COVID-19 & Paxlovid: After Day 1

It’s now 1 day into my course of paxlovid for COVID-19.

So far, so… meh?

Having COVID-19 as an older person, even with paxlovid, is no fun.

So far, I’m still running about 1.5°C fever (despite aspirin), and still pretty achy and very tired. Last night was full, and I mean full, of some very annoyingly exciting diarrhea. ^[1] There are a number of nocturnal excitements upon which I might look favorably; this was not one of them.

Still, I haven’t gotten the famous bitter, metallic, quinine-like taste that people report from paxlovid. Which is disappointing, because (a) I like quinine, and (b) I want to know paxlovid’s doing some good.

Still… nothing has gotten worse, and for that I’m thankful. It takes 5 days for a reason ^[2], and I’m only 1 day in.

Really, really thankful to have gotten paxlovid with a minimum of jumping through hoops. Even the insurance cooperated, for some arcane reason.

The most important dish in tonight’s dinner

… is 2 tabs nirmatrelvir + 1 tab ritonavir. Compliments to the chefs.

You can see the hilarious (to me) embossing of “3CL” on the nirmatrelvir front side, and Pfizer’s stock ticker symbol “PFE” on the back side. No idea what’s on the ritonavir, or why.

Also, you can see the packaging looking gnawed by a velociraptor. This is because the packaging designers (a) have no understanding of what a lever arm is, and (b) no desire to ask what that means for the finger joints of possibly older patients. Or, perhaps they do know these things and are just vicious people. In any case, I eventually got it open.

I may have said a bad word.

But, bad word or no, I’m grateful to have it. Though not so grateful to need it.

Notes & References

1: If it should come to pass, as a native speaker of English who is not currently a healthcare worker, that you can even spell “diarrhea” without looking it up… then it may be time to re-evaluate your life choices.↩

2: Maybe it should be longer, to suppress rebound infections. But that’s another story, and one more difficult to pursue. ↩