Tag: sick

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dragging myself out of bed

Yesterday was the absolute worst day of this cold. I hardly slept the night before due to coughing and sinus pain/pressure, and the cough was just killing me. I took the day off sick.

I drank Nyquil and snuggled into a blanket/pillow fort on the couch and watched a bunch of Leverage episodes. I coughed up junk and went through a box of kleenex. I only left the house to take the dog to the park and to take my mother to her sleep study.

After dropping Mom off, I crawled into my bed, put on a long ASMR video and drifted into a Nyquil fueled coma. I didn’t get a lot MORE sleep than the night before, but it was all in one solid chunk, and that seems to have made all the difference. I’m feeling much better this morning!

I did, however, have to drag myself out of bed before I wanted to so that I could go pick up my mother by 5:30 am. I am hoping that now that I’m feeling more like myself I can actually get some work done on both my day job and my house.

I need a second cup of coffee first, though.

Hoping your Wednesday is fabulous, Readers!

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

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*cough cough sneeze sneeze*

I missed posting this weekend because I have been down with a nasty cold/virus. I’m still sick, but I think I’m starting to come out the other side. This has been a long, slowly developing illness. I started with a sore throat a week ago Sunday. The sinus congestion started late on Monday. Sneezing arrived on Tuesday.

Thursday I thought I was feeling better. Friday, I went out to a work event (paintball) and was okay until about 2 in the afternoon, when I suddenly felt completely drained. By the time I got home, I had started coughing, all the junk settling into my lungs.

I’ve been coughing ever since. The fatigue sidelined most of my weekend. This morning I’m feeling slightly better, I think. The fatigue isn’t as thick as it was yesterday. My voice sounds like I started taking testosterone. My throat is raw from coughing.

Okay, enough complaining. Let’s talk about Friday. It was the first time I had met any of my coworkers in person. I drove an hour and a half out to Napa to meet up with them at a place called Paintball Jungle. They have a couple of acres of land set up with forts, blinds, and other obstacles.

My first observation was, damn that paintball gun is HEAVY. I’m still feeling it in my arm! Now, I’m not the most agile individual, and being that I was somewhat sick I also wasn’t hugely energetic, but I went out there to try. And I did pretty good, right up until my energy drained out of my toes. I sat out most of the last game we played and instead sat and talked with others who weren’t participating.

It was a fun day.

And now, I need to find some energy to get the day job started.

Photo by Patrick T’Kindt on Unsplash

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covid sucks

A week ago, several days after returning from Star Wars Celebration, I tested positive for Covid. I’m still not fully well.

I was sick for days before testing positive. There were four negative tests before the positive one. The first few days I felt like I was coming down with a cold. My temperature never went above 99.8, but I was very congested and felt like I could fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

Friday night, after having a miserable day, I tested positive. I still felt like I had a bad cold, with the added fatigue. I had a sore throat, ear aches, and nasal congestion. It seemed like each day a new symptom came up. I slept a lot. On Wednesday, the headache arrived…and it hasn’t left. That’s when the cough started up too. It has not been a bad cough, and I’m only breathless if I do stuff like climb the stairs.

I think Thursday was the worst day for it, and I ended up sleeping or laying down a good chunk of the day.

Now, mind you, I have had both vaccines and two boosters, and I wore my mask pretty much any time I was inside in public unless I was eating or having my picture taken.

I can’t imagine how bad this would be if I wasn’t vaccinated. With my comorbidities, I’d likely be in the hospital.

I’m planning on taking today easy, though I need to do laundry, with the hope that tomorrow I’ll be in better shape.

Photo by Medakit Ltd on Unsplash

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keep your hands to yourself

It’s a scary time out there, Readers, and I hope that you are all alright and taking good care of yourselves and your family.  As someone with a mother in her 70s with compromised lungs who lives with people in the service industry, it’s kind of terrifying.

Everyday I worry that my brother or his family will bring this virus home and not even be aware of it, but I know my mother is sensible, and I know that she’s washing her hands and using sanitizer, and I know the family is doing everything they can to help keep her safe.

I know that for people in the service industry, this crisis has to be terrifying as well, not just the idea that they might get sick, but that they might lose income from cut shifts, lose their jobs if they get sick and have to self-isolate for two weeks or more, and with those loses comes loss of housing and an inability to pay bills.

So far, our response to this virus has not inspired confidence in either our national safety nets or our healthcare system.  We appear to have no real plan in place to deal with this kind of swiftly migrating illness, and that in and of itself allows the virus to continue to multiply.

We need to protect our most vulnerable.  We need to demand national sick leave from all employers.  And if you can, stay home. Keep your kids home.  Find fun things to do as a family.

Even my employment search is being impacted.  What would have been an in-person interview next week is now a Skype interview.  Most of the companies that I am mid-interview process with are on mandatory work from home orders.  I guess that means I don’t have to worry about appearing rude if I don’t shake hands.

I’ve never been a germaphobe before, but I’m starting to see the wisdom in keeping my hands to myself.  I hope you are all taking care of yourselves too, and wish a thousand acts of kindness for you all.

I’m off to make more coffee, and find out what my cats just knocked off a table in the living room.

 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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The thing about being a woman of a certain age is that, while much of life is certainly so much better than it was in your 20s (more money & stability, no need to please everyone around you, etc), there comes with age this one particularly unpleasant symptom.  And for someone who has always run a little hotter than everyone around me, when I say that I’m having a hot flash, please understand that isn’t just me being dramatic.

Heaven knows I can be dramatic, but this kind of hot is no joke.

Having returned from my days at Disney with some sort of sinus infection/cold, I’m sitting here at my computer trying to determine if this is a hot flash, or a fever.  Of course, I can’t find my thermometer to check, and I have no desire to leave the house to get a new one, so I will continue to wonder.

Still, the trip to Disneyland with my 24 year old niece was worth a few days of being less than fully healthy.  It was the thing I needed to release some stress and included some amazing character interactions in Galaxy’s Edge (complete with massive Chewbacca hugs that just made life worth living) and getting to ride the new Rise of the Resistance ride twice.

I got to ride roller coasters and other rides, which is something I haven’t done in 20 something years due to my size.  We flew the Millenium Falcon, had drinks at Oga’s Cantina, and ran around Batuu hacking our way through the Play Disney App’s games.

Since I was there last in September, I’ve read the book Black Spire, and that gave me a whole new appreciation of the park, and really informed some of our interactions with the “locals” including one guy at Oga’s that just really got into his role.

Of course, all good things must end, and we eventually left LA for the long drive north, a drive made all the longer by traffic problems that included a big rig fire on the Grapevine that burned the hillside and left nothing of the truck but some bits of metal.

That got me home too late to even consider going in to the office on Thursday, and I woke up with the cold/sinus infection on Friday morning, so I worked from home both days.  For today, I’m going to take it easy, going light on the chores, and probably not even getting much writing done since my brain is having trouble getting words to push through the sludge of congestion.

I think it might be a good day to settle in with my giant TV and surround sound to watch movies and get caught up on TV.  Happy Sunday, Readers!  I leave you with one of my favorite shots from Disney, on board the Millenium Falcon in my Han Solo Disneybound.

 

Han Solo on the Falcon

Header Photo by Hans Reniers on Unsplash

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the one with a migraine

Yesterday was not a good day.  I was feeling all over aches, bloating, nausea, stiffness in my back….just yuck.  As the day went on, I developed a headache and then, shortly after I had a little dinner, I threw up everything my tiny stomach could possibly hold.

I went to bed knowing that I would wake up with a migraine, and sure enough I did.  I have medicated and had some coffee and it’s dialed back a bit, but my stomach is still not very happy with me and I don’t dare venture out into the sun or head to the gym.

That means keeping myself in my nice dark office to get some work and some writing done.  I’m enjoying this part time work lifestyle, even if it means I don’t have quite as much money.

It also means I have time in my schedule for more freelance work, so if you’re looking for a writer or an editor, hit me up.  I’ll give you a good deal.

 

Photo by Carolina Heza on Unsplash

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taking a sick day

I had writing plans for this weekend, but I seem to have caught the cold that’s been going around, so I am going to call it a sick day and not beat myself up over it.

I think it might be a good day for my couch, my blankets and pillows and whatever movies I can find to entertain me on Netflix.

Sometimes a sick day is good for the writer’s brain.  We can step back and hopefully when we return, we are ready for action again.  At least that’s what I’m hoping.  I have a full religious liturgy to create!

Whatever you’re up to today, I hope you make room for some rest as well.  And, if you’re in the area, some chicken soup would be nice.

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knocked down

Ever have a cold hit you so hard, so fast that you went from “everything’s fine” to “somebody shoot me” in a single afternoon?

That’s what happened to me last week.  I went to work on Wednesday feeling pretty okay, if a little tired (but tired is a part of the wicked insomnia I’ve been dealing with) and it was around lunch time when I started to feel a little…off.

By 2pm, I knew I was getting sick and I left work early.  By the time I got home, I was coughing, congested, and so tired I could have laid down on the street for a nap.

I was in bed by 6:30 pm that night, and when I woke up before my alarm, I knew there was no way I was going anywhere but back to bed.  I called in sick both Thursday and Friday and spent those two days plus Saturday and Sunday doing a lot of laying around on my bed and couch.

I was supposed to go into San Francisco on Sunday to shoot senior portraits for the daughter of a friend, but had to postpone that.  I was lost in the fuzzy head brain fog that comes with severe congestion, so no writing or editing got done.

It feels like I lost a week of my life.  But, I finally made it into work this morning.  I’m still beset by a hacking cough and head congestion, but it’s all starting to work it’s way out.  Which is good.  I have a life to get back to!