COVID-19 & Paxlovid: After Day 2

It’s now 2 days into my course of paxlovid for COVID-19.

Another bit of a rough night

The first night on paxlovid was the nightmare of never-ending diarrhea. (Where did it all come from?! Must my intestines wind through a Hilbert space of mind-boggling dimension, to hold that much, ummm… ordure? Apparently so! But none of my professors, when teaching Hilbert space, ever used this example. I wonder why…)

The second night on paxlovid – last night – was the sore throat from hell. I had trouble swallowing even saliva, painful enough to stop getting to sleep. I eventually discovered that if I lay very still, breathed shallowly, and pretended to be asleep, saliva production would go down as if I were asleep. Then I wouldn’t be jolted awake when I had to swallow.

Again, not ideal. But probably closer to ideal than hospitalization for COVID-19 would have been for me.

Breakfast of Champions

The protein shake is my usual fairly low(ish) carb, high protein breakfast. It felt excellent against the sore tissues in my throat.

The chaser, of course, is 2 tabs nirmatrelvir and 1 tab ritonavir.

The patient-proof packaging, as we demonstrated yesterday, has been helpfully gnawed open by the neighborhood velociraptor. ^[1]

Agenda du jour

On today’s agenda is a teleconference with the new doctor, partly to establish care formally so she can renew prescriptions, but presumably also to review the paxlovid.

For the latter purpose, the data this morning are:

• sore throat quite annoying at night,
• 1.0°C fever,
• diarrhea mostly resolved, and
• joint/muscle aches mostly resolved.

The sore throat and fever are the main things right now, so we’ll see what aspirin can do about that, and what the new doctor is like. Symptoms seem to abate rapidly after taking each dose of paxlovid, but that’s likely psychosomatic, no?

The video call was quite pleasant, basically going over medical history, renewing prescriptions, and checking out my paxlovid experience (none of which was unusual). Also, turns out one can take Mucinex to control coughing while on paxlovid, so that’s good.

Overall, the healthcare system did what I wanted here. So far.

Spread within Château Weekend

Confusingly, though gratifyingly, the Weekend Editrix continues to test negative. That may have something to do with the field of land mines she has laid at the base of the stairs, to keep me confined to the 2nd story of the house. ^[2] She’s busy wrestling with some gnarly dental treatment right now anyway; COVID-19 is the last thing she needs!

Still, we’re hoping the COVID-19 saga here at Chez Weekend remains confined to your humble Weekend Editor.

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Notes & References

1: Initially, I was against the idea of having a neighborhood velociraptor.

“Won’t it just eat us?”, I plaintively asked the neighbors. Fortunately, they ignored me. (On the other hand, everybody usually does that, so no new information there.)

Though, really, they should have sold me on the idea of a fast predator with a mouthful of teeth serrated on the back side by explaining that it could open difficult containers for neighborhood residents. Obscurely sturdy blister packs of medication, maybe jars of tomato sauce, that sort of thing.

Dinosaurs, given the opportunity, can be quite helpful. Who knew? ↩

2: The Weekend Publisher, of course, ignores this and shuttles happily back and forth.

We haven’t been able to teach him pandemic discipline any more than the unmasked nimrods on the MBTA shuttle bus who infected me last Saturday.↩