#also yes my doctor is in san antonio even though i currently live 2.5ish hours away

[surrexi]

hey hi so for a couple weeks in july i was house/dog-sitting for my parents and then i stayed with them through the last week after they got back because the 28th was my birthday and like, why spend it alone. and then i went home on the 31st.

then the night of the 1st my mom calls me and goes "hey will you still love me if i tell you that i tested positive for covid today" and i was livid bc i have protected my delicate asthmatic lungs for the whole-ass panini and now my own mother exposes me?!

so the morning of the 2nd i tested negative but then the asthma flare-up i was already having before my parents got home started getting even worse and i was losing sleep from all the coughing (i have cough-variant asthma which means my asthma attacks involve hella bad coughing that is unstoppable) and on the 4th i tested positive for covid.

*stares directly into the camera like i'm on the office*

anyway my dad (who is somehow still covid negative) came and picked me up in college station bc my parents didn't want me making the 2.5-3-hour drive to san antonio when i could have a coughing fit at any moment and that would be bad while going 80 mph down the highway, and on friday (the 4th) i saw a nurse practitioner at my doctor's office and she listened to my wheezing and ordered a chest x-ray and was like "why hadn't you already come here over the asthma flare up you weirdo" and prescribed me paxlovid and a steroid pack and a daily inhaler to use to hopefully reduce my dependence on my rescue inhaler.

the steroid pack does a great job of shocking your lungs into behaving themselves almost right away because you get six pills the first day and you can take them all at once, so my coughing went down real quick after that. then the paxlovid started having a noticeable effect on the rest of my symptoms after the first two doses (you take two doses of three pills each twice a day for five days).

judging from how my symptoms differed from my mom's, i think if i hadn't already been in the middle of an asthma flare i might have only really experienced the covid as my asthma getting a bit worse? but since my lungs were already riding the struggle bus i was more affected.

anyway mom and i are both doing much better, though my parents keep telling me i look really pale and pushing a pulse oximeter at me, lol. (the lowest i've seen my oxygen was when mom made me measure it right after a bad coughing fit, and it was at 88 for a few seconds before jumping back into the 90s.) today (saturday) i spend most of the day sleeping, with my dog next to me keeping watch like the sweet baby she is.

we're lucky that we were all vaxxed and boosted (my parents have even already had their second booster, though i'm still only at one), and lucky that our family doctor('s office) was willing and able to see us quickly, recognize that we qualify for paxlovid (mom bc of age+risk factors, me bc of my asthma+other risk factors), and get it prescribed. now we turn to hoping that neither of us end up with long covid *crosses fingers*.

anyway, this panini is still fucking happening, you should still be being careful, if not for you, then for the friends and family you're in close contact with who could be more vulnerable than you.