Category: learning curve

Day 574, part 2 – Once more…

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…for the guys at the back?
…into the fray?
…with feeling?
…unto the breach?

Maybe all of them. Whatever.

Let’s run through this one more time:

  • Wearing a mask cannot completely stop Covid transmission, but it can reduce it.
  • Good ventilation cannot completely stop Covid transmission, but it can reduce it.
  • Social distancing cannot completely stop Covid transmission, but it can reduce it.
  • Handwashing cannot completely stop Covid transmission, but it can reduce it.
  • And vaccines cannot completely stop Covid transmission, but they can reduce it*.

But WHEN USED TOGETHER, these measures CAN effectively stop Covid transmission.

And limiting the spread of the virus is how we end this pandemic.

Incidentally, if you choose to merely pick one of the bullet points above and then throw it around without context in order to try and make a point, you’re either being deliberately obtuse or extremely stupid.

Don’t do that.

* drastically – and also reduce your risk of serious illness, hospitalisation and death!

Day 574 – The hospital

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As mentioned, yesterday’s appointment went well. But it would be remiss of me not to comment on the place where it occurred. It was my first visit to Rondebosch Medical Centre, and while it was a generally positive experience, the actual place was actually rather unsettling.

The ground floor is occupied by a petrol station. Bit weird.

The public parking was on the roof, and was a real adventure to get to. Tight turns and no set plan for any floor of the parking lot kept me guessing and (once) having to reverse and try again. And then, once arriving there, half of the roof was being used as a construction site.

The view was pretty good, though:

The car park set the tone for the building, which was poorly lit, full of narrow corridors and tight corners, and seemingly also all under construction. Like an 80s office block suffering from sick building syndrome that had been hastily and desperately converted for another use.
Like a private hospital.

But just because the building is awful, that’s not to say that the service wasn’t good. It was.
It was just that it was all housed in a really horrible place.

Day 573 – 5k, 30 minutes, next April

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A somewhat surreal experience at the specialist this afternoon yielded some mostly good news.

Surreal because the whole place looked like a building site, there was no receptionist, the doc himself looked like he had just finished working in his garden on a weekend, and the entire episode was accompanied by some energetic jazz funk on the radio. Then the previous patient – still clutching his fresh urine sample in one hand – asked if I could spare him R5 for parking. He was wearing a Liverpool shirt, so I took pity on him and gave him the money. In his other hand.

But once I was in the practice room, thankfully things were a bit more normal. Nice guy.

Let’s get the not so good bit over with first: no magic pill, no quick fix, no guaranteed timeline of escaping these crappy symptoms. That “you really just need to be patient,” line again, which seems to be the (admittedly justified) mantra for this thing. And a few more blood tests (LFTs, Cortisol etc.), just to check that the Covid symptoms aren’t hiding any other nasties. We’re all pretty sure that they’re not.

But mostly good news because – having had an ultrasound of my heart, a resting ECG and done some treadmilling (I got up to 6kph on a slight upward slope, for a whole 150 seconds!!) – I have permission to begin exercising again.
My heart is good and strong, I have no blood clots and my lungs are almost repaired. It’s just the rest of me that is completely broken and needs some work. So not klapping the gym, boet quite yet (it’s an absolute haven for Covid infections anyway), but a walk a day, increasing my pace and increasing my distance each week.

He stressed that he seen a number of patients who simply don’t seem to understand quite what a blow Covid has dealt them. The idea that once the acute symptoms have gone, you can go back to normal, just isn’t true. One also needs to recognise the regression that the infection has caused.
“You’re running 100m, but you’re starting 50m behind the starting blocks,” was his analogy.

Longest 100m ever.

Anyway, without putting any firm timeline on it, there was mention of six months (from now) to maybe get back to where I was. I almost cried. Six months might seem like a long while, but honestly, there have been a lot of times when I didn’t think I would ever get back there. And maybe I won’t. Or maybe it will take 3 months.
But there’s hope, and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and so I’ve set myself a goal: I’m going to run 5km in 30 minutes with my son on his birthday next year.

Possibly, anyway.

That will be more than 9 months to get myself back to normality after this “mild” infection, assuming this all goes to plan. So let me just drop the message in here once again that you can increase your chances of avoiding all this shit, simply by getting vaccinated. Incidentally, my doc thinks that the timing of my first vaccine dose might just have been the thing that kept me out of hospital. Thanks be to Pfizer.

I have already taken the beagle on a celebratory trip around the block, and so now I am ready for bed, but it doesn’t matter.

This has been a good day.

Day 569 – Experiments gone disastrously wrong

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If you’ve been in science for any length of time, you’ll have had plenty of these. They’re sometimes expected, often annoying, and occasionally soul-destroying, but it’s all part of the learning experience. I tried two experiments yesterday. One of them was documented in some detail here, and the other one was simply enjoying a small bottle of Castle Milk Stout with dinner.

Both were fun experiments to do, and both seemed like really good ideas at the time. But in retrospect, neither of them have gone particularly well. I woke up last night at 3am with a towering hangover of note, and despite the best efforts of a combination of paracetamol, ibuprofen and codeine, I then woke up at a more reasonable time this morning with a collection of symptoms best described as “being completely broken”. Head, joints, muscles…
And my brain is not working again. Argh.

Let’s get the learning process going, then. No more alcohol experiments for a while. Not even a little CMS. And that’s disappointing. Not because I need the alcohol, but more because I like the taste (now that I can again). Sure, there are the well-advertised 0.0% alternatives (although thankfully(?) not for Milk Stout), but they are often very disappointing in the taste department.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room. The one which seemingly rolled over me in bed last night. Because in 11 days time, I have to go back to the rock and do three days of stuff, back to back. Based on the results from yesterday, this is is going to be very difficult. And that’s got me very worried. The first rule of Parents Assisting With School Visits To Robben Island Club is that you do not talk about Parents Assisting With School Visits To Robben Island Club, but I generally ignore that one. However, the second rule of Parents Assisting With School Visits To Robben Island Club is that you need to actually assist with the school visit to Robben Island, rather than being a liability.

And honestly, this morning, I would be a liability.

Crap it all. To use a well-used South African phrase: What must happen now?*

* The use of the phrase “What must happen now?” often then followed by an awkward silence, purposefully shifts the burden of the decision-making process – and therefore all responsibility for any negative outcomes resulting from that process – onto someone else, immediately absolving the protagonist of any blame, guilt or accountability.
I am fully aware of the implications of using it here, and despite that, I am still using it here.
Almost desperately.

Day 568 – Long lighthouse

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568mls in a pint… (just saying, Cape Talk).

What a morning.

I went across to Robben Island earlier today. Just a recce. I’m both inspired and knackered. And now rather concerned about the actual visit in (less than) a couple of weeks. Could be exhausting.

This was a whistle-stop tour to discuss wants and needs and plans, so there literally wasn’t any time to stop and take the place in. However, it could also be a whistle-stop tour to look at what I might get some photos of when we actually go. I was using my old kit lens to play with and we were rushing, so I had to do a bit of messing around with some of the photos when I got back, so I went full messing around. These pictures never looked tremendous, so why not have some fun?

They did not come straight out of the camera like this, ok Ian?

The lighthouse needs a coat of paint. And this photo needs less HDR, but we all have our issues. This is deliberate, honest RBOSS. And I’m actually ok with that.

Then there was this smart guy by the sea:

This was taken through the window of a moving minibus. Yes, I know it shows a bit. But not too much, right?
I was also impressed.

With the right lenses, (ok, and possibly a lot less messing around in post) these would be much better images. And so that’s what I’ll try and do next time around.

Here’s one that I’ve left just about “as is”:

And it might look bright and colourful, but it was actually a very bright and colourful scene.

You can’t blame me for that. (Artificial) saturation = 0.

The real visit is going to be very hard work, but it’s also going to be very rewarding in a lot of different ways. Hopefully one of them will be some amazing photographs.