Covid

I woke up Thursday morning at 2:00 a.m. with the chills.  Having had a dry cough that seemed a little suspicious even for what I've experienced on blood pressure meds, I took one of my free tests.  The test was pretty insistent after I'd peed on it that I was pregnant with covid.  I'm pretty sure I know where I got it as my events were fairly isolated in time, so I'm going to blame Jesus.  I wouldn't have changed my behavior, but the irony of probably getting it from an Easter breakfast buffet when I don't do Easter meals and really generally dislike buffets - Mama Sheila's excluded, props to her for serving the buffet food and keeping multiple sets of fingers away from everything - is ironic.  Perhaps Jesus felt a need to give it to me to prove he can save me.  That whole I only hurt you because I love you and want to teach you a lesson thing.  But mostly I think smart people who designed vaccinations saved me.

My experience with covid so far leads me to believe there's an intelligence to the disease. Dry cough, try to trick you into thinking it's just the dry cough that comes with blood pressure meds...annoying sure, but it doesn't seem to be getting to you. How about a headache and heavy runny nose/congestion? You're going to sleep upright and take meds? Fine...how about these intermittent but hard core chills during the night...those your kryptonite? You're sleeping in your flannel robe under the covers to try and mitigate it and just logging extra hours in bed to make up for the sleep disruption? Well la te da...how about some muscle cramps? Let's target the muscles that are usually a little achier as you've aged that twinge a bit after exercise and try and ramp up those specific aches until they're hard to ignore. No, still not getting to you, I'm nothing compared to achy muscles end of the day after an Almanzo bike ride? How about some abdominal cramps? Almanzo or RAGBRAI give you abdominal cramps? Reminds me of Lyme's [which I had twice] in that it seems to be wandering around the body looking for a weakness. I'd hate to experience this w/o being vaxxed. My condolences to anyone who's gone through or lost someone they care about to it so far. Be careful in MN - the rates are waaay up and those multiple BA2 variants are super infectious.

Touching Things

I was off work for three days with some sort of illness.  Longer if you consider I had a sore throat starting Friday afternoon when I was working from home and really only came back to the office today.  Plenty of working from home during that time, even extra, but at least Monday I could barely see the computer at some points my sinuses, eyes, and lungs were leaking so much.

Today that gave me some pause while I was thinking about being contagious.  I'm fairly certain I'm fine given usual contagion rules, and it's not a baddy, because I haven't gone anywhere.  But I thought about what I might touch that could transmit germs.  My first meeting of the morning was standup.  I touched:

• the outside door handle to the room.
• the inside door handle to the room
• the light switch
• the cord to the computer from the t.v.
• the dongle to the computer from the t.v.
• the tv remote
• the phone and almost every single number on the keypad
• my pen
• a notepad
• my computer
• my mouse
• a white board marker
• a white board rag
• a bottle of white board cleaner
• the hand sanitizer

No wonder the world is generally doomed when there's a risk of pandemic.

Shingles

So about every three or four minutes, it feels like someone is shoving a knife blade under the ribs on my left side.  On the plane ride back from Orlando, I had this pain in my left shoulder.  I thought I'd done something stupid like pull a muscle while swimming at Blue Springs.  The next morning, a spot on my chest hurt, sort of where the ribs run into the sternum.  Picture an imaginary bullet shot by a little person.  In one side, out the other.  I poked around on line and thought, it's probably just where the muscle in my back attaches in the front.  Then I got a very light rash on my abdomen.  I'd had hives in Orlando due to something I was allergic to in the water at the amusement park, and it seemed like this was just a recurrence.  Then it started to really hurt.  So I was back to see Jennifer at urgent care in Eagan for the second time in two weeks.  Shingles.  Damn it.  They put me on an anti viral.  My mother recommended lysine as well.  And now I can expect 3-5 weeks of tender skin and sharp pains.  It's not keeping me from doing anything, but it sure is a distraction at work.  On a positive note, after taking the lysine, I seem strangely energized and  like my old self.  I'm interested to see if that's consistent and whether the shingles are the result of some sort of imbalance.  Hopefully, between the dog bite, the splinter so deep in my palm it wouldn't come out, the shingles, and the allergy to the water, and...I think there was one other malfunction in there somewhere...I should be done for a while.

Stupid Ironic Disease

On Monday, I was home with what I thought was an average, low-impact, flu. Headache. Uneasy stomach. Little dizzy. Muscle cramps. Light fever. By the evening, I was pretty sure I'd be going in to work on Tuesday. I was eating dinner, telling my wife I really liked it when the baked potatoes had extra crispy skins, and enjoying an episode of Family Guy where Peter gives Stewie, Brian and Chris each a vial and declares an ipecac contest, he who pukes last wins. After which they proceed to puke all over each other and the living room, groaning for it to stop, just stop.

Which was what I was doing at 5:00 a.m. Tuesday morning. Projectile vomiting up crispy pieces of baked potato. Coupled with a fever of around 102.5, sweats, chills, dizziness, and head ache. It was followed by passing out for several hours, and then repeating, several times, until I strained muscles in my back, neck and balls that still hurt today. Technically, I suppose I strained the muscles near my balls, in the abdomen or something, but it sure feels like someone gave me a gentle kick in the giggleberries with a boot. The puking, which took place in three separate sinks, three separate toilets, and one handy-dandy puke bucket (Eryn's), cleared up around 3:45 or so, but the fever and the rest of it held on through the night (perhaps worse) and I think I'm still a little warm to the touch. I think it was actually worse than it sounds - I spent something like 38 out of 48 hours sleeping and barely ate for two days.

I was at work today, but I canceled all my meetings and kept my body, in particular my hands - as far as possible from anything anyone else might touch. I'm hoping that was sufficient to protect the washed masses.