January 3, 2023
It's been one week since I started with Covid. So much better now but the powerful extent to which I was effected by the virus, caught me off-guard. Haven't been that ill in a long time. Of course I've followed the news for the last 3 years and know how life-threatening and deadly it has been and can be. One of the strange qualities of covid is how differently it can affect people. The effects of covid run the gamut from some who are unvaccinated having little to no reaction to a deadly result for some who have been vaccinated, and everything in-between. My personal decision regarding the vaccine was that I didn't want to roll the dice. Reflecting on my personal experience with now having had the virus I shudder to think how badly this might have turned out for me, had I not chosen vaccination.
There are treatments for covid. One of them is the drug Paxlovid. What they don't tell you ahead of time is that Paxlovid tastes like the La Brea Tar Pits. Or a mixture of vomit and that watery slurry at the bottom of a trash bag that's sat out in the sun. Oscar the Grouch, the green muppet on Sesame Street who adored garbage and made his domicile in a trash can, may have found this a delicacy.
Once that medication enters your system, the horrible taste of sulphur (or rotten eggs) is a constant bad taste (aka dysgeusia) that does not relent until a day after you stop taking the medication. Googling this side effect I found words like, 'Paxlovid Mouth', 'Garbage Mouth', 'Gross'. Seems the medical fact sheet breezes over this saying that only 6% of those in clinical trials experienced dysgeusia. To be fair, this is a very new drug. I think that percentage will increase over time, as more data comes in from personal reporting. However it seems to me that that day may not be far off, given the plethora of articles I found online about this distasteful side effect.
I tried brushing my teeth several times, constant sucking on hard mint candies, drinking a lot of water, ginger ale, mint tea, and eating peanut butter (one piece of advice said to coat the mouth in pb). I tried salty, savory, sweet foods to see what worked best to tame the beast. Nothing worked. Through evolution bitter tastebuds far outnumber the sweet, sour, etc. This was for survival. It's the body's way of warning you to spit out bitter plants, insects, etc. because that bitterness often meant it was also poisonous. It's the same reason we avoid feces, garbage, vomit--the body says 'NO!' for good reason. To put it politely, when I ignored this my body sent messages in the forms of nausea and eventually...I could keep nothing down.
I called the doc. She advised I stop taking it (to my great relief!). She said that I'm not in a vulnerable group, medically speaking, so she felt it would be ok for me to stop taking it. [I am not saying that the same advice would be appropriate for someone else. Ask your doctor; follow what she/he tell you to do]
Why am I going into such detail? Because no one tells you things like this, ahead of time. The prescription should come with a bag of Atomic Fireballs, or perhaps a strong sedative. Others might not have such a strong reaction so I'm not advising any medical advice whatsoever. Follow what your doctor advises you to do...but stock up on extra strong mints ahead of time, just in case.
Silver lining? I have now had the unique experience of 'tasting' the La Brea Tar Pits, without taking a deep dive.