Category: Covid-19

Bitch, bitch, bitch

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I just have to vent, because I live alone. Two weeks ago, I came down with covid — for the fourth time. I didn’t know it was covid until the second week, when I started getting chills. Until then, it just seemed like a bad allergy week, with a runny nose and lots of sneezing. (I never sneeze. I should have known.) I wear a mask everywhere, I have no idea how I caught it. Maybe at physical therapy, I don’t know.

Anyway, then the long covid symptoms came roaring back.

Now, here’s the thing. After a year of struggling with long covid from the last infection (you might remember last summer when someone ran a red light, totaled my poor car, and the non-mask-wearing tow truck driver gave me me covid), I was finally starting to feel like myself again. I was so damn happy. No more falling asleep all the time, no more crushing fatigue where I can’t even bring myself to load the dishwasher. I was getting shit done.

I felt like I had my life back. That lasted maybe six weeks.

And now, I’m right back where I started. The neurological symptoms aren’t fun; it takes me maybe five minutes now to figure out the name of the familiar politician I’m posting about. (“Let’s see, he’s a Republican, is he a senator? I think he’s a senator…”) And the weird smells that follow losing my sense of taste! I keep smelling something burning in my apartment.

At least my tongue didn’t swell up this time. Because then you keep biting it in your sleep, and it hurts all the time.

But I’m so, so tired. This time, even though I’m sleepy all the time, I CAN’T SLEEP. I go to bed early but the longest I sleep is five hours. I tried several times to take a nap today, and finally gave up.

An estimated 17 million adults currently have long COVID. There are roughly 250 million adults in the U.S. population, 43 million of whom report ever having had long COVID and 27 million of whom report having had it in the past but not having it currently.

I frequent an online chat for people with long covid, and I consider myself relatively lucky. There are young, previously active people who are confined to bed, or a wheelchair. People who have lost their jobs, have no money, and go from couch to couch, just trying to survive.

And always, the desperate search for some magic supplement that will relieve any of the symptoms. (My desk is covered with supplement bottles. I can’t even remember why I take half of them.) Only one supplement was a slam dunk — one of my doctors, who also had long covid, recommended it for the chronic chest pain. I forget the ingredient, but it’s an epithelial plaque stabilizer, and it works. (It’s also $40 a month. Self-treatment adds up.)

Anyway, short version: I’m back in the long covid cave. It makes me angry that no one is paying attention to this.

Mask up, people

~ susie

This is surging everywhere. One of my friends was just diagnosed with heart failure but the doctors can’t find anything wrong with her arteries. Coincidentally, she was hospitalized with covid two years ago.

I don’t get it

~ susie

Here’s what I remember: I couldn’t get a covid test because my fever was “only” 100 and the Trump administration required 101 in order to be eligible for a test (because they wanted to suppress the number of positive cases); I remember the constant wail of sirens in the background as network news covered the frightening death toll in NYC; I remember big cities had to use refrigerated trucks to store all the bodies; that the supply chain was so screwed up for so long, I had to do my Christmas shopping in September to get the gifts by Christmas; I remember people being out of work and desperate for food. I remember the crime rates soaring. I remember people blowing up ATMs; I heard the explosions almost every night.

I’m sure there’s more, that’s just off the top of my head.

What were these great times people remember? Who are these people?

Elise is hypnotized now

~ susie

She’s right! I really miss all the refrigerated trailers outside the hospitals to hold the overflow bodies, and being afraid to go outside my house: