While I was still masking up and being as careful as many others who had never been infected, I walked around with the calming assurance from my doctors that the risk of getting sick again was minimal, perhaps even less risk than, say, getting hit by lightning.
Then on September 1, a test showed that my antibodies had plunged to 5.90 in the antibodies scale of measurement. I was dismayed when told by doctors that while my lower antibody level was still enough to provide me with protection, it was no longer advisable to donate plasma. That was a 16 percent drop from the previous month, and a big fall from the high of 9.38 on May 17 when I donated plasma for the first time. This decline was exactly what the latest science had predicted.
It was just a matter of time before my treasured antibodies dwindled to nothing. Or so I thought.
After some dreadful reading about the long-term or even possibly permanent effects of Covid, including inflammation of the heart, I went in for a full check-up last October 20.
The heart and lungs were working fine, two key organs that Covid attacks. But when the results of my ECLIA antibodies test (with claims of near perfect accuracy) arrived by email last Friday, I had to catch my jaw on its way to the floor.
After a steady decline for at least five straight months, my IgG antibodies, the kind that gives protection from future infection, were now at 8.70, a gain of a whopping 47 percent from the previous month!
Nothing I read in the news or in the scientific literature had prepared me for this. My entire expectation was another drop in my IgG on my way back to Covid vulnerability.
I sent my ECLIA test results to four reputable doctors I knew, two infectious disease experts, including the one who treated my Covid; and two hematologists or blood specialists.
With various caveats about how nearly nothing is certain about this new disease, they all agreed: the spike in my antibodies was probably due to a recent exposure to the Covid virus, which almost surely occurred since my previous test on September 1. I had apparently been near enough to a virus carrier to be infected if I did not already have IgG antibodies to fight off the virus. My battle-tested immune system quickly detected the enemy and produced even more of the same antibodies, hence the 47 percent increase in my IgG shield.