I still think it was covid. See if you agree.
I was exposed late oct 8 - wee hours of oct 9, during a long interstate drive. Had not been out or saw anyone days before nor days after, until the symptoms onset.
On oct 12 I woke up ravenously hungry. I usually eat once a day, in the evening, and have no appetite whatsoever til late afternoon at the earliest. My experience taught me to associate such ravenous food cravings with onset of a viral infection (I guess the revved up immune sys demands energy). Also, I was feverish and even broke out a sweat -- in the middle of the day! -- totally unheard of for me.
Pandemic going on, I naturally assumed it could be covid. I knew the meds were most effective in the very beginning, so I immediately took HCQ with zinc, 500 mg azithromycin and double dose of vit D. About 3 hrs later I remembered about ivermectin andI took a generous dose (eyeballed ~1.5-2 cm of horse paste).
At the time I was fixated on HCQ and only vaguely remembered IVM studies, in one of which they administered IVM twice, on day 1 and day 7. So I thought I would take IVM again in a week. But in about an hour after taking IVM I noticed that I felt much better and associated this improvement with it -- even though, logically speaking, it could be HCQ and AZM kicking in. That was Day 1.
Day 2 and 3 I kept taking HQC 200 mg twice a day, AZM 250 mg once a day, zinc and vit D.
On Day 3, late morning, I began having an unpleasant sensation deep in the lungs, as if something was brewing there. That's a familiar to everyone sensation when you have a cold. It starts in the throat, then goes down, brews there for a couple of days and then you start coughing -- except that in this case it bypassed the throat entirely and went straight to the lungs. Before that I only had mild sniffles and an occasional sneeze.
That unpleasant feeling deep in the lungs got me worried and, as it kept getting worse, I thought about IVM again. In fact, my intuition kept insisting that I should take it now and not wait till day 7 as I had originally planned. And so after some deliberation I took IVM and -- only in ~an hour (!) noticed that the unpleasant heaviness in the lungs was gone. This surprised me, a lot.
Day 4, in the afternoon, I felt so well that I began to doubt it was covid and decided to stop the meds (after the early morning dose of HCQ with zinc).
Day 5, in the evening, the symptoms returned with a vengeance and I returned to HCQ with zinc, and again, as an afterthought, I took IVM. Again, only about an hour after IVM I felt almost normal.
Day 6, once again, feeling quite well in all respects, my doubts returned and I skipped the meds entirely.
Day 7, late in the afternoon, it suddenly hit me. The onset was so sudden and dramatic that I thought, it must be covid -- and the timing! -- just as they were saying. I returned to HCQ bid, zinc once a day, no more AZM and I took IVM only when I felt that heaviness deep in the lungs. Invariably, it knocked it out in about an hour. It turned out that during week 2 I was taking IVM daily.
A very dark mood descended. It kept me paralyzed. I could not do anything constructive and, hard as I tried, could not convinced myself to get out of bed and go for a free PCR test at a local CVS. All I could do was to obsessively click on cards doing Montana solitaire, for hours on end.
This lasted for about 3-4 days. At some point, I remember, I was acutely aware of my state. I checked and there was not pain, no fever, I had plenty of energy if I wanted to get out of bed and do whatever - except that the impulse to do anything was entirely lacking. There was no sadness or exasperation in my dark mood. Emotionally, I was completely flat. There was only mild mental irritation, sorta what's a point and why bother. And yes, then I recalled reading, years ago, that high interferon levels were in antagonistic relationship with serotonin and dopamine. This sorta explaned it for me and I concluded that the dark mood I was in was a sign that my immune sys was hard at work and that t will be over soon.
And that's how it was! in another day or two the darkness lifted, I got out of bed and finally made it to the local CVS. The PCR test, as expected, was negative by then.
Edited by xEva, 09 January 2021 - 12:41 AM.
