Dammit, I caught covid again

I avoided covid for quite a while, but in August of 2023 my luck caught up with me and I think it was going to three sold out movies in theaters in the same week while a friend was visiting and also I decided not to wear a mask at the movies. For the three years that preceded it, I was mostly careful and wore a mask indoors, while also avoiding restaurants for several years into covid.

That first time I got it, it was super rough. I got on Paxlovid on day 1 and the bad metal taste side-effect was actually way worse than what I was warned it might be like, but the gnarly headaches and general overall body pains subsided after a few days. I still felt pretty sick and "off" for a month after. I barely remember anything from August of 2023 since I spent most of the month in bed.

My long cross-country trip ended last week, and the one place I always wear a mask still to this day is on airplanes. I can safely say today that I'll likely wear a mask on every flight as long as I live because I think it keeps my mouth and throat from drying out from recycled plane air and tests of airplane wastewater and air quality over the past couple years have shown over 90% of flights have some covid present. So the odds are pretty good you'll catch it from a flight.

My typical approach to travel is to grab a mask at home from our amazon stockpiles, wear it on a plane, toss it into my jacket pocket, and wear it on the flight home before throwing it away.

Since I drove the cross-country first leg of my trip, I forgot to grab a mask before I left. By the time I realized I didn't have a mask in the jacket I was wearing, I was inside the Indianapolis airport a couple hours before my flight was to take off.

I dropped into a Hudson News type place and asked if they had masks for sale. The person working there said it was at the other Hudson News place on the opposite end of the terminal. I walked to that one, asked about any masks for sale, heard no, they stopped carrying them a couple years ago but some vending machine with health-related things might have them in the terminal. I searched for all the vending machines in the airport and every one of them sold just headphones and tech gear, no masks.

I jumped on the plane home, my first mask-free since 2020, and when I got home I felt exhausted but chalked it up to the long trip. I woke up feeling slightly weird on Monday, but by Monday night it hit me like a tornado. No headaches this time around, but I felt awful, went to bed early, and woke up after a couple hours and started vomiting in the bathroom. All night this continued where I would sleep for an hour or two, need to pee and would get up and also have to vomit.

I took one of the last free covid tests from the USPS we had saved up, thinking no headache, probably just a flu, but might as well check and boom, instant double lines. I'm on day 2 now with another strong positive test.

Thankfully, this time around it's pretty mild. The vomiting stopped after the first night, and now it's like I have a cold and a cough, with my lungs pretty clogged with mucous. I'm taking it easy for the next couple weeks hoping it goes away soon, but I don't feel the need to get paxlovid again.

What pisses me off about this is not only my own mixup by not grabbing a mask before the trip, but also that I got the latest booster in October this year!

I only realized after my first positive test that when you can't find any masks in an airport, you can ask the crew at your gate or any staff headed into a plane. The airlines have typically always handed out free masks to anyone who asked, and I forgot that, but really wish I asked before I took my flight home.

UPDATE: This round of covid was way, way easier. I stopped testing positive after the fourth day. I feel pretty much normal a week later. I guess I was lucky or maybe getting the latest booster a couple months ago helped.