5 Things I Learned While on the Paxlovid Train

[stgulik]

Yes, I'm no longer a COVID virgin.

Near as we can tell, my husband picked it up from church choir two weeks ago. (It's a Unitarian Universalist campus; don't worry, I have not suddenly grown a religion bone.) Almost everyone still masks there, including me, but the choir's mask vigilance is always hit-or-miss. So is my husband's. (I wonder how

Comments

[mimimanderly]

Back in December of 2019, Paul came down with a "cold" that he thought would go away in a couple days (as is usual for us), but didn't. He is a bartender at a popular restaurant, and has a lot of regular customers who came over and hugged him during the Christmas season, while they were home for the holidays. On Christmas day, he basically slept be ALL DAY. But he still worked his shifts, because it was just a cold, right? By New Year's Eve day, he didn't feel any better, and went to the doc in a box. Doc said that it's a virus, and a lot of people are getting it, but it will go away on its own. The next day (New Years Day), I had a sore throat. We still went to a party, because it's just a cold, right? But we both were sick for a couple months, which is NOT normal for us. (Paul had body aches, I had none. Neither of us had a fever or loss of taste or smell. I had lots of mucus, which wouldn't come up, so I basically chugged expectorant all day. I even stocked up on it when I saw that it was getting low in the drugstore. I was told, "Yeah, people are buying a lot of this now." When I encountered people in various places, and they hacked, I was like, "Oh, do you have the cold that will not end, too?" And, yeah, they did. Some even had bowel issues. Thank goodness I was spared that! One thing Paul and I both had was a "roller coaster effect": After feeling like crap for a long while, we'd feel good again! I took the opportunity to do all the things I couldn't do while I was lying on the sofa all day. It lasted a couple days, and then, a few more days of sofa time. Lather, rinse, repeat. This lasted for months. It was only in March of 2020 that they put a name to it and said it was in the USA. But believe me... it was here MUCH sooner than that. And I think we both had it, although there wasn't a test for that back then. We probably could be tested to see if we had it, but to what end? I'm absolutely sure that we did.

[stgulik]

I was following your LJ in 2019. And I do remember you and your husband mysteriously sick with something you just couldn't shake! I've talked to others who were also massively sick around then. To me, there's no reason not to believe the virus had already come to the U.S. before the CDC said it did.