I thought I must be immune to covid....I thought wrong

Yup, I got socked by the dreaded 'rona virus. I noticed a slight sniffling Wednesday evening and Thursday. Minor, really minor. Figured it could be dust from cleaning, it was that minor. Friday morning I woke up knowing that I wasn't alright. Slight body aches in my trunk and legs. Decided to take a home test and yup, two lines. I'm either positive for covid, or pregnant. Looking at my gut and the current state of the gender argument (since men can get pregnant -roll eyes-), it could be either haha.  

I call my manager and tell him I'm putting in for 4 hours pto so I can rest over the weekend and hit the ground running Monday.  

I laid down to rest at 12:01 Friday afternoon, it took EVERYTHING I had to keep going until noon, and slept until 4:30 Saturday morning. Yup, just about 16 hours asleep! I was fighting a loosing battle with a 103.5 to 103.8 temp Friday and Saturday. My wife kept putting cold cloths on my head to get the fever down as I slept, but that didn't work very well. Probably took a dozen cool showers Saturday, 1/2 that many Friday. that would bring it down a degree for a few hours, then it'd start up again. I was taking tylenol, but I'm allergic to acetaminophen so Motrin was out for me. I've had pneumonia and bronchitis more than a few times so my lungs are always a concern. Then the rattling in the chest started. Pneumonia is bad enough, viral pneumonia is really what you don't want because they can't do much for you except watch you enjoy the ride. Sunday morning Mrs. Boost is starting to show symptoms.

Hit urgent care Sunday morning to get paxovlid. I drove us there, knowing I should NOT be driving, but what else do you do? It's not an ambulance ride, and I'm not calling an uber to take two sick covid patients to and from the docs. 

On drugs now, have finally turned a corner. Putting in a few hours of work (desk job, WFH), then taking the balance of the day to rest. 

My wife is still pretty rough, my daughter and youngest son are hit pretty hard right now. 

The upside is I'm down about 10 lbs. It's Tuesday morning and, nearest I can remember this is all I've had to eat since breakfast Friday:

• 4 cups of jello
• 1 small slice of pizza 
• 2 bites of pasta a friend made. 
• 2 bananas
• 1 piece of toast with 1 tsp or peanut butter
• bowl of chicken noodle soup

I'll tell you what really sucks though, I don't know if it's the paxlovid, the steroid I'm on, or both but my sense of taste is all jacked up. My mouth tastes like it's full of dirty pennies and pink erasers. 100% of the time. Water only helps for about 5 seconds after I swallow, so it's a nasty, constant thing. I truly don't know if I can hack it for the duration of the meds. It's absolutely terrible!  

Man I'm sorry and hope you recover soon and fully. Hang in there bud!

Wow, that sucks.  I hope all get better soon.

I think the mouth taste is down to the medications, because the main symptom related to COVID is loss of smell and therefore taste.

When we had it way back in 2020, fatigue was our biggest issue.  Keep resting a lot as you have been.  Good luck!

Two of these threads on the front page.  Not good.

Hope you feel better soon DrBoost

Keep hydrated and rest. Screw work. Rest is more important. 

I'd give advice but I'm just some high schooler with bad people skills. All I can say is get well soon homie

Hang in there - it gets better.  If you have a chance to amazon a finger tip pulse ox monitor it's a good thing to have handy.

I had the dirty penny thing both times, once before the meds and then the next time on the Paxlovid. It lasted a few weeks each time. 
 

The first 2-3 days were the worst for me and then the fever broke. After that, it was mostly annoying and inconvenient for the rest of the time. 

Wife and kiddo and I got it in early July. For the wife and I, we were tired and achy, and we all had fevers, but it wasn't too bad. The worst part was that kiddos symptoms seemed to last about 7 hours total, whereas my wife and I had it for probably about 4 days. So the toddler was going nuts. 

But, long Covid is still a thing. My wife, over a month later, still needs to take a nap in the middle of the day and is asleep by 9pm. She's gone from using her inhaler (asthma) about 2 times a month before Covid to using it every day. She even had to go get a nebulizer treatment and oxygen at the doctors office, where they prescribed her a course of steroids and a stronger inhaler - and that was a full month after her recovery. It is not a joke.

Wishing you and your family a speedy recovery, Dr. Boost

Rest hydrate and keep us posted. 

Fairly healthy middle ager here and it knocked me on my ass for 2wks. First was the initial infection then a sinus infection on top. Wasn't fun. Hope you a speedy recovery!

Paxlovid mouth is apparently a thing: https://www.verywellhealth.com/paxlovid-mouth-what-to-do-6361685

The internets recommend hard cinnamon candies-fireballs. Hot Tamales, Red Hots, Atomic Fireballs. 

Feel better soon OP!

In reply to CrustyRedXpress :

Quite the spicy remedy

Sorry to hear it's hitting so hard. Hope you get better quickly. 

I'm here to commiserate.....I came down with symptoms Fri afternoon, took two home Covid tests both said negative, went to urgent care Sat am and they tested me positive. I asked if there was something I could take (I'd heard about the paxlovid stuff) but they said just the usual home cold remedies (By the way Tylenol IS acetaminophen) 

Worst part for me has been the cough and sore throat that hurts all the way up into my ears, and when I cough hard enough  it really hurts!

My fever never seemed to get much over 101 and now, 5 days later, it seems I'm on the getting better slope. I have a phone interview with my primary care Doc to see about getting on the Pax but I don't know if I need it now.

The best news is somehow I've managed to keep from giving it to my wife.

Hope everyone is getting better. I guess I'm going back to wearing a mask when I'm out and about......

Ugh... sounds like you got it bad. Hope you (and the wife) feel better soon!

I've had it twice now. First time I got it, I tested positive on New Year's Eve 2020. I literally got the email results at 11:58PM; 2020 was a jerk, after all. It was pretty rough, and I was out of commission for about 2 weeks. No big fever, but extreme sinus pain, no taste or smell, body aches, and fatigue. The fatigue lasted months, and it took A YEAR for taste and smell to get back to normal. Certain stuff tasted like old varnished gasoline, like diet sodas and toothpaste. 

2nd time around was around May of this year. I had been vaxxed and boosted by that point, and I think that helped. I didn't even know I had it, but after a friend I had been hanging with earlier in the week tested positive, I did too. I had a mild case of the sniffles, but was otherwise fine. Felt 100% in about 3 days with no loss of taste or any of that. 

The thing that's scary is it affects everyone differently. Do not want that again! At least there are some treatments now that seem to help for the serious cases. That Paxlovid taste thing IS a thing for sure though; a buddy of mine who had it had the same complaints where everything tasted like pennies. 

About that, how do we all know what pennies taste like?

Thanks all, for the well-wishes. I'll address a few comments before I lay my head down.  

mtn: We're ordering a pulse-ox thing. With my breathing issues we should already have one. I had a wicked asthma attack a year ago (inhaled a bunch of mold cleaning out an A/C unit). That put me on heavy-duty inhaler and it worked great. No issues in like 10 months. I hit the inhaler again this morning. I gotta get this breathing under control.

CrustyRedExpress: I couldn't find atomic fireballs, so I got jolly ranchers this morning. I didn't like the idea of having a block of sugar against my teeth for 24 hours a day, but gawd is this taste awful. Turns out that my system isn't ready for that suggar anyway. so I'm just drinking a metric ton of water and just trying to bear it. Big Red gum helps, meant to get more of that this morning but forgot. I've had the dirty penny taste from other meds, but this is a whole nother world. It's like my mouth is coated is something. Sometimes it actually feels like there's a coating on my gums, not just a weird taste sensation. I'm going to see through the 2.5 days that are left because I really don't want to get pneumonia again. I'm sure I'll end up in the hopspital again. 

minidave and others: It's really weird how it hit's everyone so differently. Doesn't seem to follow any lines that I can detect. Some folks are healthy and get hit HARD, others say it's just a mild cold. Some say they're up and at 'em in 3-4 days, others say they have lingering effects weeks and months later. I feel like poo, but I've turned a corner.  

Speaking of feeling like poo, a helpful tip to others that go down the same road....
One of the effects of covid for me was diarrhea, then 2 of the 3 meds I'm on list diarrhea as a side-effect. So yeah, it was a rough few days. I asked my wife what I can do about the effect of that on my more tender side LOL.  She's very in tough with natural ways to take care of yourself. So I took a small dose of psyllium husk for fiber. But like 1/4 of what's recommended because the book said if the condition is caused by meds to go easy on the fiber to ease your system back into rightness. I also had a banana and drank rice water (not as bad as it sounds). That little regimen really did the trick. I still have the condition, but my system is MUCH more stable. I was sitting on the toilet after eating anything at all, within minutes, and also after every glass of water. I mean, I wasn't even eating food and still runnin to the bathroom 5-6 times a day. It was tough. Now I've gone from running to the bathroom many times a day to not running, but strolling to the bathroom once. That gave everything a rest and has really improved things. 
Just a little tip from your uncle Larry. 

In reply to MiniDave :

Sorry to hear =(

When my mom got it this summer we had to switch doctors so she could be proscribed Paxlovid. Here is a run down of who is eligible: 

https://aspr.hhs.gov/COVID-19/Therapeutics/Products/Paxlovid/Documents/paxlovid-information-sheet.pdf 

I think docs were slow to proscribe it when there wasn't much to go around and haven't updated their reccomendations.

Can the people who have had COVID it here and been vaxed say what vax they had and how they responded to it?  And how that related to their COVID response.

I have not gotten a good answer on how you vaccine response relates to your response to COVID.

I don't think I have had it (maybe very early in the outbreak, but I am not sure, it was pretty harsh but did not follow the typical formula) but I had a pretty heavy response to the vaccine (Moderna, especially the second shot) with a full day of light fever and aches (similar to many peoples COVID response, just shorter).

Common sense would seem to indicate a healthy immune response to the vaccine is a good thing, but does that also mean you will have a heavy response to the virus?

Three shots of Moderna here and finally got Covid a month or two ago. 

I was only sick sick for a day or two, then the fever was gone and I had brain fog and fatigue for a week or so. The hardest part was sitting around waiting to test negative.

What was you response to the Moderna shots?

Like you, i'm vaccinated and boosted and finally got it this year- I thought I could trust a Ska Punk show and de-mask! And the one concert I ditched the mask in, I got COVID. Thankfully, mine never progressed beyond "crummy head cold" and my only long COVID symptom has been thinning hair that I'm now fixing- contrast to my stepdad who got diabetes, and the rest of my family who have some form of Fatigue. And I swear, if someone without the jab in this thread tries to claim being some kind of victim because of their choice...

CrustyRedXpress said:

In reply to MiniDave :

Sorry to hear =(

When my mom got it this summer we had to switch doctors so she could be proscribed Paxlovid. Here is a run down of who is eligible: 

https://aspr.hhs.gov/COVID-19/Therapeutics/Products/Paxlovid/Documents/paxlovid-information-sheet.pdf 

I think docs were slow to proscribe it when there wasn't much to go around and haven't updated their reccomendations.

I didn't know about this guy! Makes sense that docs weren't supplying it right away; without knowing how COVID spread or what it actually infected, it was hard to to know what antivirals would work, coupled with needing to catch it early enough to lower viral load to even have a positive effect.

aircooled said:

What was you response to the Moderna shots?

Sick for 8-12 hours then perfectly fine like a lightswitch.

aircooled said:

Can the people who have had COVID it here and been vaxed say what vax they had and how they responded to it?  And how that related to their COVID response.

I have not gotten a good answer on how you vaccine response relates to your response to COVID.

I don't think I have had it (maybe very early in the outbreak, but I am not sure, it was pretty harsh but did not follow the typical formula) but I had a pretty heavy response to the vaccine (Moderna, especially the second shot) with a full day of light fever and aches (similar to many peoples COVID response, just shorter).

Common sense would seem to indicate a healthy immune response to the vaccine is a good thing, but does that also mean you will have a heavy response to the virus?

Moderna for me, felt like the yearly flu shot from my hospital- one bad day of flu symptoms, then normal right after. Mine was body aches mostly, second more rough than the first. 

It's hard to say what is more effective- I've read some that say moderna is slightly better than Pfizer- but I can say from personal experience, that I have few-to-none long COVID symptoms and had less trouble with it than my close family, who all have some form of fatigue or diabetes (the latter got it before the vaccines were available). But i'm also an ICU nurse... and a serious immune system comes with that, so YMMV.