COVID Joint Pain and Swelling

I spent a good portion of a recent summer on crutches due to 'long COVID' causing lingering inflammation and swelling of some of my joints.  The joints that seemed to be affected the most, for me, were my knees, ankles and elbows.  Sheila also had this problem around the same time in her wrist and elbow joints.  

I'm still trying to recover from my latest COVID infection...  still seesawing back and forth with fevers, hacking up thick gunk, difficulty breathing, swollen eyelids, overwhelming fatigue...  but the past couple of days have also seen the return of extremely painful knee joints.

The best way to describe this pain is it is a sharp but consistent pain deep in my knee...  behind the kneecap and between the femur and tibia.  I haven't noticed any swelling yet but I am familiar with this pain so I won't be surprised to see some swelling soon.  The pain is always there but worse during use of the joint.

We were supposed to celebrate Christmas with the kids and grandkids this coming Sunday but we've put that on hold.  After a week, I still have a fever and symptoms so I won't be in any condition to cook and/or entertain in the next few days.  Of course, I don't want to be the one to get anyone else sick especially those who are a higher risk so that is a good reason to cancel this gathering.  Also, I certainly don't need to be exposed to any other bugs the grandkids might be carrying!  We'll try to reschedule Christmas for some other weekend later in January.

We'll see how this progresses...  after four years and five bouts with this virus, this is getting quite tiresome.  It seems as though I've had more days of COVID symptoms than without over the past four years.