For the last month, I’ve been in bed watching TV.
I’m actually quite annoyed at how long this has all gone on.
It all started when I came down with COVID late last month and I went to the CVS when I got back into Illinois and used their clinic to get Molnupiravir to treat it.
After a couple days on that, I started feeling better. I completed my 5 day course and other than a post-viral cough, I felt fine.
A couple days went by and then more trouble. I had a blister in my mouth.
Then another one on the other side, both on my upper lip.
Before I knew it, I ended up getting a mouth full of sores and lips cracking and bleeding.
I called the doctor and she asked me to come by and she’d give me some Valtrex.
We had assumed that it was an HSV-1 outbreak because I’ve had it for about 20 years, and it never crops up except as a mild nuisance about once every 5 years, usually in the winter, and I go on some Valtrex for it and it clears back up quickly.
I ran out of Valtrex again, and my mouth continued getting worse. By last Saturday, my gums had turned completely white and I lost all of the feeling in them, and what I could feel stung, itched, and burned.
The doctor looked at the photos I sent and said I was having an oral outbreak of Shingles, and called in a lot more Valtrex, and here I am a week later, and day 13 of _this_ (day 7 of Valtrex) is the first day I’ve eaten and brushed my teeth without pain.
The correct color is coming back to my gums. My lips are healing. I can feel around my mouth again.
For over 10 days, I was popping pain medicine for my mouth every time my watch beeped. I had it set so that I wouldn’t take more than the maximum dosage, but as soon as each dose wore off, my teeth started to ache (all of them did) and the soreness came back, and I was laying here biting down on a cough drop on each side to help take the focus off of that until I could have more pain pills.
I think I went through more pain medicine between the two infections than I have in the past 30 years, for everything, put together.
I thought the COVID was bad until it let loose the Shingles, which was a fair deal more painful. Not that the COVID was pleasant. There were times when I was coughing so much crap out of my lungs that I kept a bucket next to the futon I’ve been sleeping on so that it could go directly into that.
I had to wear my nightguard even with all of the blankets in the house on top of me because I was chilling so badly that I was afraid I’d crack a tooth and need to go to the dentist when it was over.
The COVID was bad even with the vaccinations and the medicine. And as a bonus, it woke up some dormant infections that a healthy immune system normally suppresses without any help and caused a massive explosion of pain and suffering from that too.
There are still people out there joking about “going back to calling it the flu” or something and a media that runs stories like “Is it the flu, allergies, or COVID?” doesn’t help. You’ll probably know.
I wouldn’t wish this on most of the people I hate.
There were at least three points where if I was in a civilized country I might have gone to the ER out of an abundance of caution, but in the US, pretty much all they do is get you to sign financial responsibility forms, do a hell of a lot of nothing, and then send you home to wait for a bill that costs more than most of the cars I’ve owned.
If you can avoid COVID, avoid COVID. It’s probably not worth doing whatever it was that got you infected.
I get that people have to go to work, but we all need to continue to be vigilant and not take any extra stupid risks.
According to the CDC, I outlasted 97% of Americans as far as when COVID hit me the first time. I have no doubt that some day I’ll likely get it again, but I’d rather minimize it.
There are people out there getting it 3-4 times per year, and not even treating it with pills, and by that point it’s just absolutely devastated their body, and you can tell by talking to them that they’re not right anymore. Not good.
I keep rubber gloves in my car for the gas pump, hand sanitizer, we still wear face masks if we do go somewhere even if those around us don’t, and I don’t do any of my grocery shopping in the store anymore.
But it’s a given that my spouse has to work in person and the customers and coworkers are idiots who don’t understand that they are playing with fire. If I get it again, that’ll be why.
Now that I know how it’s likely to play out, I do plan to always have some COVID tests on hand so if I feel weird at all I can test and get to the medicine quickly, and I’m going to have a bottle of Valtrex ready to go so that if HSV or VZV outbreak follows, I can start on it as soon as the first blister appears.
I’ll at least have the advantage of it not being my first time down at the rodeo.
I do have no doubt in my mind that I may have been hospitalized or dead (or wishing I was dead) had I not gone on the two rounds of antiviral medication.
I’m luckier than most Americans in that I have decent enough insurance that I can see the doctor and get prescriptions filled without worrying too much, but like most Americans, we fear the hospital bill more than what sends us to the hospital. 😛
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