Man, that fucking sucked.

I’d managed to dodge any tussles with COVID-19 since it premiered – at least, to my knowledge – until a recent excursion to a certain beer hall (that shall not be named) proved disastrous for my winning streak.

Gentle reader, I got wrecked.

Not to the extent that I wound up hospitalized, but it was unpleasant enough that I feel driven to complain about it online. I didn’t even get any superpowers after.

Plenty of folks have shared the details of their own brushes with Our Friend Corona, but there aren’t many that have reviewed their experience, so that’s my unique little twist on the formula.

I’m up to date on my vaccine boosters but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add a little more pharmaceutical oomph. That’s where Paxlovid entered the equation. I’m not sure it did anything except leave a bad taste in my mouth (literally) but it didn’t make me feel worse. I’m sure it works wonders for some people, but I am not some people. I am that guy, and in this case, that guy is pretty bad at responding to helpful medications. Take it if you want. I’m not your dad, probably.

I am thankful to whoever invented towels for their creative thinking: the night sweats were extremely present, and when I wasn’t housing Gatorade or traipsing to the bathroom, I was mummifying myself in fresh towels so I wouldn’t need to burn all my bedsheets.

I was, frankly, almost disappointed in my relative lack of respiratory symptoms: I thought I’d be hacking up a black lung like ol’ pee-paw come back from the mines…but no. I had a few grody expectorations, but nothing really biblical, and for that, I must lower the illness’ score.

As you may have gathered from my mention of night sweats above, I had a bit of a fever. My chest turned into some kind of infernal furnace, hot enough to forge legendary blades.

My sense of taste has, thankfully, survived – at least in part. I’ve tested this by subsisting almost exclusively on Buldak extra spicy ramen noodles. They still hurt to eat, which means my taste buds aren’t out of action yet.

The fatigue was the worst part: COVID seemed to play up my natural melancholic laziness to almost comical extremes, leaving me with an amount of energy that could best be described as “maximal sluggishness.” I could still get the basics done, but after that, I was wiped. Lots of time was spent on the couch/in bed staring up at the ceiling and listening to whatever was up next on the YouTube playlist.

Speaking of which, special mentions to these two channels for serving to keep me moderately sane during my tangle with Corona.

Medieval Madness, for crisply-produced, easily-digested mini-documentaries on weird Medieval shit:

https://www.youtube.com/@medievalmadnesss

Baldermort’s Guide to Warhammer, for well-presented sci-fi short stories:

https://www.youtube.com/@baldermort

Anyway, Corona sucked. Be safe out there, and buy yourself some Buldak extra spicy ramen, just in case.

I’ve somewhat arbitrarily decided to rate the COVID experience on the usual 0 to 10 scale, with 0 being dead from dysentery and 10 being gaining flu-based superpowers. The spread is pretty wide, because you could, you know, die.

Rating:

5.5/10 (+1/-5)