I guess my luck finally ran out.
As I write this, it's just shy of the end of 2023.ev. I'm now up and around and functional enough actually think about writing. Not because of any New Year's festivities, unfortunately.
If you guessed that I caught covid-19 in December, you'd be right.
I went on travel for a week for work in December, which is probably when I was exposed. It might've been at work, it might've been at the hotel (where, during that week, two wedding receptions and four holiday parties were held), for all I know it might've been at the airport when the TSA decided to ask a certain weirdo wearing a leather jacket a couple of questions. Ultimately, it really doesn't matter.
What does matter is that, the evening of 23 December I was not sleeping well at all. I kept waking up coughing and my sinuses were draining down the back of my throat. I'm told that I was coughing so hard that I kept folks awake. I also woke up with a raging sinus headache that covered just about the entire front of my skull. Unsurprisingly I woke up the morning of the 24th feeling like crap. A covid test came back negative, so I began to suspect a sinus infection. However, on Christmas Eve every urgent care office I went to that wasn't closed had a minimum of four hour waits and were asking people to make appointments. So, no dice there.
On Christmas morning I woke up after another night of feeling lousy and barely sleeping, took my temperature (a toasty 102.8 degrees Fahrenheit (which probably had as much to do with having chills and bundling under three or four blankets as it did my body's immune system)), and then took another covid test. I was surprised to see a bold pink positive line appear within a couple of seconds as if shouting in my face "YOU'VE GOT COVID, JAGOFF!"
Well, merry fucking Christmas.
One video call with my doctor that afternoon, and I had a prescription for paxlovid phoned in to the pharmacy we usually deal with. Paxlovid is rough stuff, it's a cocktail of two antiviral compounds (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) that have to be taken in concert on a reasonably tight schedule (twice a day, around 12 hours apart) out of a box of five foil bubble-sealed cards. Like many antivirals, they're horse pills that feel like they're kicking your ass harder than the virus is. Please note that paxlovid has multiple possible interactions with other drugs; while waiting for the prescription to be filled I did some research and asking around, and learned that two of the things I take are supposed to react badly with it... my physician said that they don't, and the handouts said slightly different things. Talk to your doctor specifically about drug interactions, please. You can't ask questions of a photocopied printout and it's really important that you do.
As you might reasonably expect, the last couple of days of 2023.ev sucked. I've been going through multiple cycles daily of fever and cold sweats the entire time. They say that paxlovid makes everything taste metallic. I disagree. I found that it made everything start tasting like soap almost immediately. Everything still tastes like soap, I've just gotten better at ignoring it. I never lost my senses of smell or taste, largely because I didn't really have them to begin with. So I guess there's that. My stomach could have been worse, the random body aches and pains could have been better. I could really have done without breaking out in a cold sweat from exhaustion just walking up or down the front stairs, or just from coughing a few times for that matter. I still don't have an appetite so I have to force myself to eat something every eight hours or so, otherwise I'll just forget and then wonder why I'm tired and dizzy. No trouble breathing (though I do keep my rescue inhaler handy, just in case).
Please keep in mind, this tale of woe comes after trying to be as healthy as one can while not leaving the house often (including to exercise), trying to eat well, and being up to date on my vaccinations (covid and otherwise - I have the latest edition of the covid shot, received in October of 2023.ev). I don't think I'd even be able to sit up and type right now if I hadn't been so well prepared.
As I write this, the entire house has tested positive and is on the shelf to some extent right now. We're taking care of each other as best we can. Thankfully we're all on paxlovid so hopefully this won't be as bad as it could be. It's still not anybody's idea of how to ring in the new year, though.
Back to bed.