ailments and politics
In the middle of a pandemic is sure not a great time to get waves of feeling like you might be coming down with something. As I write this, I mostly feel fine, but yesterday I did not—and all along, honestly, I have been assuming it was related to the herpes I've been carrying for a decade now. I think there must be an outbreak going on with something occurring inside my urethra, which is making urinating difficult. It feels like it's creating a bit of blockage from being able to pee at full capacity, and it was to such a degree overnight that I must have gotten out of bed to pee at least five times. It was truly ridiculous, and also felt sort of like it was because I was never able to fully empty my bladder any given time.
That said, in a way, this urination issue is a blessing—as without it, I would be far more inclined to worry about COVID. But whatever is happening to me the past couple of days seems clearly tied to that, even though yesterday in particular I was feeling unusually fatigued. I did take my temperature and it was normal. But, I also looked up common symptoms of herpes outbreaks, and these kind of checked the boxes. I haven't had an outbreak with effects to this degree in a very long time, but given the urethra issue, it still seems the most likely explanation.
I had a lot of difficulty sleeping last night. I never did get into much of a deep sleep, with the exception of just before my damned alarm woke me up. For the most part I blame having to pee so often on that. I added two Aleve to my regular pills this morning and that seems to have made a truly definitive difference; I also intend to add an extra dose of my daily herpes medication before bed tonight, something long recommended for during outbreaks but which I haven't needed to do in several years.
Another scary thought occurred to me this morning, though. Could all of these things be happening because of gallstones? I just did a quick search for symptoms of that though, and those symptoms don't seem to align at all. Whew! The idea of passing gallstones genuinely scares me, I've heard so much about how painful it is. And my peeing hasn't been especially painful—just unusually uncomfortable, and as though the tube is getting a tightened strain on it somewhere. That seems more in keeping with the idea that an outbreak is inflaming my urethra. Let's just hope it all passes without incident within the next day or two; now is not the greatest time to be going to see a doctor for any non-COVID related reason. They're all very busy right now. (Related: Danielle texted me last night that the unit in the hospital where she works, which is mostly for elective surgeries, is being shut down again, and they currently have 56 COVID-positive patients at that hospital in Renton. So, for the time being, Danielle will be working in the Emergency Department again. I think last time she spent most of her time screening people coming and going for symptoms.)
I'd be a lot more worried if I were getting worse right now, but I don't seem to be. I do keep thinking about the stories of people with COVID who have mild symptoms, they seem to start going away, and then they get laid out by being re-hit hard. I think if I ever test positive I might panic a bit, even if probability dictates I will be fine (in the short-term, anyway; long lasting effects still await further study). There still have been people my age or younger who have died from it.
For now, I'm still latching on this weirdness I went through yesterday having started with the difficulty urinating. That's not a COVID issue at all, to my knowledge, and I already have something else going on that offers a plausible explanation. Still, I'll be happier once a good two weeks have passed without any further incident.
As for last night specifically, it was low key and spent at home. I made salad for dinner, in my quest to get my shit together and eat lighter meals—my weight is going up too far too quickly lately, and I weighed in at a solid 162 lbs yesterday morning, mostly due to consuming way too much over Thanksgiving weekend. Yikes! No snacking yesterday though, and salad for dinner, seems to yield immediate results: 160.4 as of this morning. At least that's going back in the right direction.
I also watched a comedy special yesterday, and in it the comedian talked about being his age and how, if you gain ten pounds at that age, "That shit is there to stay." Don't tell me that! Granted, it's far harder to shed and keep off than it was ten years ago, but it's far from impossible. Not that it's a good idea or healthy for me to just blame my husband, but Shobhit is a significant factor: he eats constantly, and with food around me at all times, it's a lot harder for me to eat less myself. I had made bagel sandwiches for dinner on Sunday and he still came home with a huge to-go box of French fries.
Anyway, we also watched the season finale of season four of Fargo. I still think seasons one and two were better and this one is definitely better than season three, but I did find it a pretty satisfying conclusion, especially at the very end.
We watched a couple episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show after that, and then I retired to the bedroom for the evening.
And . . . oh, right! I just got done with this week's Office Lunch Meetup. Technically this is the 18th one, although thanks to my being unavailable for it for the first time last week due to working a 12-4 shift at the Central District store, it's my 17th.
Last week it was just . . . Rebecca. She says she actually volunteered at stores Thanksgiving week last year and the year before that, but couldn't this year due to a recent surgery on her shoulder. So, she hopped onto the Zoom last week, and then, nobody else showed up. I did email her earlier that morning to warn here I would not be there, as I had been so reliably present every week prior that she might have thought I'd died. (Actually she probably would have assumed I was working at a store, but she still appreciated that I let her know.)
So, today, for the first few minutes it was just Rebecca and me, and I was telling her about my experiences at the store last week. Then one other person joined, Andrew from IT, honestly one of my favorite people at the office, and for the rest of the hour we had quite intellectually stimulating conversation, first about movies and TV shows, but then about politics and history. It was really nice and I remain grateful that at least a select few of us are doing this every week.
[posted 1:04 pm]