Got the Rona

After 2 years of being pretty careful we finally got covid. It hit me kind of hard because of having asthma I guess. I’ve been off work for a month, hoping to improve this next week and be back at work but that will depend on whether I can talk without coughing.

It has sucked but I am reasonably good at being sick in bed. One aspect of being disabled that actually helps sometimes! The down sides of having covid while disabled – the logistics of getting to doctors’ office was kind of hairy since I could not handle a) the bus b) driving c) breaking down and putting together either the manual or the powerchair for transport in a car. My sister drove me to to get a monoclonal antibody infusion (TOTAL INFUSION was the hilarious 80s name of the clinic) and then isolated in her basement for days in case I had exposed her. I didn’t want to take a cab. Then at some point I thought about going to urgent care (because my blood pressure was out of control probably from the high doses of prednisone) but could not figure out how to get there without once again asking someone to potentially be exposed and then have to isolate.

I am fine now, just still coughing/ asthmatic when I move around a lot, talk, or laugh. NO LAUGHING ALLOWED. Goal is to quiet this reaction via more inhalers, nerve drugs like gabapentin which apparently help with dry cough, and more tea with honey than seems humanly possible.

I also gained 10 pounds almost instantly from the prednisone and eating whatever I felt like eating, which was: everything.

I missed a bunch of events, concerts, and so on that I had wanted to go to and will probably keep missing them as I will likely go back to work before I am 100% better and the ramp up to Actually Better enough to go out in the evening will be long and slow. So that also sucked.

Luckily the weather was amazing so I spent a lot of time, after the first two weeks where I barely got out of bed, lying on a sort of pallet on the lawn in the garden. I feel very lucky to have a sunny little garden with its astroturf lawn, hummingbirds, finches, and flowers. At first I was getting help from Danny to set up the little bed and drag it back to the Underhouse every day but now I can do it. There is also the hammock and my amazing outdoor claw foot soaking tub. Variety in where you park yourself is really good when you are sick, to keep up morale!

Milo turned 22 and A. is 19. They will likely be going off to grad school (library science) and university (probably in the UK). I’m so proud of them both!

Milo got covid, rather lightly, but was better within a day or two. Danny was pretty sick and slept through nearly a week (some of that isolating in the basement, but we didn’t isolate well enough) and then has been still a little bit sick for maybe 3 weeks or so. He is better now!

SDI & the EDD have been a non ideal experience, as they seem to have screwed up somehow. I think my doc sent in the paperwork but EDD attached it to a claim from 2014 (??!!!!) So my claim is in limbo, it doesn’t have a case number yet, so when I call on the phone I can’t get to the right menu to get a person, and I also can’t send a message since there is no claim to do it from, only a “pending” claim. ARRRRGH.

We are just starting to have people over to hang out in the garden. It’s nice but I find people to be exhausting. I holed up in the room with the door shut kind of a lot just because everything seems irritating and overwhelming and I get a headache quickly if things are overstimulating.

Somewhat inspired by the sudden heavy hitting covid, I started filling out a little workbook called “I’m Dead, Now What?!” that is supposed to gather all the information that would be useful to your survivors or executor of your will. It is interesting to contemplate. Mostly I worry about the giant mess of books, papers, and magazines that I have been lugging around for my whole life and which has NOT gotten any more orderly. What would anyone even do with it? The least I can do is put it in order and sort out anything “important” (LOL? is any of it?). Some of the zines, at least, should go to a good zine archive and/or maybe get scanned. So that will be a goal for this year. Maybe I can hire someone to scan them once I have a pile ready.

I would not call this “Long covid” by the way – Just a long recovery since my lungs got hosed and the exhaustion kind of lingers. I expect in another month I’ll be frisky as ever.