After four years of dodging Covid-19 like Neo dodged bullets in The Matrix, it finally caught me this month. In Boracay, of all places.
I was in vacation in Boracay with family, and on my last day there (June 11) I got a sore throat. I even asked for honey from the hotel breakfast buffet and mixed it with calamansi and hot water.
I thought it was just sore throat from having drank too many fruit smoothies – as one does in Boracay – but the next day it felt so painful that I thought it was tonsillitis or some sort of upper respiratory tract infection which needed stronger meds than honey, salt water gargle, Vicks, Ibuprofen, or whatever other home remedies I. used.
So I headed to the clinic on June 13 to get that. The doctor asked if I had taken a Covid test. I said no, and honestly it had never occurred to me to do so because all these years, I have had terrible respiratory illnesses and taken Covid tests, they were never Covid.
I agreed to take a joint Covid and Flu test, but as I sat in a booth while the nurse poked painfully into my nostrils, I regretted it, thinking, Why did I agree to this? it’s kinda expensive and it will just turn out to be negative.
Then she read the test results and said, “You have Covid.” I was super surprised.
My symptoms – sore throat, cough, colds, no fever – but headaches and bitter tastebuds that usually accompany that, reduced sense of smell, and fatigue. I was sleeping so much. I though it was just the colds medicine that was making me sleepy, but when I was no longer positive, I did not feel that sleepy even with the same meds.
The sore throat was the worst. It was so painful, like needles were poking the inside of my throat every time I was not sucking on a lozenge. I had anti-inflammation medicines from the doctor, but they did not do squat. One day, I read up about ice cream being good for tonsillitis, so I bought some and surprisingly, my throat got better immediately after that.
By the way, thank goodness our building got rid of the pandemic no delivieries directly to the door rule! I was able to order food delivery – I got a lot of congees through Keeta app. My friend May also sent me some medicine when I ran out.
I finally tested negative on June 21. I immediately went to the VFS Canada office to drop off my passport – because I had finally got my Canada work visa approved! I celebrated my freedom with Starbucks coffee and a bagel with cream cheese.
But my pain wasn’t over yet. I had bad headache on the left side of my head. I thought it was migraine because it was only on one side, but it didn’t feel like my usual migraine. It was like there was a fist inside my head, and it felt very stiff and the pain erupted when I had to move my head sideways. The pain was on the top, bottom, and also on my neck. None of my usual migraine meds – Mefenamic Acid or Ibuprofen – worked. I looked up long covid symptoms, and migraine is one of them, so I worried that this was it.
So I tried to get acupuncture, and then a head massage, and when finally went back to the clinic. The doctor saw from my chart that I had covid before, and correctly deduced that my pain was related to my neck/spine, from lying in bed for too long. She prescribed some anti inflammation meds which I funnily actually do have in my stash, but for my frozen shoulder, which I did not think of taking.
A couple of days later, the headache finally went away. Whew!
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