Plague diary: Day 38 - back working

Day 3 of me back at work. The C-19 has subsided enough that I've been able to work, but I've been so knackered by the end of the day, that it's taken me a while to blog about it.

Day 1 of work went ok, beyond the drop in energy at the end of the day. And of course, I managed to sleep funny on the inflatable mattress. Getting out of bed was such pain I just had to sit on the floor for a minute or two. I got through the morning, but I had to give up in the afternoon. OTOH, my lungs were actually able to fill to the bottom, so, if it's not one thing, it's another.

Back in time a bit... Two weeks ago, the wee boy woke up in the night, and crawled off the bed. The baby monitor we were using (which we used when R was a baby) gave up giving us audio, so we didn't notice him deciding to roam around. After roaming off the bed entirely, and the crying that ensued afterward, L and I took action. 1) Barriers so he could not get out of his cot, and 2) a new, working baby monitor.

The barriers are working, but the baby monitor is crap. the camera gets up to 50^C just being plugged in, not even on. So we have to return it.

Back to the present. I've been calling every day since Sunday, being on hold, waiting for someone to answer, and finally giving up. Yesterday, instead of working with back pain, I lay down on the sofa, feet in the air, and pipe under the painful part of my back, on hold for an hour and 42 minutes. When they finally answered, I discovered I was asleep and had to drag myself into sentience. Despite the wait, they were very fast and efficient resolving my request to return it. In fact, they just picked it up and took it away 2 minutes ago, as I was writing this.

Given the inflatable had betrayed me, last night I slept in my own bed. It was lovely. I didn't sleep very well, but I awoke with no back pain, so that's really nice. Day 3 of work had almost practical levels of energy, so I could do things. Let's hope this continues

Plague diary: day 31 (really, 31?)

Now that the pneumonia is gone, one day seems to be much like another. I did push it a bit too hard on Tuesday, and needed a long rest. The rest of this week has been more or less the same. I'm ok as long as I'm not doing something. But once I do I just get winded and lose all my energy. I can hang up laundry just fine. Then 3 minutes later I realise, no, it wasn't fine. I can't figure out my limits because the goal posts keep changing all the time for no obvious reason.

A couple of the doctors I've spoke to have said that they're finding The Virus can linger as long as 6 weeks. I'm only just past week 4, so I'm not surprised it's still having an impact. I am worrying that this is what life is like now. Perhaps the lung damage is permanent and I'll just have no energy to speak of from here on out. I mean, with chicken pox, I've gotten scarred for life in a number of places on my skin, so it'd not be shocking that covid-19 might do some irreparable harm. No one knows. It's all new to everyone. Like those Samsung phones with exploding batteries. They were just phones. They're expected to just either work, or to break. Nobody expected them to blow up. Perhaps The Virus just smashes things up before it leaves like a renter who lost their deposit.

In other news, the son is getting consonants. M and D and H, mostly. He says Da like his sister did, but not as often, and with more variety of other things. I suppose by the time we next leave the house he'll be walking and speaking at least a few small words. He's eating too. Anything we put in front of him. Blueberries, cucumbers, avocado, tomatoes, squash, asparagus, mushrooms, lemons, brussels sprouts. Anything. This is so very different from what we got used to with his sister, who in retrospect, was a picky eater. I always thought she was just the sort to just eat a bit, and was ok with only eating a bit. Now I know, she was really thinking Ok, I'll eat this one thing, but the rest, I'll just move around and hope they never try it again. I like milk. Can I just stick to milk?.

Of course I'm not doing the food prep. I'm sure I would have passed on The Virus by now if they didn't have it already, but I'm still a little wary, since no one really knows how this things can spread. I'll feed him, but with chopsticks so I stay far away from touching the food or touching him myself. It's odd, and awkward and unpleasant. He has changed quite a bit in the last month, and it bugs me to be missing it from so up close.

I've spent a huge amount more time with R than I did while we both had school and work. I'm still sleeping in her room, but I don't really count that as quality time together. I've stopped reading her bedtime stories. I've run out of books from our queue and have struggled to find age appropriate stuff. I read Neverwhere on a few good breathing days in there, but that and the short story sequel are done. I need to get back in to the habit of reading before it's broken entirely.

Also, R is now pretty big. She's still smaller than us, but she's not a little girl. She's a small person, but a proper person. Still very headstrong. We are still facing many challenges. I'm trying to get a bit of learning in there, but all she wants to do is use the iPad or sometimes play with toys (which I'm happy to join on, when I have the energy for it, but her room is so cramped with the extra bed, we can't both use the spaceport at the same time). I've been trying to teach her useful stuff based on things that come up in conversation. Monday I explained how FM and AM radio (frequency vs amplitude modulation) works. Today I explained triangulation (how do we know where a lion is when it roars). On a practical level, to get her away from the iPad, I hid it today, and taught her card games. Poker and solitaire. She seems to like them both and the latter I'm finding less boring. This seemed to get her happily away from technology for the whole day.

Plague Diary: day 23 - I leave the house

For the first time in over 3 weeks, I left the house. It was interesting to finally see what the local area was like in lockdown. But more interesting was going to the local Covid-19 hub for additional testing to find out why I so breathless today.

Today was weird. I had lung capacity, at least as I measured with the flow meter. But just having a conversation was leaving my breathless. By mid afternoon I called the GP. they made the appointment at the Covid-19 hub at a nearby hospital to check out my bloody oxygen levels – that's apparently the important number, more important than how much air you're getting in. Since I couldn't walk or drive, they sent an ambulance to pick me up and take me there. With the understanding that if anything was awry, they'd take me on to hospital.

So I charge my phone and collect all my meds to take with me, get my shoes on and wait. All the while my brain is telling me that if things do go wrong this will be the last time I see my family, since no one can come with me or see me in hospital. I try to not think of it, but do make sure I say goodbye before I go.

When the ambulance comes, they want to take my readings in the house before they take me away. Bloody pressing, temperature, that sort of thing. Then they give me a mask and off I go.

It's like a weekend out there. Lots of things are closed, but there are plenty of people out and about. The biggest sign that things are different were the well-spaced queues outside the post office and grocery stores. I saw a dozen or so people wearing face masks, but most people were not. Signs outside the park warning people to keep distant. And many "We're closed" signs on shops.

Once at the Hub I was asked to wait outside for the doctor to collect me. I waited at first in the ambulance, but it was a nice day, so I waited outside the front door with the paramedic from the ambulance a coupe of meters away. The wait was pretty short.

The doctor was wearing a mask and plastic sheet of his clothes, just like the ambulance people. Plus he had goggles over his glasses. He took my vitals and blood oxygen levels, and everything looked good. My chest also sounded clear. He thinks it's the lung lining being irritated from all the horrors it's seeing (not his words) and that it'll be like this possible for a few more weeks. This virus is slow to get over. and even afterward, my lungs will still be tight for a while. So unless my energy levels drop drastically, it looks like I'll be ok to ride this out.

I guess it's closer to the 45 days some of the early reports from Asia were saying instead of the 7 days we're being told in the UK. Which makes me (sigh) potentially at the halfway point.

Plague Diary: Day 21 - why can't this end?

This virus seems to be completely unable to make up its mind whether its coming or going. Every day starts with a normal temperature going into a fever. The "getting better" feeling I had at the end of last week has switched back to the same heavy-lunged drowseyness I was feeling in the first few days. The GP's given me antibiotics in case what I'm feeling is bacterial pneumonia. We should see shortly if this makes a difference or not.

L is spending all her energy keeping the house together – which I greatly appreciate given I have to nap for an hour if I try to hang up laundry. I think she's going a bit mad with all the work, plus looking after a crawling baby. And R is going a bit mad with all the freedom from schooling.

I found R had replaced her chore calendar with chores or her own making, like "Binge watch something" or "stay home" rather than the previous "take out compost" or "tidy room". I give her points for creativity. But zero for making family life easier.