With prior vaccines and flu shots, I have either had no side effects or mild.  But with the COVID vaccine, I was sicker than sick!  I wasn't expecting to miss as much work as I did, nor go to the doctor three times in a week's time.  I received it around 11:30am on Thursday, March 18.  Around 1pm, my mild headache started to intensify and had ringing in my ears that would repeatedly come and go (still is doing so today, just not as frequent).  Around 4pm is when all of the "normal" side effects started?chills, hot flashes, sore arm, and super sleepy.  I woke up a couple hours later, with a headache that was WAY worse and was super nauseous.   This was close to 10pm.  Then, around 11pm that same night, I developed HORRID shooting ear pains and took my first Tylenol.  The ear/jaw pain was more than I could stand - had it in both ears, but the right ear was more intense.  It felt like I had a lighting rod between both ears and had these intense "zings" that kept going back and forth, like they were playing ping-pong.  The painful "zings" reminded me of those felt during an ear infection but WAY MORE INTENSE.  My jaw was super tight, as well, with a horribly intense headache.  I spent the entire night night doing warm compresses on my ears, taking Tylenol every 4-6 hours, staying in the shower, and lots of crying.  It was so bad that I felt the need to go to the ER but didn't feel comfortable driving and didn't want to go the ambulance route?and thought it was pointless because going to the ER for ear pain would leave me there for hours and hours since I didn't feel it would be viewed an an urgent emergency.  My goal was to make it through the night and see if I could get into my PCP doctor the following morning.  I took another Tylenol around 5am, and I thankfully cried myself to sleep for a couple of hours.  When I woke up, I called my PCP but couldn't get in, so I did an online doctor visit through my insurance company.  My fever was about 103.06 at its highest during the night but was gone by 3:34pm Friday afternoon (assuming because I was taking more Tylenol than I had been post-online doctor's appointment).  Around 7pm Friday evening, I knew I needed to go to the ER or urgent care.  I got a ride and was taken to urgent care for my intense ear pain.  They gave me a Toradol injection and Tramadol prescription.  By bedtime Friday night, the injection was doing its job and made the ear pain and zings were much less intense (didn't get the prescription until a couple days later).  On March 20, Saturday night, is when I developed a red, itchy rash on my back and tummy.  Over the next couple of days, it was on my chest, arms, legs?pretty much come and was in various places.  I called my PCP Monday morning (March 22), left a message, and they called me back to tell me to restart taking my Zyrtec/HCL to see if it would help the itching.  It has and am just mildly breaking out at this time.  The stinkin' ear/jaw pain returned on Tuesday the 23rd, so I loaded up on OTC ear drops and made an appointment with my PCP for Wednesday, March 24.  She saw no ear infection and essentially told me to keep taking the pain meds.  I received the vaccine on March 18 and did not return to work until the following Thursday.  In retrospect, I should have just missed the remainder of that week, too.