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Jason Pawlak

Me and my Internet


Husband, Dad, Navy Officer, Coder, and Tinkerer. I have many interests and am always looking to learn something new. This site is a launching point to the many areas of the Internet that represent me.


It got me

COVID Test Positive

It got me...

Maybe I’m immune?

Maybe I have magical blood?

Maybe I can donate my blood to science and it will cure cancer???

Well actually, no… COVID finally got me.

Since early 2020, up until this weekend, COVID has hit every individual in my house (some multiple times) , except me. There was absolutely zero reason I hadn’t had COVID. There have been multiple instances of my interacting with someone in the house right before they got diagnosed, and I always tested clean. In fact, not only have I not had COVID, I haven’t even been sick since February 2020 (wasn’t COVID, it was more of the puking kind of sick).

Of course I’ve pondered many times over the years why I never got COVID. For a while I figured I had it but never showed symptoms. But then sometime in 2021, after a blood donation, my results came back with no antibodies. I wondered if I was just naturally immune? And I also wondered what the heck was in that “mission critical personnel” early-release COVID vaccine batch I received at Scott Air Force Base. Was I the unwitting subject of some military biomedical warfare testing? If it meant I never got sick, would I actually be upset if I were?

But here we are. Fortunately, I’m on the upswing following a crummy few days of fever, chills, headache, body aches, congestion, sore throat, cough, and just feeling awful. I sure didn’t miss being sick.

One of my least favorite routines to attempt while sick is sleeping at night. On any normal non-sick night I fall asleep pretty quick and sleep through the night, mostly. Maybe I’ll wake up to flip over or on the rare occasion get up to go to the bathroom. But when I’m sick… yeah I’m getting out of bed like every two hours to go to the bathroom (sometimes hydration reset sometimes stomach reset depending on the sickness). But getting back in bed, I just know I’m going to be up again in an hour or two. And it takes forever to find a comfortable position to sleep since three toes out from under the blanket chills me like a frozen tundra but just two toes has me sweating like I’m in a tropical rainforest. And of course the movement of sitting up, laying down, or moving from one side to the other has the real likelihood of causing me to asphyxiate from snot… or worse… become a mouth breather. “Is it morning yet?” I’ll ask myself whenever I wake up and look towards the window. How much more night must I endure?!?

Wow, complaining about being sick when I made it nearly five years without being sick is fun! I had an epic run. But now, sadly, it has ended.

Interesting observation while having COVID, my Garmin watch thinks I’m clawing my way up to death’s front door. Check this out…

Garmin Screenshot

Never seen this before...

Why yes that was an apparently stress filled day. But look at the body battery. I started the day on zero because apparently my “sleep” the night before was not all too restful, and I just squatted there, all… day… long. What does it even mean to have a body battery of zero? I felt bad these last few days but I have also felt worse.

And check this out. On the Apple Fitness side of things, I absolutely crushed my calorie goal during my day with zero body battery. On a normal non-sick day it looks like I burn about one or two calories an hour when I’m stagnant. The day my body was fighting the good fight it looks like I was burning five or six calories an hour.

Apple Fitness Calories

Apple Fitness Calorie burn on my worst COVID day

Technology is amazing. While I didn’t need my Garmin to tell me I was feeling crummy, it is kind of interesting to see the data mirror my somewhat extreme circumstances. And as I have started to recover, it appears my Garmin agrees and my body battery is back to positive numbers.

Garmin Screenshot Recovery

On the road to recovery

So hey, Scott Air Force Base medical, if I was part of a super secret biomedical warfare study… I’ll trade you my data for another one of those “vaccines”…

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