Tag Archives: masquerade

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Post Covid Sartorial Splendor

I dressed up in November for the Chamber of Commerce masquerade. This is a 1920s dress and I had to repair the lace around both arm openings. The underdress is rust colored silk and is beaded. The overdress is lace with the beaded and fringed flower with a tassel on the side. The lace is definitely see through and I wore a slip. The silk underdress has beaded squared off tags that hang outside the lace, which is a detail I haven’t seen before. I do not remember where I got this, second hand.

When the silk is nearly 100 years old, it wants to fall apart. I took a second dress just in case there was dancing. If I danced in this dress, it would probably disintegrate.

In other news, here is an article about the Post Covid exercise intolerance. It is a small sample size, but they biopsied skin and muscle in people who were still exercise intolerant one year out from Covid 19. These people all had Covid-19 in 2020, so unimmunized.

https://actaneurocomms.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40478-023-01662-2

“Compared to two independent historical control cohorts, patients with post-COVID exertion intolerance had fewer capillaries, thicker capillary basement membranes and increased numbers of CD169+ macrophages. SARS-CoV-2 RNA could not be detected in the muscle tissues. In addition, complement system related proteins were more abundant in the serum of patients with PCS, matching observations on the transcriptomic level in the muscle tissue. We hypothesize that the initial viral infection may have caused immune-mediated structural changes of the microvasculature, potentially explaining the exercise-dependent fatigue and muscle pain.”

This is a big deal. More needs to be done to confirm this, but a talk earlier this year said that the muscles don’t get adequate blood flow and get hypoxic and that the fatigue is recovery afterwards, taking 1-3 days. That is the best hypothesis for why people have the activity “crashes” after exercise or doing a little bit more than usual. My chronic fatigue shuts my fast twitch muscles down when I have pneumonia. This time it was two years before I got them back and I still have to be careful. It’s weird when they won’t work. It’s like the muscles go on strike. They didn’t really hurt (ok, they burned like strep throat all over the two times I had systemic strep A) but it’s more like the muscles are screaming NO NO NO NO! at the brain. It is hard to describe. If I tried to push, it felt like dying. Perhaps the muscle cells really DO start dying if we push them too hard. Mine is annoying but it doesn’t confine me to bed. My slow twitch muscles were fine though this time I needed oxygen. I hope not to experience it again.

This is the mask I wore. Nice to be in a different sort of mask, but I masked at a concert last night and will mask for travel with an N95.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sartorial choices.

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Messy

Everyone I get to know and really become friends with, has a messy life with difficulties. I think we are terribly afraid to admit it, with the curated lives on the place that is not a book but has lots of Faces. I write that all of my patients are smart and they are. I had my own rural family practice for eleven years. My goals were more time with patients and to do good medicine. I succeeded at both. With more time, I could learn a little more about my peoples’ lives. People that I would never suspect of having very messy lives still have them. Does everyone in our culture have estrangements, family that they don’t talk to, parents that they find difficult, friends that they have gotten upset at and abandoned?

In high school my daughter says, “Most of the fights are stupid. Usually someone says something without thinking, even in passing. Person B takes it personally, gets upset, talks about it to others and then person C or D says something back to person A or shuns them. Person A has no idea what is going on and is hurt and upset. It is stupid.”

Adults do this too. I had a friend where I would think about something for a week and then go back to him. “You said this. What did you mean?” Usually he didn’t mean anything or meant something very far from what I was thinking. At least I went to him and did not add person C or D or E to the mix. He said, “You think about it for a WEEK.” Well, that was his own fault, actually, because he can’t tolerate anger. Even if I was upset or hurt, it was still interpreted as anger. Raised in an alcohol household and trained by medicine, I can hide feelings. After a while he could tell when I was chewing on something.

We grow up physically by our mid twenties, but often we don’t grow up emotionally. Especially if relationships are interrupted and colored by drugs and/or alcohol. People miss developmental stages. Everyone is trying to cope as best they can, but I do wish our culture celebrated mature calmness and quiet adulthood, rather than just the wild youth. Wouldn’t that be a change?

If you were to curate your life for something like the site that is not a book and has Faces, what would your ideal be? What do you aspire to? Kindness? Emotional maturity? Peace? My feed has friends, insects, birds, rocks, fossils, funny animal videos and music. I get almost no politics in it. I have not blocked anyone or anything. I try not to friend people I do not know. It is peaceful and a celebration of nature and yes, that is what I would like to curate.

Blessings.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: curate.