I now have a 1% iodine nasal solution consisting of a saline spray of 1.5oz and .15oz of 10% iodine added. I was told to use this every time I was out in public and returned to the car. Also told to use a special version of Crest mouthwash; Crest Pro Health Advanced. Don't use the blue tint, use the clear. Blue will stain your tongue. Ask me how I know. Ha!
This is what happened to me. I tested positive, took Paxlovid and was great for 10 days. Then BAM! Like a ton of bricks I went down.
COVID hitchhike onto T-cells and spreads around, at least inside the lungs. Instead of like a bacterial pneumonia, which moves through the lung as a wave, The viral COVID, hopscotches around on t-cells, starting spot fires in front of the wave. So time can go by where one feels like they are gaining the upper hand, only to have these 'spot fires' of covid flair up. On my chest x-rays and CT scans, you can see the splotches of white haze where the lungs are infected and the mucus and puss/moisture is filling the lung tissue. Normally, pneumonia affects the lower lobes, and moves upward. I had pneumonia in all 4 lobes at once and explained to me by the doc about how t-cells do this. It may be that it is variant related, I can't recall exactly what he said.
Also, COVID attacks immature red blood cells. Here's an article about how;
https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2021/...n-low-oxygen-levels-in-covid-19-patients.html
The body works overtime to make up what immature RBC's are killed off, providing more feed for the virus. Mature RBC's live about 21 days. By day 10, you are down to half the mature RBC's. RBCs move oxygen from the lungs to the rest of your body. So not only are you struggling with lung tissue filled with fluid, you are dealing with a reduction in RBC's. So once I was over the pneumonia, I still had to deal with growing new mature RBC's and bone marrow making more immature ones to develop. That took at least another month. My O2 concentration looked good resting; about 95%, but walking around dropped to low 80's because just not enough RBCs to move the oxygen to the muscles. Even coughing lowered my O2 count 10 points.
Then there's the lung exercisers I needed to use every hour to keep damaged lung tissue from turning into scar tissue and permanently reducing lung capacity. I hated that part, but I stuck to it and now not only recovered, have more lung capacity than I did prior to COVID.
