I’m COVID-19 Positive: Here’s My Paxlovid Pill Experience (+ the Pills’ “Metallic Taste”)

Hello everyone, I'm Stephanie. I'm going to make this a super quick video. As you can probably see, I'm starting to lose my voice a lot due to coughing. This is due to COVID. I want to start by saying that I am double vaccinated and boosted. I haven't received the second booster yet, but. And my husband also has two young children who do not have access to vaccines, so they are not vaccinated. All three tested

positive

on May 9. So on Monday and I tested

positive

basically until Wednesday at three in the morning I had started coughing the day before.

And that night I started to feel chills and pains. And then I thought, I know I have it. I tested at three in the morning with a very faint line, COVID positive with one of those home tests. And then that whole day was fine. I had a few coughs that felt like, oh, this is pretty mild. And then today, May 12. Much more. It just spun very quickly. Joint pain, nasal congestion to the point of not being able to breathe through the nose. I can't sleep because I cough constantly. I finally started to get a little fever.

Nothing bad, like 99 to 100 and some changes in bowel movements that were uncomfortable. So I'm really struggling. I'm in a lot of pain right now. In fact, it reminds me a little of when I was going through chemotherapy. So I talked to my doctor and I want to mention a medical exam. Dr. Torres She is amazing because I messaged her and she just had a question about pecs. She wanted to know more. She didn't know if she qualified. And she responded right away and said, and I made an appointment for you. And really because of my history of lymphoma and that's a question I'll ask some doctors.

And by the way, if you have questions, tell me. Try to include them too. But I want to know, as I've seen some messages from the CDC, about how even if you're not a current cancer patient, if you've had cancer treatment in the past, you're at increased risk. And in terms of COVID19 impacts, that could be due to many things, right? Age, usually people are older when they have cancer. So I mean, I think, you know, and also maybe more comorbidities or other illnesses or ailments that people are dealing with. So I'm not very sure. And I'd like to get a better answer for that.

But with that said, I felt so bad that I decided to try pecs a little. So

here

it is and I say, you know, t

here

are some learnings and basically at some point I will also record another video. So it's easier to see. But there are five of these. I already picked up a set, so you'll see what's missing. But the blue is for the night and the yellow is for the morning and there are three

pill

s each. There are six

pill

s a day and they last five days in a row. And the last thing I want to quickly mention now is that I heard that the biggest side effect, the most common, was a

metallic

taste

in the mouth.

And sure enough, it was about an hour after I took the dose. And about 10 minutes ago I started testing it. I have seen different descriptions of its

taste

s, like grapefruit with soap. If it does. In fact, I've heard and read, you know, like when you take

pills

and then they don't go down all the way and you get a kind of bitter taste. I'll definitely try it too, but I don't know. It doesn't really bother me much. So yes. So we'll see what happens and I wish my doctor would have said, and this is my primary care doctor, not my hematologist oncologist, but my primary care doctor.

Dr. Torres, again, so amazing. And empathetic. He said that hopefully he would start to feel better in terms of symptoms. 24 to 30 hours and we'll see, see you later. I hope it's not my robe and I hope I feel better.