Something Other Than Books

[hrj]

So this past week I've been dealing with my second bout of covid. At the beginning of last weekend, I thought I was having a bad hay fever attack where I'd missed the window to stave it off with Claritin: stuffy sinuses and headache, serious post-nasal-drip sore throat. Then Monday morning I logged a 100F fever and took a covid test that was bright and solidly positive.

Conveniently, this week I'd scheduled Thursday and Friday off for the online version of the Nebulas conference (glad I hadn't sprung for hotel and plane!) so I more or less took Mon-Wed off sick (which: working from home means I don't really take "off" because I log in for the staff meeting, the all-hands meeting, the interview I had scheduled for an investigation, and did enough work on my investigations to keep everything moving).

So I spent about half of Mon-Wed in bed (as I had on Sunday because my response to a serious allergy attack is the same as being sick). Sore throat was gone by Tuesday. I felt able to stop the OTC cold medicine on Wednesday and the sinuses were ok. Follow-up test was negative on Friday. I still have very occasional, minimal productive coughing, but haven't had any serious coughing other than that. So all in all, a mild case with trivial inconvenience.

Best guess is that I picked it up during my work anniversary lunch out the previous Wednesday, though no one else in the department has come down sick. Another possibility would be the folks who were replacing my water heater on Thursday, though we didn't really get up close and personal. Much less likely (based on timing) would be interacting with vendor reps at work on Friday.

I still mask routinely in stores, but not when I'm on-site at work and now when outdoors in public. This information provided for risk estimation purposes only and is not intended to prescribe or judge others' behavior. But I'm quite confident that if I weren't still masking routinely, I'd be on more than episode #2. In particular, I'm quite certain that consistent masking when traveling has been highly effective.

Comments

[hawkwing_lb]

I'm glad you're recovering. I picked up a bout of probably-Covid in early May and I'm still not back to normal. (The lingering fatigue and brain fuzz has been the worst.)

[hrj]

I sometimes wonder if I'd notice any extra brain fuzz. I keep telling myself that my brain will be better once I ditch the day-job...but what if it isn't? What if it isn't simply a matter of only having so many computer-screen hours in me per day, and I'll be able to transfer them to more fun stuff? I look back at the year or two when I was producing a blog post every day plus writing novels and I can't remember how I did it.

[hawkwing_lb]

I mean, cognitive impacts are pretty scary, but all we can do is all we can do.

[evil_macaroni]

Ugh - here's hoping for a smooth recovery. I'm out of the habit of masking as a routine, but I know the variants are out there and multiplying. I should be more diligent. I feel like I dodged a bullet when both Mr Macaroni & Legoboy were sick but Gingerboy and I avoided illness. Like ... how???

[beanolc]

I'm glad it was mild!

[alithea]

I'm glad you're recovering well. Masking isn't a thing where I live any more so I eventually gave up too because I was finding being stared at in shops quite uncomfortable, although I did hold out longer than basically everyone else! It did seem somewhat pointless at the stage that my nurse husband was told that not only was he not to mask in the vaccination clinic he works at, he also cannot access tests any more... Hey ho, I haven't been doing anything particularly high risk anyway and I shall test and mask for WorldCon.