To make my confinement a little bearable, I’ve been live streaming 24/7 lo-fi music either via Youtube or Spotify. I hope my Edifier speaker won’t conk out on me for abusing it.

I’ve been arguing with my sisters and mom regarding my Covid symptoms. They insisted that I should consult other doctors because of my lingering symptoms. To make them stop nagging me, I booked another teleconsult, which I doubt would help.

Number 1) I had Sinovac for vaccine (and my mom had it too) because we were the first batch of people to be vaccinated (people with comorbidities and senior citizens) so that’s why my symptoms were worse than my sisters’ (they had J&J) as they only had one day of fever and just loss of sense of smell and taste. Sinovac is known to be less effective for other variants of Covid compared to the initial variant when it first appeared in China. So my cousin who had Covid last year before the vaccinations began said in our chat group that it took her four months to completely recover. She had fatigue and often had to chase her breath when exerting effort, which I suffer from these days especially when disinfecting the bathroom. I no longer have fever and cough, only fatigue and random headaches, which my cousin said are normal long-haul symptoms. And also hair loss. Lots of it.

Number 2) I am also taking other medicines for my other illnesses, specifically for my PCOS, which may or may not have contributed to my heavy menstruation, which is an anecdotal but documented symptoms of some female Covid patients or those who received the vaccine. Not enough research is done on this so what can the doctors do? Prescribe more medicines when they don’t even know why are some patients are heavy bleeders and some aren’t? The most that they can do (which I read) is to recommend to the patient to supplement with iron. They cannot over-medicate me so that is that.

Number 3) People do not have uniform responses to Covid as it depends on how their bodies responded to the vaccine, the kind of variant that hit them, and other pre-existing conditions. When I had my initial dose of Sinovac, my body responded like I already had Covid: I had allergies and flu-like symptoms for 48 hours. So I guess it is not surprising that I have lingering symptoms now.

I am just thankful that that vaccine I had, albeit less effective than what others had, kept me from being rushed to the hospital. Otherwise I would have been dead by now because of lack of beds here in Metro Manila or intubated in an ICU. Because I have a chronic respiratory disease (asthma).

I also read that those fully vaccinated who became breakthrough Covid cases would have better chances of withstanding other future variants (Mu) that may come given that they have more antibodies now.

So to keep my sisters and my mom from panicking, I cited all these things.

I am fine and just thankful to be alive.