COVID and Mental Health

Did you know that COVID 19 can affect your mental health ? I didn’t. Back in March 2020 my fiancé and I had the virus. We never got tested by the way but it wasn’t hard to tell that we had. In the beginning of the year we took ALOT of trips outside. Experiencing things we’ve never experienced before. After all the fun was done. We got sick.

 

 

It was just me at first, I had a really bad cough that I couldn’t shake for about 2-3 months. It was so bad, I felt like I had mucus in my chest. My fiancé got sick but his symptoms were very different compared to mine. He lost his appetite and was always cold. Sometimes I would find him shaking in bed even when he had blankets on. His symptoms scared me. I’ve never seen him like this before. All I could do was give him Gatorade’s and water. His stomach couldn’t tolerate anything else. Not even soups. I hated seeing him like this. As the days went on he started losing a lot of weight.

As I was helping him try and get better I was noticing that I was developing some of his symptoms. My appetite would come and go. I craved water more than ever and my cough was becoming worst. We should’ve just went to the doctor but at the time, there was already so many people staying at the hospital because of COVID. The best thing we could do was stay home and quarantine. Only going out if we really needed to. 

 

After about 4 weeks of the same cycle of being sick, we were finally getting better. My fiancé’s appetite started coming back and he was able to keep down his food and my cough wasn’t as bad. We begin gaining our weight back slowly but surely. 

 

A few months after that I noticed my fiancé’s behavior was changing. He was becoming more and paranoid as the weeks went by. He thought I was cheating on him. ( For the recorded I never cheated , never had to. ) He would accuse me of cheating on him with his brother with no proof. It goes worst to the point his brother had to move out. I thought maybe his mind would settle but it increasingly got worst , he wasn’t sleeping in fear that I was “sneaking” out of the house. He became dehydrated and his paranoia was only getting worse day by day. This was a very stressful period in our lives.

 

We’ve gotten into a number of arguments that based on his “theories”. I decided that I couldn’t keep going through this cycle anymore and I took a step back  with our daughter hoping that it may make things better. That week of us being gone, sky rocketed his paranoia. He thought that that people in the neighborhood were trying to harm him. His mother decided that it was time to seek help. He was checked into a mental hospital and diagnosed with being in a state of  psychosis. They weren’t to sure what caused it because we never got tested for COVID so they couldn’t confirm or deny if that was the cause. I knew it was. I’ve never seen him that sick before and shortly after is when his behavior started to change. It was like he turned into another person. It was hard to go through and there were times where I just wanted to rip my hair out but there was nothing I could do to make it better besides calling and checking him in sooner. I wouldn’t wish what we went through on anybody but it has thought me a lot about mental health. Who knew a sickness could alter your mind set in that manner.