Age: 52.0
Sex: F
Vaccine: COVID19-2
Symptoms: Abdominal discomfort, Asthma, Burning sensation, COVID-19, Chest discomfort
Clinical narrative: I received the Pfizer Bivalent booster for COVID-19 on 11/7/2022. On the evening of 11/27/2022, I went to dinner with my husband. We parked a block away from the restaurant where we planned to eat, but I was really tired at that point, so I asked if we could park somewhere closer. I'm usually not so tired, though. When I went to bed that night, I had a sore throat. I woke up at 1 AM on 11/28/2022 with a fever. I took a home antigen test and very quickly got a positive result. I developed a headache, nausea, and tightness in the chest for the first couple of nights. I also had nasal congestion at night that was so bad that I couldn't breathe out of my nose. It was so bad that I would sit in the bathroom with a hot shower running, because I hoped the steam would clear my sinuses. I also used a humidifier, an asthma inhaler twice a day, a NETI POT, and fluticasone nasal spray. After a few days, the extreme nasal congestion was gone, but it was replaced by a severe headache. It wasn't a sinus headache, though. It was more like a severe migraine-tension headache. I switched between ADVIL and TYLENOL at different intervals, but they didn't work. However, when I finally tried naproxen, it did the trick. Altogether, the headache lasted 3-4 days. During the headache, I was nauseous. I never threw up, but I was afraid of throwing up. I was too nauseous to eat, but I managed to take in a little soup. The nausea was intermittent and would come and go over the course of a week; sometimes, the nausea was more or less intense than at other times. At the time of this writing, I have an upset stomach that has come and gone for about a week now. I have had diarrhea. I have also experienced an overall feeling of queasiness and the feeling that something isn't right; it's similar to the feeling you might get with food poisoning, but not as intense. I also still have an intermittent cough, and at night, it feels like I have an upper chest cold. I get a scratchy throat that gives me the urge to cough. Ever since I've had the virus, I've been colder than usual. Whenever I go outside, I'm more sensitive to the cold air, and it irritates my asthma. A couple of days after I tested positive, I had a telehealth visit with a doctor. I was offered PAXLOVID, but I declined, because I know two people who experienced rebound infections and a bad aftertaste when they took it. I was prescribed ondansetron for the nausea and benzonatate for the cough. I only took the benzonatate twice, because I wanted to cough up any mucus that was present, because I feared that suppressing the cough would irritate my asthma and possibly lead to pneumonia. I also got a burning rash on one side of my right arm and had to go to urgent care. I was prescribed VALTREX to keep on hand in case the rash turned out to be shingles. Thankfully, it did not and it went away after less than 24 hours, so I didn't have to use the VALTREX. I took another home antigen test on the tenth day and got a positive result. When I took it again 1-2 days later, the result was negative.