I go through an afternoon of flu-like symptoms and wonder whether it’s the vaccine actually working to fight COVID-19.

I’m curious.

I got my COVID-19 vaccine about a month ago. It was the Johnson & Johnson one-and-done vaccine that isn’t on the top of most people’s list of choices for getting vaccinated. Its efficacy is supposedly lower than the other two vaccines approved in the US — the two-dose Pfizer and Modera vaccines — and it recently was put on “pause” (and then resumed) when it was tied to blood clots in younger women.

I had a reaction to the vaccine that started about 12 hours after I got it. First, every single muscle in my body — including ones I didn’t even know I had — ached. Some ibuprofen got me through that. Then, for the next 36 hours, I was completely exhausted by mid afternoon. After a total of 48 hours, I was back to normal.

I haven’t had any reactions since.

I still wear my mask when I’m shopping and doing other things around strangers, but I don’t wear one around friends. But this weekend, I was in close quarters, maskless, with friends I know were vaccinated and some of their friends who may not have been. (After writing this, I discovered that they were.) I didn’t think twice about it, but now I’m wondering.

For the past two days, I’ve been completely zonked out again in the afternoon. While it wasn’t bad on Tuesday, it was terrible yesterday. I wasn’t even that active during the day — I went asparagus picking and then shopped for garden plants. When I got home at 3 PM, I was wiped out.

Around 4 PM, I stretched out on my bed to rest and read and wound up falling asleep. I slept on and off while my pups used my bed as a playground. I was so out of it that even them running over my body and making growling noises at each other didn’t snap me out of it.

A phone call at 6 woke me up. I fed my pups, let them out, and lay down again. I slept for another hour and then let my pups back in.

Then I got my pajamas on and stretched out to read again. By 7:30, I was dead asleep. And I slept until nearly 4 AM.

That’s a total of nearly 12 hours of sleep.

In all fairness, I did take an allergy pill yesterday morning at about 7 AM. My nose had been running like a faucet for the past two days, with sneezing and some small amounts of phlegm. The pills are generics and their “best by” date was back in 2017. The bottle says take one per day. I’d expect that if a side effect was sleepiness, it wouldn’t take 9 hours for that side effect to kick in.

This morning, I feel awake but still tired. I’m having a little trouble keeping warm with the heat in the house set to 71°F. I’m achey, but not terribly so — it could just be the aches that are common from non-movement for long periods of time. (If you’re near my age or older, you know what I mean.) My allergies are not bothering me (yet).

I don’t feel sick, if you know what I mean. Just run down and achey. Kind of how I felt after I got my vaccine.

So my question is this: Is it possible that I was exposed to COVID-19 over the weekend and my vaccinated body is fighting it off? How would I be able to find out?

Again, I’m curious.