Tag: long covid

Day 593 – Bounce

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After a fairly horrendous night of sleep, which left me expecting to be in pieces today, I appear to have bounced back somewhat.
Who knows what my immune system is doing? Who knows how I’d be feeling with fewer drugs in me? Or more drugs? Or different drugs?

Who is even keeping score anymore?

It’s weird, and inexplicable, but I’ll take it.

And I have taken it. I managed to get almost a million* jobs done this morning which had previously been hanging over me for the past few weeks. The ‘to do’ list is much shortened and things are looking neater, tidier, cleaner. Fitter, happier, more productive.

Sure, reality will prevail by 8 this evening, I know: my legs are already telling me what’s coming (and they know their stuff). But as an unexpected bonus, the last eight hours or so have been pretty good.

* actually only a very slight exaggeration

Day 590 – Rough end

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It’s been a bit of a rough end to the week. The treatment plan, designed to dampen down my immune system and prevent nasty flare-ups (while also replacing important things that I might not be getting enough of, treating its own possible side-effects and also mitigating any nasty flare-ups that it can’t prevent) was overwhelmed and everything came back.

No taste, hypersalivation, huge fatigue, aches, pains, shortness of breath, palpitations and a complete loss of brain function. Durr.

Unpretty.

12½ hours of sleep later and some drugs – this is just this morning’s selection of ons and ins – and I’m vaguely back with the programme. (Beagle-eyed viewers will note that some of these tablets are the same as others. But not all of them. That’s what keeps things interesting.)

But I really do think I need to start to be ahead of the programme again at 8 each morning if I’m going to get through a whole day unscathed.

And this morning, I’m installing an oven.

What could possibly go wrong?

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.