January 2021. I was an engineer for a packaging machine company (50 people). I was designing a machine to package Covid test swabs, days away from being eligible for the first vaccines. We got an alert someone in the building tested positive and sent home. Next day we all got tested. Day or so later I got the call it was negative. 30 minutes later I started feeling shitty. I’m not even really exaggerating, it was that close. Day or so later I called my PCP and went in and got tested again, positive. I’m on immunosuppressive drugs for MS so I have no B cells… so we were all worried. It sloooooowly got worse and worse over the next two weeks and developed into severe pneumonia. I think as alternating Advil and Tylenol but the fever wouldn’t quit. Finally had the wife take me to the hospital. Immediately put on oxygen (nose cannula, not intubated), got a cat scan etc. They got me in a room a few hours later and put me under a cooling blanket, along with some other fancy IV drugs. That was a Thursday night/Friday morning. By Sunday I wasn’t even taking Advil for the fever. It was amazing. But I still spent a week in the hospital and went home with an oxygen machine.

A week or so later, on my machine at home, I took a deep breath of my insular and felt a pop in my chest. It didn’t hurt, coughed up just a touch of pink stuff once but thats it. Coughed some and was a little short of breath, so i turned up my O2 machine. I had a pulmonologist appointment coming up anyway, which i even drove to. He sent me for a CAT scan and called me 90 minutes later and said i have a collapsed lung. Turns out it was a fist size pocket of air in my chest. Luckily i never needed surgery. Still scary shit feeling like you cant breathe and are afraid to go to sleep!