I won't lie, today I've felt worse than I have in years. About an hour and a half after vaccination, the muscles in my upper back, neck, and shoulder started aching horribly. It was more like a deep muscular ache than just muscle soreness (so not like the day after you have an intense workout) which was quite terrible.
About an hour later, I developed a really bad headache. It felt like someone was taking the back of my skull and pulling it down. It was debilitating.
As I tried to rest and escape these pains, I started violently shivering. I've lived in the northern UK, New England, and New York during winter, and never has my body responded like this. I've even visited Chicago in winter and this type of thing didn't happen. My body was almost uncontrollable in its shaking, even under multiple covers. It was like the people who caught diseases in colonial times or en route to settle the western US where all that was reported was "so-and-so caught the shaking fever and then died." I've had the flu, e. coli poisoning, many sinus infections, etc. but never have I experienced something like this.
I became extremely nauseous and started vomiting soon after. It was the type of vomiting where you end up dry heaving when everything is gone from your stomach. Really horrible. I tried taking OTC painkillers and medicine to help, but simply the fact that there were now some pills in my stomach was enough to make me vomit again.
Tried to warm up by sitting in the hot shower. Worked on the shivering, but did not make me feel any better otherwise.
I finally took a percocet to escape the debilitating headache, but vomited it out. The second try went better, and it took about 2 hours of laying in the dark on the floor while the opioids did their thing to finally be okay enough to rest without significant pain.
I'm a healthy and young person who takes care of their body, tries not to eat terribly, works out multiple times a week, has not (knowingly) had covid, etc. and this was the result. I know scummy Branch Covidians say "I'll take a day of not feeling great over covid!!!!" but this wasn't just not feeling well. It was like every non-permanent side effect they warn you about happened all at once. Having gone through this, if I didn't have to get the vaccine for school, I would never get it. I'm seriously worried about booster shots in the future now, because I never again want to volunteer to feel this shitty.
Anyways, be mindful if you decide to get vaccinated. You might be fine with a sore arm, or you might be kneeling on porcelain for an hour while dry heaving some tylenol you took.
Edit: Just as a capstone to this experience, I guess, literally minutes after posting this I started feeling nauseous again because I had taken too big a gulp of some pedialyte about 15 minutes before. Naturally, my body decided it was best to just vomit it out. Amazing.
