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silveradept[This Year's December Days Theme is Community, and all the forms that it takes. If you have some suggestions about what communities I'm part of (or that you think I'm part of) that would be worth a look, let me know in the comments.]
A perfectly cheery topic to talk about as people are engaging in their holiday gatherings, the still-existent plague of SARS-CoV-2, and the feeling that we are entering the fifth year of March 02020. (Although, depending on how the politics of the U.S. go, we might have to turn that clock back to 02019 or 02016 instead.) I was hoping this one would go early, but the randomizer appears to have some spite still left.
Unfortunately for me, this year was the year that I joined the community of people who have been infected with the virus, unmistakably. Admittedly, this was after having several of the vaccinations, and after having adopted a regular habit of wearing masks basically everywhere I might be in proximity with other people, only removing them when I had to shove food or drink in my mouth, and I tried to do that around as few people as possible.
One of the meanest, nastiest tricks that this virus has evolved to itself is to be highly transmissible before someone has any obvious symptoms that might indicate a sickness. The second meanest trick is that the symptoms of this virus usually mimic the symptoms of other, less problematic viruses, with some exceptions. So when I got it, the visible symptom I had of it was a croakiness in my voice, something that I have had before and usually associated with a strong cold or some other things. After that symptom stuck around for longer than it should have, I tested myself and the test returned positive.
Cue the panic. Because, you see, when you're the able-est-bodied person in the household, that means everyone else in the household is at greater risk of major complications if they get infected. And here I have been, blithely spreading infectious materials at home, assuming it's nothing serious, to others in the household for days at this point. Thankfully, while I might have spread it to someone else who was in the house at the time, it was the person who had their own place to retreat to and who could test and isolate away from the rest of the house. So I put my mask on, set myself up in the isolation bedroom as best I could, put the fan in the window with the fans blowing outward, told work that I was out and taking sick leave for the forseeable future, and hunkered down to wait until my system had passed the virus through.
I'm somewhat annoyed at having gotten it at this point, because the most obvious place for me to have picked it up would have been from work, where the break rooms are tiny, used by many people at any given lunch time, and have no additional filtration, ventilation, or mitigation measures in them. And all of my coworkers are generally "mask when sick, not masking when not obviously sick," so if they picked it up while it was still in the transmissible but not obvious phase, someone gave it to me without realizing it, in the same way that I passed it on without recognizing it. (I'm still very thankful that the people who would have potentially been hurt most by getting an infection from me did not get one, even with regular testing of themselves.)
Knowing full well that rest is the thing that is prescribed for me, as the infected person, and that the rest itself will go on for longer than I need it to, I manage to get the Chromecast working consistently on a big TV so that I can watch and/or have background sporting noise going on while I'm doing nothing much but resting, drinking, and eating. I keep my mask on when there are others around me, and others have their masks on before they come in to see me. It takes two weeks of rest to clear the virus to the point where the test actually comes up clear, even if the line is weaker around the ten days mark. I'm glad I have the sick leave to take, and that my workplace is able to absorb the loss of me for that long, but I recognize both of those things are immense privileges and ever since the beginning of this, there have been plenty of people who haven't been able to take that kind of time off, or who have been strongly encouraged to return to work before they are fully cleared and ready to resume work. (Annoyingly, the infection coincided with time that I was planning on taking off anyway and had already gotten approved.)
Enforced rest is not the greatest thing to do to someone with variable attention. But for the first few days of it, it was essentially, "If you feel like taking a nap, take a nap. If you're watching something for background noise and you wake up later, having taken a nap, that's fine, you can go back, if you feel the need, and if you fall asleep again, that's fine, too." Knowing that the naps and the rest were important and part of trying to make sure the virus didn't cause any more problems helped. Eventually, though, realizing that I was not going to want to get through the entirety of my saved sporting events (they make such good background noise), I requested some of my other devices to come say hello to me so that I could keep up with my Internet friends, preferably with a full keyboard. Still with a lot of sleeping, because, after all, that's what works well for healing for me.
This particular experience gave me an analogue of what life is like for people who are less able-bodied than I am, and especially people who have to manage a spoon budget. Even if I was feeling okay with all the resting, I knew that my actual spoons were much smaller than what I thought I could do, and that one of the ways that the infection turns into long-term disability is trying to ramp activity back up to previous levels too quickly. So my phone took trips to the park and back to keep my mons streaks up, along with the official auto-catcher accessory that I had at my disposal. And I waited, while the rest of the household shouldered the burdens that I would otherwise be handling, as well as caring for me, making sure I had enough symptom-relief material, drink, food, and masking to make sure I wasn't transmitting and they were staying safe. Because we already had people in the household who were dealing with spoon budgets and body issues, we had sourced things like shower chairs and a lower anchor for the shower head, so instead of stressing my system by trying to stand while showering, I was informed that I would be sitting while doing so. And the windows were opened so that air exchange was quickly possible. This kind of activity was very helpful for reminding me what my real spoon budget was, compared to what I believed it was, and so I continued to accept my limitations as they were demonstrated in front of me.
In other media, or in the general sentiment of society that I have read here and there, a character might have felt like they were finally getting the care they had been giving to others all this time. That didn't happen for me. (And furthermore, that kind of attitude was basically what my ex did to me, after having cared for her late husband through his cancer.) It felt unfair to be asking the people in my household who were already dealing with their own ability level depletion to take on additional work to care for me. Mostly, I was feeling like I wasn't contributing, and that I was being burdensome to others by having this infection and taking rest. I wanted it to be done, both for a change of venue, but also so that I would feel less useless. [Insert Mary Oliver's Wild Geese or several of the quoted excerpts of Daniell Koepke's Daring to Take Up Space. Or, quire possibly, the entire work. It all goes here under the idea of extending myself the grace and patience that I would extend to others in a similar situation.] These are normal frustrations that happen at a change of ability, and even though I was doing everything I could to try and make sure this change of ability was temporary, it still was there. And, it shows how much my self-worth is still tied up in being useful or helpful to other people.
Time passed, and I continued to test every so often to see whether or not I had cleared the infection, after waiting the five-seven days that I knew would be the infection running its course. First test: still infectious, and still pretty strongly so, so I grumbled and settled in for another three days of rest and waiting, the thing that had become somewhat routine, and burned through even more of my backlog of background noise. Second test turned up with a faint second line, or so I thought, and the second opinion confirmed it, so for making sure that all was well, I stayed in isolation for another three days past that, continuing to try and clear out the last of the infection out. Test cycle number three produced the pair of negatives that I had been hoping for, and so, after two weeks in isolation, I finally graduated back to light and limited duty. Which was also enforced upon me by the other people of the household, to the point of making sure that I was using the assistive devices originally obtained for others in the household to manage their energy levels. Having those devices already present made it easier to use them, and also easier for their use to be enforced. So that was probably another two weeks of light duty and conserving my energy. Even in going back to work and making sure that I used proper techniques and light loads for what needed doing.
At six months from the infection, I'm most back to my usual duties, but I note that I seem to have lost some of the strength and endurance I had for moving heavier things and for doing tasks for longer. I've been keeping an eye on it, just to be sure that it's not developing into something else or something that might be more like persistent malaise or long-term effects of the infection. If a drop in strength and endurance is what I have suffered from this infection, then I've managed to avoid the major punishments. And I continue to mask, and to try and apply things that will be helpful, in the hope that the knockout punch for this disease will be delivered soon, and we will be able to resume something more resembling a normal set of activities, social engagements, and work without the spectre of each event being potentially infectious. (And my nose will thank everyone on this, because wearing masks has been hell on it, especially the masks that put pressure and weight on the bridge of it and then leave it there for hours upon end.)
Conveniently for this topic,sonia linked me to Maskbloc dot org, which maintains a list of local entities that provide masks and tests free of charge to their residents, so that there doesn't have to be a large outlay of costs to get back on the masking train. Some is better than none, and better-grade ones are more useful. It does sometimes take some doing to find one that works for you, however. And, of course, there are always some people who cannot, but if you can, do, so that the total exposure risk to everyone around you, and you yourself, is minimized. While we wait for the knockout punch, the fewer times you have to fight the damn thing off, the better for everyone. Here's hoping we get there soon.
A perfectly cheery topic to talk about as people are engaging in their holiday gatherings, the still-existent plague of SARS-CoV-2, and the feeling that we are entering the fifth year of March 02020. (Although, depending on how the politics of the U.S. go, we might have to turn that clock back to 02019 or 02016 instead.) I was hoping this one would go early, but the randomizer appears to have some spite still left.
Unfortunately for me, this year was the year that I joined the community of people who have been infected with the virus, unmistakably. Admittedly, this was after having several of the vaccinations, and after having adopted a regular habit of wearing masks basically everywhere I might be in proximity with other people, only removing them when I had to shove food or drink in my mouth, and I tried to do that around as few people as possible.
One of the meanest, nastiest tricks that this virus has evolved to itself is to be highly transmissible before someone has any obvious symptoms that might indicate a sickness. The second meanest trick is that the symptoms of this virus usually mimic the symptoms of other, less problematic viruses, with some exceptions. So when I got it, the visible symptom I had of it was a croakiness in my voice, something that I have had before and usually associated with a strong cold or some other things. After that symptom stuck around for longer than it should have, I tested myself and the test returned positive.
Cue the panic. Because, you see, when you're the able-est-bodied person in the household, that means everyone else in the household is at greater risk of major complications if they get infected. And here I have been, blithely spreading infectious materials at home, assuming it's nothing serious, to others in the household for days at this point. Thankfully, while I might have spread it to someone else who was in the house at the time, it was the person who had their own place to retreat to and who could test and isolate away from the rest of the house. So I put my mask on, set myself up in the isolation bedroom as best I could, put the fan in the window with the fans blowing outward, told work that I was out and taking sick leave for the forseeable future, and hunkered down to wait until my system had passed the virus through.
I'm somewhat annoyed at having gotten it at this point, because the most obvious place for me to have picked it up would have been from work, where the break rooms are tiny, used by many people at any given lunch time, and have no additional filtration, ventilation, or mitigation measures in them. And all of my coworkers are generally "mask when sick, not masking when not obviously sick," so if they picked it up while it was still in the transmissible but not obvious phase, someone gave it to me without realizing it, in the same way that I passed it on without recognizing it. (I'm still very thankful that the people who would have potentially been hurt most by getting an infection from me did not get one, even with regular testing of themselves.)
Knowing full well that rest is the thing that is prescribed for me, as the infected person, and that the rest itself will go on for longer than I need it to, I manage to get the Chromecast working consistently on a big TV so that I can watch and/or have background sporting noise going on while I'm doing nothing much but resting, drinking, and eating. I keep my mask on when there are others around me, and others have their masks on before they come in to see me. It takes two weeks of rest to clear the virus to the point where the test actually comes up clear, even if the line is weaker around the ten days mark. I'm glad I have the sick leave to take, and that my workplace is able to absorb the loss of me for that long, but I recognize both of those things are immense privileges and ever since the beginning of this, there have been plenty of people who haven't been able to take that kind of time off, or who have been strongly encouraged to return to work before they are fully cleared and ready to resume work. (Annoyingly, the infection coincided with time that I was planning on taking off anyway and had already gotten approved.)
Enforced rest is not the greatest thing to do to someone with variable attention. But for the first few days of it, it was essentially, "If you feel like taking a nap, take a nap. If you're watching something for background noise and you wake up later, having taken a nap, that's fine, you can go back, if you feel the need, and if you fall asleep again, that's fine, too." Knowing that the naps and the rest were important and part of trying to make sure the virus didn't cause any more problems helped. Eventually, though, realizing that I was not going to want to get through the entirety of my saved sporting events (they make such good background noise), I requested some of my other devices to come say hello to me so that I could keep up with my Internet friends, preferably with a full keyboard. Still with a lot of sleeping, because, after all, that's what works well for healing for me.
This particular experience gave me an analogue of what life is like for people who are less able-bodied than I am, and especially people who have to manage a spoon budget. Even if I was feeling okay with all the resting, I knew that my actual spoons were much smaller than what I thought I could do, and that one of the ways that the infection turns into long-term disability is trying to ramp activity back up to previous levels too quickly. So my phone took trips to the park and back to keep my mons streaks up, along with the official auto-catcher accessory that I had at my disposal. And I waited, while the rest of the household shouldered the burdens that I would otherwise be handling, as well as caring for me, making sure I had enough symptom-relief material, drink, food, and masking to make sure I wasn't transmitting and they were staying safe. Because we already had people in the household who were dealing with spoon budgets and body issues, we had sourced things like shower chairs and a lower anchor for the shower head, so instead of stressing my system by trying to stand while showering, I was informed that I would be sitting while doing so. And the windows were opened so that air exchange was quickly possible. This kind of activity was very helpful for reminding me what my real spoon budget was, compared to what I believed it was, and so I continued to accept my limitations as they were demonstrated in front of me.
In other media, or in the general sentiment of society that I have read here and there, a character might have felt like they were finally getting the care they had been giving to others all this time. That didn't happen for me. (And furthermore, that kind of attitude was basically what my ex did to me, after having cared for her late husband through his cancer.) It felt unfair to be asking the people in my household who were already dealing with their own ability level depletion to take on additional work to care for me. Mostly, I was feeling like I wasn't contributing, and that I was being burdensome to others by having this infection and taking rest. I wanted it to be done, both for a change of venue, but also so that I would feel less useless. [Insert Mary Oliver's Wild Geese or several of the quoted excerpts of Daniell Koepke's Daring to Take Up Space. Or, quire possibly, the entire work. It all goes here under the idea of extending myself the grace and patience that I would extend to others in a similar situation.] These are normal frustrations that happen at a change of ability, and even though I was doing everything I could to try and make sure this change of ability was temporary, it still was there. And, it shows how much my self-worth is still tied up in being useful or helpful to other people.
Time passed, and I continued to test every so often to see whether or not I had cleared the infection, after waiting the five-seven days that I knew would be the infection running its course. First test: still infectious, and still pretty strongly so, so I grumbled and settled in for another three days of rest and waiting, the thing that had become somewhat routine, and burned through even more of my backlog of background noise. Second test turned up with a faint second line, or so I thought, and the second opinion confirmed it, so for making sure that all was well, I stayed in isolation for another three days past that, continuing to try and clear out the last of the infection out. Test cycle number three produced the pair of negatives that I had been hoping for, and so, after two weeks in isolation, I finally graduated back to light and limited duty. Which was also enforced upon me by the other people of the household, to the point of making sure that I was using the assistive devices originally obtained for others in the household to manage their energy levels. Having those devices already present made it easier to use them, and also easier for their use to be enforced. So that was probably another two weeks of light duty and conserving my energy. Even in going back to work and making sure that I used proper techniques and light loads for what needed doing.
At six months from the infection, I'm most back to my usual duties, but I note that I seem to have lost some of the strength and endurance I had for moving heavier things and for doing tasks for longer. I've been keeping an eye on it, just to be sure that it's not developing into something else or something that might be more like persistent malaise or long-term effects of the infection. If a drop in strength and endurance is what I have suffered from this infection, then I've managed to avoid the major punishments. And I continue to mask, and to try and apply things that will be helpful, in the hope that the knockout punch for this disease will be delivered soon, and we will be able to resume something more resembling a normal set of activities, social engagements, and work without the spectre of each event being potentially infectious. (And my nose will thank everyone on this, because wearing masks has been hell on it, especially the masks that put pressure and weight on the bridge of it and then leave it there for hours upon end.)
Conveniently for this topic,
sonia linked me to Maskbloc dot org, which maintains a list of local entities that provide masks and tests free of charge to their residents, so that there doesn't have to be a large outlay of costs to get back on the masking train. Some is better than none, and better-grade ones are more useful. It does sometimes take some doing to find one that works for you, however. And, of course, there are always some people who cannot, but if you can, do, so that the total exposure risk to everyone around you, and you yourself, is minimized. While we wait for the knockout punch, the fewer times you have to fight the damn thing off, the better for everyone. Here's hoping we get there soon.
