Let’s find out.

So far I’ve taken a few tests and all of them have yielded negative results, which has been fantastic!

I’m not sure if my fever is back because of COVID, if it’s because I tried to stop coasting off of a low dose of prednisone to keep from coughing (as the poison seems to cure the poison in this case) or… what, but I suppose I’ll be finding out as the day goes on. I’m due to take my last dose of Paxlovid this evening, and then my primary care physician wants me to make an appointment to see him sometime next week — depending on his availability, that is — to make sure that I don’t have any long-term… problems (writing posts while on Paxlovid is fun, I swear) as a result of this, and to make sure that it hasn’t worsened my heart or lung problems. Ironically, the only thing that I’m protected from is the cytokine… thing that happens at the end of some COVID-19 infections because I’m immunocompromised, and people who are immunocompromised can’t surmount a cytokine response like that in a lot of — almost all — cases, which is probably the only good thing to come out of all of this and my circumstances. It’s the cytokine (over-)response that kills people.

Then again, with the health problems that I have, COVID-19 could simply kill me by virtue of killing me, so me actually coming down with it was never ideal in the first place. I tried hard for three years to prevent that.

I have had an ear infection for a few days now (that I continue to get as an adult for… some reason, more than likely owing to how small my Eustachian tubes continue to be), and it has not gotten any better, so I feel like going to urgent care is not only the preferable thing to do but the necessary thing to do in this case. I haven’t been able to hear out of my left ear for a few days now because of how “clogged” and “stuffed” it feels, and this is usually something that quickly improves. It is not doing so in this case. There is also pain to be had with this ear, and since that pain is not only not going away but is causing me to need to take pain medication for it, I think it needs to be seen. I don’t want to be put on oral steroids for this unless there is absolutely no way around that, because my body can no longer tolerate prednisone like it used to and the side effects — more like adverse effects in this case — have become absolutely unbearable. (For instance, I frequently get full-blown fevers from “therapeutic” prednisone usage, and I do not like this at all. Not a bit.)

Maybe when I’m feeling better I’ll begin writing those posts that I’d intended to begun writing about sooner.