My positive lateral flow result is really negative

Day 11

My 10 long days of quarantine with Covid are behind me and I'm once more free to re-join society.  I'd hoped that, some time after the 5th day, I'd have tested negative for a couple of days and thus earned an early release, but it never happened.

The 'raging sore throat' that I reported on my last post responded well to Lemsip and gradually diminished.  By day 5 it had gone completely... but still the cursèd lateral flow tests showed that I was infectious. It really was quite an odd situation; physically I felt perfectly fit; only a piece of white plastic told me otherwise.

On day 11 – the day after I was legally 'free' – I did a lateral flow test, just to see what would happen.  A faint line at the 'T' declared that I was still positive, but the government's advice was clear:

You do not need to take any more LFD tests after the 10th day of your self-isolation period and you may stop self-isolating after this day. This is because you are unlikely to be infectious after the 10th day of your self-isolation period. Even if you have a positive LFD test result on the 10th day of your self-isolation period you do not need to take any more LFD tests after this day and you do not need a follow-up PCR test.

Every two or three days during my isolation, texts appeared on my phone from NHS Tracing, thanking me sincerely for self-isolating, assuring me that support was available if I needed it, and threatening me with a fine if I broke the rules and escaped my confinement. I suppose one would call that a 'carrot and stick' approach.  Perhaps I'm just naturally rebellious (yes, that must be it), but the repeated reminders were rather patronising and made me feel like a potential criminal.

As you have doubtless concluded from the tenor of this blog, I am actually a gracious, well-behaved lady who has never found herself on the wrong side of the law. For instance, in my long years of motoring I have never even picked up a parking ticket. However, being ordered to stay within the confines of my house and garden was a bitter pill to swallow for someone who lives but a few yards from the Forest of Dean, with its miles and miles of unpopulated paths. 

Photographs of my rambling garden rarely appear in this blog, so I thought that, for a change, I'd show you three that I snapped during my exercise.  Even in winter, my leafy garden path is a delight and I'm very pleased to see that some mandarin ducks have chosen to live on my pond. I do hope, though, that the croc leaves them in peace. Thankfully, he doesn't look very hungry.

Finally, here are some screenshots from my FitBit fitness tracker.  In my last post I showed the data up to Tuesday 18th January, which included two full days of my Covid infection. Unfortunately, the FitBit only stores 7 days of data and I forgot to record it until today. This data is therefore centred on the final day of my confinement, Wednesday 26th January.  Disappointingly, I don't think it tells me very much, other than that I'm in reasonably good shape.

Oxygen saturation has oscillated around 95%, exactly as it did when I was first infected. Since 95% is considered by many to be the lowest 'healthy' value, I'm left wondering whether it will improve as I return to full health

Breathing rate, which had peaked at 16bpm, soon settled down to more normal levels... until last night. That last one coincided with greatly increased blood pressure and might be down to something other than Covid and its aftereffects.  Suffice to say that my blood pressure was normal again this morning.

No problems here. Once again, the increased rate at the beginning of my infection soon returned to more normal levels.