Saturday

5am Woke up too early and couldn’t fall back asleep as usual. looking at stuff on my phone…

8am breakfast. it’s kinda cold outside.

10am Arrived at Rite Aid. Unlike 4 weeks ago for my 1st shot, I’m first in line! Nice.

11am Back home, not feeling much yet. Took a shower. Playing Northgard on the computer.

12pm Had half of a hamburguer and fries. Omg is this 800 calories even when halved? It was delivered a bit cold, too. I wanted to know what the rage about Shake Shack was about..

1pm Start to feel some generalized pain. Took 2 caplets of 500mg acetaminophen and started watching Netflix. Some pain in the shoulder.

2pm Feeling dinged, with some fever and almost asleep (possibly slept on the couch for half an hour), went to lie down face down for about an hour. Usually when doing this I struggle with stuffiness in the nasal cavities, but this semi nap was pretty straightforward – I can breathe normally with my nose, which is unusual. It was a heavy ding – like gravity was twice what it usually is and everything was pulling me down. No headaches.

4pm Got up and finished the hamburger. I regret putting some dumplings in the rice cooker thinking that I might be able to keep at my daily goal of 2,200 cal max because all the moisture made the fries soggy. A rewarmed, dry hamburger and fries could have tasted great. As I move around the house a bit, the dingy feeling and sleepiness slowly recedes, with some minor pain in the shot area. If things go well I might be only out of commission today, returning to more or less normal activities tomorrow.

6pm The hardest part of all this is not having any more calories I can ingest for the day. I think I am starting to feel a bit of fever again. Getting two more aceta caplets.

8pm went lie down, looking at stuff on the phone

10pm sleep

Sunday

3am Woke up, more water. Fever seems entirely gone, seeing how light my body feels compared to yesterday

4am I’m having trouble going back to sleep so I took the nighttime version of acetaminophen.

9am Woke up

10am Breakfast. Body feels pretty heavy. Did it get worse than how I felt at 3am? Or is it a side effect of having interrupted sleep mid-sleep? (So feeling sleepy). Playing Northgard.

12pm Lunch. Body definitely feels heavy. Do I have fever? I can’t tell.

Also, I was thinking about this at 3am – this vaccine is mRNA, so it’s different from the old school ones which was just a weakened virus. So if the vaccine is just telling the body to produce antibodies, why do we still see flu-like symptoms? I thought weaker symptoms was a characteristic of vaccines with weakened viruses. Ok so hmm.. the flu-like symptoms apparently originate not from the virus itself, but from the body’s immune system response to it. So that’s why we still experience those symptoms. The difference is that unlike an actual infection or weakened virus, there’s no risk that the virus wins against the immune system and causes major damage to the body. Hmm although for COVID-19, doesn’t most of the damage, in the lungs for example, come from the immune response and not from the virus itself?

1pm Lunch. If recovery is this slow, it looks like I’m gonna spend tomorrow Monday out of commission as well. Good thing it’s a federal holiday.

Tried playing some of the old games that had long-winded dialogues that I didn’t have the patience to go through. But picked them up because these are controller supported. Unfortunately it’s still boring even when with fever. Reinstalled and played Civ5.

4pm Having some trouble breathing. But I had these symptoms even before the vaccine, for about two years. I would wake up very tired, have some trouble breathing at a couple moments throughout the day, all the while feeling tired and drained. So this is probably the vaccine but it might be compounded with whatever was happening beforehand as well. Took 2 caplets of aceta.

5p Dinner. Ah.. everything is better after food.

7pm Feeling better after shower and TV watching.

11pm Ok, I’m gonna lie down, watch some YouTube and then sleep

1am A lot of interesting stuff happening on some Discord servers.. stayed up too late reading up, took Tylenol PM to sleep

Monday

8am Breakfast. Ok, so it seems I have fever, I can feel it with my hands in my forehead. It’s light.. 2 caps aceta

Hmm so when sick, I need to ingest more calories than usual. How much more?

12pm Lunch.

2pm Lunch 2

6pm Dinner. Feeling pretty well so far, still a slight fever but it seems to be receding. Although this was the pattern yesterday too, so we’ll have to see how it is tomorrow.

Played Civ5 and EU4.

9pm My armpit lymph feel swollen, it hurts a bit when I touch that side. Maybe the immune system is in the cleanup stage, even though there never was any virus involved?

12am Tylenol PM and sleep

Tuesday

5am Got up for some water. As usual, the kitchen smart lights were on again. It does this randomly every few days, not sure why.

9am Woke up. I had a pretty good sleep, I think. Still a bit of fever.

10am Breakfast

1pm Went outside for a bit to pick up lunch. I think this is the fist time I walked outside since the vaccine. It’s much warmer than previous days (73F)

2pm Had a work meeting. The fever is not something serious, although it does get in the way of focus. Although it wasn’t too different before the vaccine either, which is… i’m not sure how to call this feeling – disappointing? Anticlimactic?

5pm Dinner

8pm Played Xcom

1am Sleep

Wednesday

4am Woke up out of breath with congested nose. Got scared of going back to sleep with the nose this congested, as usually has been happening before

6am Got out of bed to play Xcom

10am Breakfast. Ok, this is it. I don’t feel fever anymore. We are back to the old. Although armpit lymphs feel either swollen or bruised. The nasal congestion is the years-long apnea problem, unrelated to the vaccine.

11am Lied down for a bit

12pm Got up and made lunch. Start doing regular work.