Yesterday my doctor informed me that I have Covid-19, to read about the symptoms that led me to get a test you can review my blog entries from the last few days.
I’m too tired to rehash it all. I sleep a lot and lay it bed watching TV on my iPad. I don’t feel feverish, but I have trouble staying warm.
My main symptom is intense muscle aches and joint pain so getting up and moving is hard and exhausts me.
According to my doctor I can reenter the world and return to work December 21. My employer says I should wait until December 28.
So I woke up a little before 10 a.m. to this message from my doctor:
I was a little shocked to see it, but also relieved. If you’ve read my blog posts this week you’ll know that I’ve been experiencing a lot of intense symptoms. It was a difficult week or forgetting my medications (Covid brain fog?), not enough sleep (thank you to the gas company and their jackhammers) and symptoms easily explained by my cerebral palsy (muscle aches and joint pain) and status as a 40-something woman (frequent urination).
So at least with a positive Covid test, I no longer fear that my body has lost more of it’s functionality. I am relieved to be sick. I suppose other folks struggling with chronic ailments and disabilities understand.
My doctor will call in about two hours. I have some planning to do, with her advice. Meanwhile it is interesting to see everyone’s reactions.
Some people offer meals or groceries which can be left on the porch. Some people call to check on my symptoms. Others offer what got them through the illness. Others calculate when they saw me last and want tests. Others know they have been around me but will watch for symptoms to get tested.
I have hardly gotten out of bed today — I’m exhausted, my body is achy, my joints are locking up, I am lightheaded and my eyes burn.
This could be the ramifications of sleep deprivation and forgetting to take my allergy and blood pressure meds for two days. It could be a cold. But it could be Covid.
The teenager made authentic straight-from-the-box Shake N Bake chicken— which she thought was novel but paying $3.50 for a plastic bag and some breadcrumbs struck her as ridiculous.
On the other hand, the no bake confetti dessert I bought at the Grocery Outlet was scrumptious.
The animals, as they tend to do, noticed I didn’t feel well.
I called my doctor and they asked me to go for the Covid test at the hospital— there’s a drive through tent outside. Only 3 cars were in front of us. The attendent did a great job of swabbing my nose. Now if I have Covid, a doctor will call me Saturday. If I don’t, no one will contact me.
And of course I will need some sort of note to return to work.
And the two teens decorated the tree and to celebrate they started their 12 days of Christmas advent calendars a little early.
On Tuesday morning, I got up early and took the Norse Pride to the vet for a post-ringworm follow-up.
I forgot to take my medicine and vitamins. I have taken Zyrtec just about every day since this pandemic started. I am allergic to pollen, mold, dust, and just about everything else including cats.
During the coronavirus shut down I started taking my medication because spring was blossoming and I didn’t want people to think I had Covid.
Around the same time, my doctor had prescribed a low dose of Lexapro for my stress-induced high blood pressure.
So on Wednesday a.m., when I got home from work, I cuddled the animals and watched some more of the Crown. I got to bed a little after two.
Somewhere around 7:30 a.m., I heard the school bus. I rolled over to go back to sleep and — no exaggeration— a jackhammer started opening the street two doors from mine with a ferociousness that shook my house.
Thank you, UGI.
So five hours sleep.
And again because my routine is off I forgot to take my medicine.
I only picked 120 last night and I was terrified about the state of my health.
I was experiencing allergy symptoms (after all I now have 14 cats in my house), exhaustion, every muscle and joint in my body was aching. I couldn’t think. My forehead was sweating but my hands were cold. My hands and feet were tingling randomly as if they had fallen asleep.
I started the night strong with just about 40 fixes picked by first break, but at the end of the night even the ones that should have taken 15 minutes took me 30.
Every break my joints locked up and it took me time to get moving again without pain. And my numbers kept dropping.
I started to worry that maybe I had a fever and the nurse didn’t notice because I tend to have a low temperature. One thermometer earlier in the day said I was 94.5. That is impossible.
Luckily, I had some chili from a friend for dinner and a $2 latte from Dunkin.
Somehow I still managed to walk 24,000 steps but man— that brief episode of withdrawal scared me. A lot.
I came home and took all my vitamins and my medicine and slept about 7.5 hours. Hopefully that will put me on the mend.
Note: I found out later, these were Covid symptoms.
Firstly, my headline is misleading as it is Wednesday already.
Tonight my body aches. Everything hurts in a bad way. And I was dizzy and lightheaded— in a weird way, like my head was clogged with fluid and my body was dehydrated (which I am not).
I only “picked” 120 at Stitch Fix’s Bizzy Hizzy tonight and I am frustrated by that. That’s 2.5 carts less than last night which is almost an hour worth of work.
Now, mind you, I was working in W most of the night which is 750 steps from the “garage area” and if I hustle I can cross in 1 minute 30 seconds. But that adds 3 minutes per cart, which easily accounts for 45 minutes. If I follow my own logic, this means if I were stationed closer to the garage I might have easily reached 136, which would have pleased me.
Bizzy Hizzy
It is 1:30 a.m. now and I am continuing season 4 of The Crown. Now, considering how much my body hurts and the fact that my fingers and feet tingle as if they were asleep, something must be wrong with my circulation. Is my blood pressure too low?
So I thought I deserved a salty snack. The teenager had hijacked my new bag of tortilla chips, and left me with the stale broken crumbs in the cupboard. Her grandfather had brought potato chips but I didn’t see those in the cupboard.
But I found a cup of Little Caesar’s cheesy jalapeño dip and thought that could revive the stale chips.
And as soon as I got them to my room, foster kitten Loki spilled them. Onto my floor. I almost cried.
Speaking of The Norse Pride, here they are after their vet appointment declaring them free of ringworm. In this photo— believe it or not— they think they are hiding from the vacuum.
Tonight I listened to a podcast on Tudor fashion, the final segment of “Do Not Harm” on Wondery. I recommended it to one of my social work interns. I can’t wait to discuss it with her.
Earlier in the day, the teenager went with my father and found our Christmas tree and helped me have a steak dinner before work. I also took my homemade beef broth out of the crock pot and packaged it. I have a cheap man’s beef stroganoff planned for tomorrow.
It is 1:01 a.m. as I write this. There is a kitten at my left hip fascinated by the bubbles in my gin cocktail (gin and cherry vanilla seltzer), a small cockatoo on my knee and a pile of clean, folded laundry at the end of the bed that I have no intention of moving before I go to sleep.
Clean laundry
I had a really good shift at Stitch Fix’s Bizzy Hizzy. I’m a tad bummed because I had hoped to “pick” 140 or more fixes and I only hit 135.
Working as a picker in the warehouse is like being an athlete training for a marathon— I love the challenge of trying to increase my performance every day.
It’s using muscles in my lower body that haven’t ever experienced activity like this. I spent 10 years on my feet and doing labor at Target, but this doesn’t feel like work.
It feels like a game.
My total number of steps for yesterday was around 24,500. It feels good.
It has been ages since I had a weekend that felt like a weekend. A weekend without trying to catch up on chores. A weekend without “Sunday scaries.” A weekend without working overtime or getting up early for one thing or another.
As a matter of fact, I slept until 11 this morning, which, when you consider my new bedtime is between 1 and 2 a.m., is not unreasonable.
The teenager made me coffee and brought me a pain au chocolat from Lidl (which is still too soft and not crispy, flaky enough to remind me of real French croissant but far better and cheaper than most American attempts).
I spent some time with my cockatoo, Nala, and many cats and kittens not to mention with my daughter.
Speaking of Nala, she bit my phone screen protector and I’m not sure if she got a shard of glass in the camera or she broke the lens, but my selfies are hazy now.
Teenager #1 wanted to drive today so we ended up at Shoprite, Pet Valu and Starbucks. I haven’t had a Starbucks in ages and I decided to try the Nitro Sweet Cream Cold Brew but ended up a tad distraught that apparently Nitro does not come with ice cubes. It’s room temperature-ness did not appeal to me.
We found lots of goodies at Pet Valu with their going out of business sale— exotic canned cat food, a myriad of treats, lots of parakeet food and a little something for Sobaka for Christmas.
I received an AmEx offer spend $15 at Sonic get $5 back so we went, as Sonic is one of the teenager’s favorite places. The food was kind of awful and they only have the drive thru open so they misheard our order so our total after tax was $15.23. I probably won’t get my special offer.
Teen with mocha cookie crumble frap
Nitro cold brew and olive feta salad from ShopRite
We ran into one of our favorite couples at ShopRite— We’ll name them C&F. They both have much respect from my daughter and I because they are super intelligent, easy going people who found each other and “overcame” some life obstacles that I pretty much would label as the realities of our American society. I feel like if they were ever two people who earned every success in life it was C&F, and I am so lucky to have met them and have them in my life and so proud of their children and commend them for being great parents. And to think— I have known C since before she got married! They were a little shocked to hear the teenager can drive since we all met when she was six.
Anyway. So after all that and a meal at Sonic, the teenager and I came home. She put the groceries away. We wrapped some holiday gifts. And finished our hair.
Amazing in Lavender
And then while I did laundry— I have surrendered to the idea that laundry will never be “caught up” again in this house— she started construction of the holiday village.
I wanted to write this last night when I got home from the Bizzy Hizzy but I had forgotten my phone charger in the car and wanted to preserve my battery.
After completing another week at Stitch Fix, (where I listened to the Indicator’s episode on “The Beige Book” from the federal reserve bank and learned about pandemic-fueled growth in the warehouse sector as I worked my new warehousing job performing inbound processing functions), I mixed myself a cocktail— Ciroc Vodka, coconut seltzer and bubblegum A-Treat. If you missed our taste test of the A-Treat, you can see it on You Tube here: Bubble Gum?
Speaking of podcasts, last night I listened to Trevor Noah joke about James Bond, an exploration of what happened to a Van Gogh painting that wasn’t a good Van Gogh (Carnation in a Vase, I believe) and rediscovered John Rosemond, the syndicated parenting expert columnist who is a self-described “renegade family therapist who believes in the Bible not psychology.”
Now, my estranged husband reminds me that he believes we knew that Rosemond was a conservative Bible-thumper, but last night hearing him in a radio program where he could speak his views freely was a “wow” moment.
I fully believe in his advice and agree with his philosophy that parents have a duty to prepare their children to be emotionally “sturdy” adults and that discipline comes when adults maintain an authoritative attitude that commands respect versus employing certain trendy (even when “research-based” methods). I enjoyed his podcasts. Out of five stars:
👍👍👍👍👍
Podcasts have left me on the fence about a lot of hosts, but I have listened to people like football player/broadcaster Emmanuel Acho on his show Armchair Expert and learned many new perspectives.
Earlier yesterday, since teenager #1 is all cyber now, we spent lunch hour getting pancakes. It was the first time in almost 9 months we went out together and sat in a restaurant together/alone for a meal.
Nothing beats buttermilk pancakes in the teenager’s eyes and I had a magnificent eggs Benedict Florentine with tomato and garlic. I can’t wait to have it again.
I need a haircut. And somehow I decided to have the teens bleach and dye my hair with a galaxy theme.
We had a good time dying our hair. Teenager #2 did a magenta stripe. I gave teenager #1 a “wintergreen” touch up. Meanwhile I have magenta, violet, lavender and wintergreen. And the violet looks a lot like my natural hair color.
I was up blogging and cuddling kittens last night until almost 2:30 a.m.
And then I woke at 9 a.m. to a flurry of text messages— similar, but not as stressful as, yesterday.
We had a meeting regarding some new contributors for Lady Boss Magazine. In the middle of it, teenager #1 texted home from school that her grades had “magically gone to shit” and that she would go to guidance to see if she could transition to fully online as whereas teenager #2 needs to be in school for success, teenager #1 can be self-directed but needs a regular routine more than an in-person teacher.
By the way, there is no transition required— starting tomorrow teenager #1 is fully online.
Meanwhile little foster kitten Vale of the Norse Pride no longer wishes to stay in my bedroom with his siblings. This feisty Ruby wants to explore the house and hang out with the big cats.
Vale and Opie
And the highlight of my day was discovering A-Treat Bubble Gum Soda. It was surprisingly delightful and not as sickeningly sweet as I feared. (See the video.) here: Bubble Gum ATreat taste test
And as if this wasn’t enough to force me into sugar overload — the Bizzy Hizzy (Stitch Fix’s Bethlehem warehouse) had bagels, Oreos and butterscotch Krimpets. Not to be confused with crumpets. Everyone went berserk over them. The bagels were sad, the toasters broken and the cream cheese stingy and rather sour tasting.
Despite every joint in my body below my rib cage throbbing (I hope to goodness it is due to the forecasted rain tomorrow), I binned about 600 items in women’s non-apparel and 900 in apparel. I worked really hard to make the women’s non apparel bins (NAP) look like the concepts and photo on the training board. Organize items like books on a shelf.
This English major can handle that.
And I learned that our inventory devices are “hammers” and their brand name is Thor.
I’m surrounded by Norse legends.
I only walked about 10,000 steps instead of my normal 22,000.
My listening material tonight included a comedy roast I didn’t like, Dax Shepherd interviewing astronaut Scott Kelly, Trevor Noah discussing racism in the housing market, something about how the Metropolitan Museum of Art refuses to count the value of its paintings, and a fashion podcast lamenting how in a pandemic world the absence of fashion shows puts a lot of people out of work.
Well, chances are the models were already starving.
And on the way home, there were two occasions where wildlife crossed the road in front of me.
