the risk of outdoor transmission is now so significant.

Regardless, given that I have now had my first infection, a couple things I wish I'd done beforehand:

Measure my resting heart rate. I believe my resting pulse has gone up, and it would be good to have a baseline to compare as I cautiously increase my attempts at exertion.

Have some more supplies on-hand. I'm a little too tired right now to comprehensively list off what I had and what I didn't have before testing positive. Check out the "If you (or someone in your home) has covid" section of Violet Blue's list of COVID resources, and Hazel Newlevant's COVID zine. Some things that really came in handy:

• Pulse oximeter, to check my blood oxygen level and my heart rate. The latter helped me quantitatively understand how much it helped to rest, hydrate (especially with electrolytes), and compress and elevate my feet.
• Pedialyte and similar electrolyte replacement drinks to guzzle. Coconut water was also nice as a supplementary beverage.
• A NeilMed nasal irrigation kit. I found the squeeze bottle easier to use than a neti pot-style approach.
• Lots of antigen tests, so that Leonard and I could better gauge when to lower or drop our isolation practices.
• Paxlovid's PAXCESS program which cut my co-pay for my prescription from $1,400 to $35.
• Gum, to counter the metallic taste in my mouth after taking Paxlovid.
• Diaper cream, to reduce chafing and similar discomfort (COVID itself plus medication side effects can cause diarrhea).
• Forearm crutches, to help support me the first few times I left home. These helped me by giving me something to rest on in case I suddenly ran out of energy for a bit, and signalled to others nearby that I might need a little help.

Get over my purity fixation. The first few days of my illness were harder than they had to be because I was grieving -- not just having caught this illness, but grieving a kind of status loss. I'm grateful to friends who talked this through with me in phone calls and texts. I'd subconsciously gotten hung up on the idea that, because I was trying so hard to do things right, I would keep being lucky and special; catching COVID felt like a failure, a sin. This wasn't a sustainable attitude, to say the least.

And a few things I'm glad I did:

Start a log of medications, symptoms, and treatments. When I got fuzzyheaded and wanted to remember whether it had been at least eight hours since the last Paxlovid dose, or how long I'd been experiencing a symptom, I could consult the log.

Quickly tell others I was out of commission for a while. A prerequisite to this: knowing ahead of time that I'd need to rest a lot, during the acute phase of the infection at least, to reduce symptoms and reduce the chances of developing Long COVID. I'd previously read Ada Palmer's "Self-Care & Healthy Work Habits for the Pandemic" and "Medical Leave Reflections", which were helpful as foundations for persuading myself that I wasn't "just" being "lazy."

Sink into comfort media. I reread favorite books, listened to comforting podcasts, and watched many hours of Dropout streaming comedy.

This isn't comprehensive but I'm trying to take it a bit easy and so I'm posting anyway.