The Show Must Go On

I gave John a ride last night to pick up a new toy. It's a long story that I might share another time, but the short version is that I'm not comfortable driving in the broad daylight so much, and night time is worse. It was a little impulsive.

But it was only a few miles, and it was fun, and I made some huge driving errors (I got into the left turn lane about a mile too soon, a place I've been going to for decades). But John was with me and I was calm, and it was mostly laughable, dumb stuff.

And it helps to talk about it in real time; I just told him my brain wasn't working right (nothing new to him over the past two years) and we carefully made our way home with no issues. And there were no close calls or anything dangerous at all. I'm the first person who thinks it's better if someone else drives. So it was just an awareness.

I've been a little goofy lately. And this morning I checked my blood O2 levels for the first time in a while and noticed that they'd been running in the low 80s for a few hours every day.

I've said this before, but -- a medical professional would expect someone with these readings to be in an ICU bed or the morgue. It's not really compatible with life. But that's because O2 saturation usually reflects the amount of oxygen entering my lungs, and therefore reflects on my breathing. A SpO2 of 82 usually means the patient is barely breathing or recently, y'know, stopped.

And it's now pretty definitively established, after being suspected from the beginning, that this virus can produce micro-clotting in small vessels, which sporadically delays the red blood cells and slows up oxygenation. The roads are in good shape and there are no blockages; traffic is just sometimes heavy and it takes a while to get from A to B.

Or I guess. My brain isn't currently the best. I read a lot, though.

I've been able to correlate low O2 sats with bad cognitive days and bad pain days, although not all the time. I don't really check it that much anymore. I have no respiratory issues. I'm still breathing fine.

And maybe it causes other things. For my entire life, or at least once I started sleeping with other people and getting feedback (hey, I lived in dorms, you know), I've been a stock still sleeper. I remember one person (OK, this was a lady) wondering if I'd died in my sleep.

But now I twitch a lot at night, and I have really bad cramps most nights, and paresthesias (tingling mostly, which can get sharp). I think maybe oxygen deprivation could play a part, I dunno.

Ugh. That's not why I started writing this. I've absorbed too much information with too little context and background; I tend to go offroad if I'm not paying attention, sorry.

My intention was to write about how life is actually pretty good at the moment. About how all three of us are generally happy and feeling well at the moment, working as a team in an easygoing way, and how that makes dealing with some deficits much, much easier.

I can laugh about some of it, in other words. Not because it hurts too much to cry, either. Because it's not the worst thing in the world, and as it turns out this part of life is not a bad time to be forced into a more passive existence, at least for a while. I'm very bored in a big-picture way, wanting more choices and variety in my daily life, but I can pass the time.

And I'm going to write on this Long Covid theme for the time being; it's certainly the most significant health event of my life, and the one that has changed me the most (and I have some history), and I have thoughts.

But it's not gloomy, just serious. And not all that serious at the moment. My brain is broke. There are a million headlines out there about Long Covid patients losing IQ points like crazy. It's a thing.

I'm not sure I care so much. I have a good brain; it'd be stupid to deny that, but also to deny that I've lost something. It's essentially the executive functioning stuff that we've been talking about since Covid-19 appeared, and a lot of problems with short-term memory.

I just think, you know. I can still learn, and retain that knowledge (true! It's been the best part! Facts are stubborn AND sticky things). Who cares if I'm a little dumber? And maybe I'll fit right in.

That deck is new and my favorite thing, lets me out in the world. Like having a front porch.

There are good things, a lot of them. We've completely re-done the outside of our house, not only with construction but with long-overdue landscaping designed to minimize work on my part. After 36 years here, it's been an amazing experience.

I've had two eye surgeries, including for a retinal detachment that didn't look hopeful but turned out great. I then had my remaining cataract extracted, just to keep that eye in good shape in case things go south. I've spent four months using daily eyedrops. I spent three months mostly in dark rooms and part of the time face-down 24/7.

My amazing friend Janice, NYC’s best walking tour guide

I've developed a bunch of new hobbies, and I'm having a blast with generative AI. I've made a lot of pictures of my friends. They seem to be all very tolerant.

I still have a life, I mean. I do things. Some things I regret doing. Live and learn. And they are stories, and I love stories, and here we are.

It's about Covid, but it's really not. I can spread some good info around, and I will. I can let you know some things about what it's like, in case that comes in handy sometime; I'll do that too.

But I've been processing my life, I guess, by writing about it for a quarter of a century now. It feels right to keep on doing that for as long as I want to. As I said, here we are.