Category: The Body Electric

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.

How I got straightened out

~ susie

I’m going to tell you how my surgical knee just got straightened out, thanks to something that conventional medicine considers a cult — Structural Integration, aka rolfing.

When I was having the first knee done, I asked my doctor if rolfing was something I could do after the surgery. “You should do it before the surgery,” he urged me. So. I borrowed the money to get it done (I will eventually pay her back. I swear) and it was a rousing success. I mean, I could tell if I’d done this 10 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have needed the surgery. And when I was in recovery, my PT team was amazed at my progress. I walked out of the rehab center without a walker or cane.

What was really nice about it was, I gained real confidence in my body’s ability to heal itself, given the right tools. Because I gotta tell you, having your knee chiseled and then getting a new one hammered into your tibia seems pretty damned primitive.

The second surgery was very different. Because of the years my leg was bent in the wrong direction, my recovery was difficult and slow, and it even affected my good leg and hip. Two months later, I still couldn’t find a position that would let me sleep all night, and my leg hurt constantly. (I did mention they don’t give you many painkillers, right?)

I was pretty depressed and as my PT pointed out, I was losing bend in the surgical leg. I also couldn’t straighten it out, which was kind of the point of the surgery. The PT kept trying to push it back down, but the pain was too intense. (I have a high pain threshold, in case you wondered.) At this point, I was even considering something called MUA — manipulation under anesthesia, where they put you under and bend your leg all the way. But my PT said it was too early to consider that.

So I went back to my rolfer for one session only (normally, they do 10, but this was more of a tuneup).

We chatted while he was working on me. He’s getting married in a couple of weeks, they’ve saving to buy a house. Etc. I told him about the Lemon Twigs. He said they sounded like a band he would like.

“Your leg is pretty crooked,” he noted. Now, one of the things about the pain is that I get what feels like electric jolts all over the area, and large areas of skin are acutely sensitive. It hurts just to have a sheet over it.

So I steeled myself. “Don’t be surprised if I scream,” I said. But I didn’t. Somehow, even though he started working on the area right away, it didn’t hurt. And then he worked on releasing scar tissue around each and every staple scar on my knee – 20 or so. “I really wish they used glue instead of staples,” he grumbled.

A few days later, and I’m feeling so much better. Even my PT was impressed. “Your swelling has gone way down,” he said. “And your leg is almost straight again!”

There’s still some pain, but it’s tolerable. Yay, Ida Rolf!

Joe Biden’s speech

~ susie ~ 3 Comments