thewayne | Entries tagged with sick

Russet is doing much, much better. Tired and getting lots of sleep, her SpO2 numbers are good and she's functioning at a pretty high level. She had a persistent nose bleed last night which was slightly concerning as (a) cancer and (b) blood thinners, but eventually it stopped. And we live at very high altitude, there's no snow, which typically means fairly low humidity. We might do some humidifying later.

I didn't bother testing until today, and it was, of course, positive. There was never any question as to whether or not I would get it again. No where nearly as angry a red line as Russet's test. I feel absolutely fine! I'm a little tired, but I've been averaging less than 7 hours of sleep for most of the month. My temperature is ever so slightly elevated, not remotely to what you'd consider a fever. I'm considering it an artifact of having recently gotten up and eating breakfast and will keep an eye on it throughout the day.

One thing is for sure: all of the Covid antibodies from 10,000 donors that I infuse every week definitely do me a lot of good! The funny thing is that right now I feel better than I did a week ago when I was sick/recovering from (probably) pertussis. Yesterday was the last of my antibiotics from that, today is my last steroid from that treatment. And my cough is feeling much better, definite improvement in that area, which gives me some optimism that I'll be able to keep the library open late - the new CDC guidelines is that if you're not running a fever with Covid and you mask, you're pretty safe to work. Assuming you're not over-exerting yourself. It's easy not to over-exert yourself working in a library, though there are days. :-)

I just got off the phone with Albertsons and they don't receive their shipment until 2ish, so it's going to be another 4 hours before I find out whether or not I can get the second box of paxlovid. She has another order of meds waiting for her, so I'll be making a dash down the mountain regardless. Probably swing by our favorite Mexican food place and pick up some more green chili stew - our local cure-all. Does an awesome job of opening up the sinuses.

Yesterday Russet came down for a blood draw as she has/had an endocrinologist appt early next week. And she was absolutely miserable. We went to Walgreens and bought a Covid test kit: the line went angry red in less than two minutes.

Off to urgent care, and while her vital numbers were good - she was running a fever, she clearly was not presenting well. They gave her some ibuprofen to try to bring the fever down and a respiratory treatment, and in two hours, she was much, much better. While we were there, I texted my immunologist who wired an order for paxlovid to the pharma for me. And I got the very last dose! The plan was that I'd take it as a preventative since clearly I'm doomed to test positive, but since both Albertsons and Walgreens were out, Russet is taking it unless I become symptomatic. Al's is supposed to get more on Friday, and I'll pick up her order for it then and start taking it.

For the next two weeks I'm supposed to keep the library open late for students to have a place to study for their finals. If I'm really clobbered by this, it's going to be a problem as we only have 2.5 people working there and I'm the half-timer.

Russet is doing much better today after a long nap when we got home yesterday evening then some good sleep last night, plus getting right on the drug. I hope it leads to a milder illness. And obviously I hope I have minimal problems with it!

We were going to do two long salmon fillets for dinner today (purchased Tuesday), but I decided to pick up a pork loin last night while at Albertsons as it's a 'fire and forget' bake that would be a lot easier to make and with much less fuss. We can do the salmon later, it'll keep in the freezer pretty much indefinitely.

Far too much fun! This will be our third round with Covid, we narrowly dodged it in August or September, but not this time.

A week ago I went back to Nat'l Institutes of Health for my first visit since Covid changed our lives. And everything was pretty good. One thing that was quite amazing was I posted my best distance for the six-minute walk test since I started going there in 2010! At least as far as I know, I only had the results of four or five tests, seems my record-keeping is a bit sloppy.

And let me tell you, until you've experienced a six-minute walk test, you ain't experienced nothing! No treadmill stress test comes close to what this is like.

But Russet worked the election, got exposed to 300+ people, and got sick as a proverbial dog that is sick. Election result depression on top of that, I didn't like being away - I shouldn't have timed my trip that particular week. But I do have to say that the weather in Bethesda was quite pleasant, as was the food! (though expensive...)

Anyway, in addition to Russet being sick from the election, Dave started getting sick at the first of the month, and hasn't been to a doctor. So he's been coughing seemingly non-stop since then. I don't know if he has medical insurance right now or not, there's some kerfuffle with the IRS and his insurance. But he hasn't gotten any treatment except possibly OTC stuff which doesn't do anything for the underlying problem, just treats symptoms.

Yesterday I knew I was feeling sick, definitely dragging at work. Today, there's no doubt. Low fever, lungs are decidedly not happy, throat is yucky. I was finally able to get ahold of my immunologist, and should be getting antibiotics and maybe steroids in a few hours.

Russet got the same yesterday, and she improved considerably overnight. Hoping the same for me.

I didn't get sick this winter!

Heck of a thing for me. Pretty much every year I get sick in the winter: it might be major, it might be minor, but I get sick. Then again, considering I had sinus infections from March to October last year, I think I made my quota and then some.

So YAY spring!

The down side is lots of fire storm warnings: low humidity, lots of wind.

Crossposts: https://thewayne.livejournal.com/1132625.html

Thursday night we got back from my annual trip to the National Institutes of Health, everything went pretty good, but the trip was cut short a day because they were going to do one thing and the plan got changed and they didn't have some gear in to accommodate the change, so I get to go back in January. Oh, well.

One of the constant joys of visiting NIH is they frequently want me to produce a sputum sample. And I CANNOT produce a sputum sample on demand. You can make me inhale a high-concentration saline mist for 20 minutes, it doesn't help. And again, this trip, no sample. We get home Thursday. Friday night I'm feeling a little "Am I getting sick?" Saturday I was definitely sick and immediately coughing up crud from my lungs. Yesterday fever of 101.5. Saw the nurse/practitioner (we don't have any GPs up here, plus she's known to and works with my immunologist) and confirmed that it had already moved in to a fully-involved sinus infection, complete with bulging ear drum. Ordered antibiotics, wife ran down the mountain and also brought back life-saving green chili stew from Casa de Suenos. Also a large container of their red salsa. Nectar of the gods.

Last night was miserable, waking up every hour or two to take a bit of water and go back to sleep. Somewhere along the line my fever broke and I'm doing a lot better, though still really cruddy.

This morning was interesting: I got up, looked out the back yard, and it was snowing! Russet surprised me and said that they were expecting it to snow at the observatory over the weekend, but it didn't. Turns out they were a day off, not unlike the request for my sputum sample.

This is a stitch of three photos looking out my back door. It was all gone an hour later. Our house faces south, and the front had pretty much nothing. So you can see that I'm not joking when I say that I live in a forest on top of a mountain! But it was very nice getting to watch the snow fall.

Tonight Russet cooked up some Boolkogi from Trader Joe's, essentially Korean BBQ, along with some Asian friend rice, also from TJ's. Quite yummy. And we watched John Carpenter's They Live for Halloween. It's been 15-20 years since I had last seen it, and I think that will be enough time to pass before I need to see it again. Excellent social criticism on unchecked capitalism and greed, but still just not a very good movie.

Crossposts: https://thewayne.livejournal.com/1037170.html

I caught a cold Sunday afternoon. I hate colds. So we took it easy. Monday it was hitting me big time so I didn't go in to work. Monday night it seemed to break, Russet said my breathing got a lot easier while I slept. Tuesday I was feeling pretty good, still stayed home, taking it easy. Tuesday night I began to really feel like crap. It moved into my lungs and nose at the same time, and not long before Russet had to head back to Cloudcroft to do some work at the observatory.

So today I go into work. I'm still feeling cruddy, but I'm not coughing (much) or sneezing (at all). Just blowing my nose a lot and making sure that I wash my hands often, also not getting too close to people. Fortunately nothing broke in my absence, in fact, one problem was actually behaving better. I wanted to see a doctor but didn't have a local one, so I pull up the list of doctors for my medical plan on the web site and start calling DO's. The first one that I call is taking new patients, but she can't see me for at least two weeks, nor can anyone else in their office. Second one I call is also taking new patients, but he's on vacation this week. There aren't a lot of osteopaths in the directory, and a few of them say that they aren't taking new patients. Fortunately I strike gold with the third -- taking new patients and not only can I get in today, I can get in in about an hour!

So I get there at 10:45 for an 11am appointment to make sure that I have time to do the new patient paperwork. In fact, I have time to do the paperwork and write four pages of a blog entry -- I don't get called back until 12:15ish. Turns out that he had an earlier patient suffering from extreme depression who took a lot of extra time.

We talk, he prescribes antibiotics, something to hopefully clear my nose and lungs, then he surprises me with an injection -- I got a steroid injection to accelerate clearing my nose, and let me tell you, it worked!

I take the scripts, make an appointment for a physical next month, and head off to Walmart to get the prescriptions filled. I wouldn't have had them done there except apparently one of the drugs isn't carried by Walgreens and KMart was not well located for my current needs. I drop off the scripts, then go to Arby's for a leisurely lunch and catch up on reading my flist. Head back to pick up the drugs, get in car to head back to work (I'm now down two hours on the day) and the car won't start.

I'm 99% sure that it's the battery. Go back into Walmart, turns out that the auto department doesn't have a jump cart, but they will lend me jumper cables: the guy tells me just to flag down the security guards in their little golf cards and they'll jump me. I pop the hood on my car and wait. Fortunately I refilled my drink at Arby's (it was almost 100f here today). Absolutely no sign of security, and no one seems interested in helping me. A good 15-20 minutes pass, I go into the store to customer service and ask them to page security to Row 2 to jump my car. No problem, they tell me. Spend another 15-20 minutes, no sign of security. Finally this guy walks up and asks if I need a jump.

Thus the car gets started, I drive across the freeway to Sears and get a new battery. Total time at Sears for a battery, plus buying a new set of jumper cables (mine were trashed by my own stupidty) and a new set of wiper blades (found out that my driver's side needs 21" blades, the passenger side 18"): less than 20 minutes.

Get back to city hall at 3:30. I'd been gone for FIVE FREAKIN' HOURS. There's no way that I could make up four hours today, especially with some of the crap I was experiencing with a vendor's web site. It was amazing -- they had a "click here to start a problem report via email" and clicking there caused your browser to spontaneously abort. It didn't matter if it was IE or Firefox, it was GONE. So they received a nastygram about that!

So now I'm home, drugged, fed, and feeling better. I put in an hour extra, I'll have the other three hours covered by the weekend. Total out of pocket for doctor, meds, battery, and automotive miscellany? About $200. I'm VERY glad that I paid off my credit card last month!

Once again, true to form, the semester has begun and I have a cold developing. My lungs are not fully recovered from my bout of flu in December, I hope this doesn't make things worse.

I'm hoping that it'll peak Friday and the worst will be over before Monday.