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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.

All in all, it could have been worse -- this could have happened a few days earlier in the middle of BayCon. But there it is, Tuesday evening, and as I'm eating dinner I notice that I get a sharp pain any time something contacts my right lower rear molar. Like, a SHARP pain. Given the tooth's history, I figure we're either dealing with the crown coming loose or something more dire. I pop off a message to my dentist that I'll be calling to try to get an urgent appointment the next day.

In the morning, in addition to the pain at contact/pressure, I'm getting a constant throb in time with my pulse, plus extended pain and a swollen lymph node along the jaw. OK, we're definitely talking something more dire. I got an appointment for just after lunch, they took xrays, but the dentist basically said, "I could diagnose this from your description alone. We're calling around for an endodontist who can take you this afternoon."

SURPRISE ROOT CANAL!!!

All in all, taken care of very efficiently with little fuss. (I will spare you the description of what emerged from the tooth as soon as they drilled through to the root.) I'm on antibiotics and it's taking a while for the pain to subside, though at this point it's mostly the aftereffects of the procedure rather than the residual infection.

I had an interesting side-conversation with the endodontist. They used an interesting 3-D imaging device that I'd never encountered before and I asked about what sort of imaging technique it used (turned out to be ordinary xray-type). In the course of the discussion I commented, that I assumed you couldn't use MRI type imaging for dental work because of the metal interference. He says, well but that's only a problem with iron and not with the metals used in dentistry. But, says I, what about stainless steel posts for implants and the like?

And he says, "Stainless steel doesn't have any iron in it."

"I beg your pardon?" I say. "Stainless steel is an alloy of iron, carbon, and other components."

"No," he says. "Stainless steel doesn't have any iron in it."

And at that point I dropped the subject, hoping that his abysmal understanding of molecular structure didn't suggest similar defects in his understanding of endodonty.

I have now researched the question of MRI and stainless steel dental implants and found articles that confirm that it can, indeed, be an issue. It's nice to be confirmed that my compost-heap memory came up with a reasonably accurate anecdote as usual. But really: "steel doesn't contain iron"?????

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Yesterday's tea (which I didn't write up at the time because pain makes me grumpy) was Stash Double Spice Chai (in bags). Black tea, cinnamon, ginger, clove, allspice, cardamom. Some flavors in the form of oil rather than ground spice. Brewed at 212F for 5 min after which I tucked the tea bag up under the lip of the lid since I hadn't brought a dish to put it on. I sweetened it, though sometimes I try it without and sometimes I also add milk to the chai-type teas.

This currently represents my favorite chai-type tea, both in terms of the spice mixture and the intensity. The unbrewed tea has a strong enough aroma you could use it as a sachet among your clothing. Hmmm... The clove is prominant but not overwhelming and mostly it's an integrated blend of flavors.

When brewed, the aroma is mildly spicy but as a blend, without an overwhelming specific note. Taste is clearly spicy and, again, an integrated blend of flavors. I did one bag in my usual pot (ca. 24oz volume), but when I use the larger pot I'll put two in and the flavor is stronger. The flavor gets your attention and this is a consideration if I'm pairing it with a snack. I'd be less likely to drink this to accompany a meal -- I'd want to be paying attention to the flavor. Comparing it to other chai-type teas I have in stock, it reinforces that I dislike the black pepper presence in the Trope Teas blend, and prefer the greater complexity of flavors compared to Bingley's Novel Chai. Comparing it to, say, Bigelow's Constant Comment, which I'd also classify as a chai-type, the Stash isn't overhwhelmed by cinnamon like CC is (though I do like CC for it's own sake).

Back in March 2020 (remember March 2020?) I was thinking, "You know, I really really need to make that optometry appointment and get my lens prescriptions updated because I can feel that weird tension in my scalp that's my muscle desperately trying to focus my eyes that last little bit for clarity." And then...March 2020 happened. And this current May, when I'd gotten my second Moderna and had a clear date for official protection, I made a whole bunch of backlogged medical appointments, but couldn't manage to get an optometry appointment. They were all booked up far enough ahead that they weren't scheduling. (Lots of people who'd put it off.) This past weekend, one of my eyes was feeling irritated and was also more out of focus than usual (hard to know which was cause and which was effect), and although the extra unfocus went away, it spurred me to try to get an appointment again. The non-immediate appointment interface was behaving brokenly in a very annoying way, so I finally said "how about today or tomorrow" and grabbed the first appointment that came up.

So yesterday I had my eye exam (yes, vision has shifted, but similarly at all distances which evidently is good? beginnings of cataracts which is no surprise given family history, but nothing that has to be taken care of for quite some time). Today I spent my lunch hour at Lens Crafters and manged to walk out having spent less than $1000 for three pairs of glasses, which I consider a victory. I don't usually update all of my glasses at the same time, but it's been 5 years since my last exam and they all needed it.

So in a couple of weeks I get to find out out how much of a difference it makes when I'm not constantly straining my vision a bit.

Back in the Before Times, I could regularly be heard to whine, "I could conquer the world if only I could get one good night's sleep first." I have a few chronic sleep issues. A rather light case of sleep apnea -- right on the line for recommending a CPAP, so I use one and notice the difference. Tinnitus that is highly noticeable when I'm trying to get to sleep or back to sleep -- which I manage by listening to low-volume audiobooks while sleeping. (I rather wonder whether that affects my sleep in other ways, but the trade-off is worth it.) And back in the Before Times, the crunch between getting up early enough to do my commute before the traffic got bad, and trying to cram in some productivity in the evenings.

When I first started working from home, my plan was to continue getting up on the same schedule as for a commute, but to get in some writing/productivity time before "the office". And, of course, with no evening commute, there was no need to stay up latish to get things done. And that worked for a while. But increasingly, I'm just enjoying the ability to wake gently with the sun rather than an alarm, to lie in bed for a while, to have a cooked breakfast in the morning. Mind you, I'm a morning person, so I'm still normally out of bed by 7am, usually earlier. And I still have a set of online tasks I usually get to over breakfast. But except for unusual circumstances (e.g., online meetings with colleagues in Germany or the like), I'm waking "naturally" and not rushing in the morning.

And I have all the time in the world in the evening after work. I do yard work -- in the daylight! I cook dinners. I read books over dinner. I watch shows on Netflix! I'm not as computer-productive in the evenings as I'd hoped I'd be, in part because WFH involves a greater percentage of time staring at a screen than being in a physical office, and my eyes and brain get tired of it. But I don't feel like I have to steal sleep time for my evening productivity. My Apple Watch reminds me that I want to get to bed by 9:30 (planned sleep time is 10-6) and I generally pay attention.

I never have that feeling of "there's sand between my brain and my skull" feeling I get when I'm underslept. I usually get up at the same time on weekends, rather than sleeping in to try to make up time. And at no time during quarantine have I gotten in the viscous circle of underslept > insomnia > underslept > insomnia > sleeping pills > groggy > repeat. Never felt any need for sleeping pills whereas in the Before Times there'd be at least once a month where I'd take half a dose to get me past the gate.

I think this is what "enough sleep" feels like.

My social media is all so overlapping that I don't know how many readers of my journal here haven't already heard this. But just in case...

This past Sunday morning, while I was fixing coffee just before sitting down to record a podcast, I was suddenly hit with extreme shortness of breath. Called 911, got an ambulance ride, and a few hours later it was confirmed as a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs). They found some clotting in my lower leg that is the assumed source, but no clear reason why I was having clotting issues. I'm on blood thinners now (injectable through today, then oral starting tomorrow) and instructions to take it easy pending further assessment. After that first episode, I haven't had any similar extreme shortness of breath. (The test for getting sprung from the hospital was being able to walk around the corridors without  my O2 going below 90%.) And I haven't had any perceptible shortness of breath after the second day. So it looks like the recovery is going as planned.

I was in the hospital for less than three days (sprung mid-day on Tuesday) though it felt longer. I have a solid local support crew who will be helping me with any heavy lifting until I'm cleared for duty again. I think the medical staff were amused that my "normal activity goal" was being able to bicycle again. They seem to have low expectations for old ladies in their 60s. Thank goodness for social media, which enabled me to get the word out efficiently and brought me an outpouring of moral and other support. (I don't need any financial support. I have solid health coverage and I'm back on the job, since my job involves sitting at my desk at home in any case.)

My reminder to all of you is to have a good communication relationship with your body. Know what the range of normal feels like, and pay attention when non-normal hits. That's easier when it's as sudden as my PE was, but it's worth listening when the signals are more subtle too. I was having some non-normal leg cramping in the previous week that *may* have been an early effect of the clots. Hard to tell. And it's much harder to think, "Is this mildly abnormal thing something I should have checked out (especially in Covid times)?"

In any event, I'm reasonably ok now. I'll be on blood thinners for an indefinite period of time, depending on further information. Lots of people are. Blood clots are something that can happen randomly just once, or can be due to an underlying predisposition to clotting. I don't have any of the typical predisposing factors, nor the most common relevant genetic markers, so maybe this was random chance.

My twitter plea for topic ideas turned up a request for a discussion of transportation systems in Alpennia, but I'm not sure I want to go into too much detail about how much of that is researched and how much is hand-wavy. Sorry!

So for a totally random topic, I've been thinking for some time of doing a follow-up to my attempts to address "tired/sleepy all the time" in a systematic fashion.

My day job involves "root cause analysis (RCA)", i.e., taking an observed failure and identifying the underlying causes--often at several removes--that can be addressed in order to eliminate the failure. Relatively simple causal chains can be identified and addressed easily. There's a RCA tool called "five whys" that's exactly what it sounds like: act like an annoying two year old and ask "why" of every answer that you get:

Failure: I'm tired all the time.
Why? Because I don't get the right quantity of sleep.
Why? Because I stay up until midnight playing video games and my alarm goes off at 5am.
Why? Because I'm addicted to video games and because if I don't get to work by 6am I can't buy more video games.
Why? ...

Eventually you get to an answer that is susceptible of a solution. (The above example is purely hypothetical, mind you. I actually have very little use for video games.)

( You know, this is getting long enough I should be nice to my readers. )

So for the last half year or more (hmm ... calculates ... more) I've been having problems with "trigger finger". I.e., inflammation of the thumb flexor tendon/sheath, such that extending it fully will "pop" as the inflamed part goes through the tendon sheath. Or such that it won't fully extend at all. At one point I had a medical consultation on it (when regular doses of aspirin didn't seem to help) and got a cortisone injection, which made it go away for a while. But then it came back. I've been taking regular aspirin doses to see if I can coax it into submission again. It sort of comes and goes in intensity, so I have some hope of self-resolution.

But the really fascinating thing is, if I baby the thumb and try to avoid using it, this has no beneficial effect on the problem. But if I have to do heavy manual labor for some reason (like digging in the garden, or assembling furniture, or other interpretations of "manual" that focus on the "manus" part) at some point I'll notice that I'm getting full extension with no pain at all. I can still feel the little painful lump at the base of the thumb where the inflammation is, but it isn't even "popping" at that point.

So maybe what I need to do to cure myself is to start every day with a lot of intense, heavy hand labor. Curious.

The thumb is doing much better. The day after the cortisone shot, the pain was pretty much all gone (although I'm still working very hard at not putting much pressure or extension on it). Yesterday and today, I've been testing the extension occasionally. Sometimes it doesn't go past straight, but sometimes I get the full "hitchhiker's thumb" that's normal for me. (And sometimes I get the "trigger finger" click, which is why I'm testing it only a couple times a day -- that means I could still re-inflame it.)

There's nothing quite like the conflict between wanting to stay home sick from work and knowing that literally nobody else can cover something you need to do. I've been part of a small team putting together an advanced training module. We've been working on it for over a year and really needed to get it to some sort of closure this week. And then Monday evening my throat started feeling tickly. So I plowed on through on Tuesday to get the final details ready for the training. And I got myself up in time to present the first training session at 6:30 Wednesday morning. And then to top it off, I needed to go in early on Thursday to audit/observe the process of counting product vials (for an investigation). And by all rights, I should have been home in bed for at least two of those days. So today was my crash in bed day, in exchange for which I have a splitting headache and a good chance of being back on-game tomorrow for Investiture. Maybe next week will be better.