joint laxity only?

hi, please let me preface this by saying that i have had bad health anxiety since 2017 and a specific terror of long covid since 2020, so by coming here my main hope is that you will chase me away like an intruder, telling me i am fine and should go about my life and leave you alone. i will appreciate everyone who makes an effort to reassure me that i should move along.

okay. i've had asymptomatic hypermobility my whole life, never a problem. i've had all the covid shots, no problem. i had covid in dec. 2022, started paxlovid on day 1, no problem. maybe mild palpitations on occasion for a few weeks afterward, but so mild it wasn't clear to me that it wasn't just me being anxious about long covid.

had covid a second time in aug. 2024. tested negative too long to get paxlovid (damn it). rough week but felt better by day 7-8. in sept.-oct., i noticed i had a coated tongue. no other symptoms, shrugged it off. another infection, late oct., followed by the development of laryngopharyngeal reflux. endoscopy in jan. 2025 showed a 1 cm hiatal hernia. started 40 mg pantoprazole daily.

in late feb., i start feeling soreness in my left shoulder doing lateral raises. right shoulder starts feeling sore too, in the spot where i tore the labrum 15 years ago dislocating it (doing something extremely stupid that would have dislocated literally any shoulder). i see an ortho in march who says he thinks i have labral tears in both shoulders. the most traumatic thing i had done to cause this in my left shoulder was busting out some pushups without warming up. but i'm 42, a little hypermobile—"it happens," says the ortho.

later in march, my hips start popping and i get some soreness in my butt (left) and groin (right). seems like external snapping hip syndrome on the left, internal on the right. i start doing glute bridges, clamshells, bird dog. seems to make it worse, probably because i was doing the exercises wrong and doing too much too fast. i back off, feels a bit better, but i still have some soreness and a weird sense of instability in my hips.

i can run, jump, carry heavy things, balance fine. i was shooting a basketball today. i've done workouts. no post-exertional malaise, fatigue, brain fog, anything like that. our family just had a stomach flu and i recovered faster than anyone else. i feel healthy, but like my joints have suddenly decided to be like 50% more lax, which is a problem bc they weren't super tight before.

could this just be regular ass hypermobility and age (please)?

if not and you suspect long covid, can i expect it to improve?

and finally, could the pantoprazole be a factor here?

again, please tell me i'm probably fine, or will be fine, if you can find it in yourself to believe that's the case.