Taken in Echo Canyon in the Colorado National Monument, Thanksgiving, 2024.
Austere choice
Why do I still feel sad when I think that I am best off with my cat and that I should eschew dating. Why do I feel like I am rejecting love? I don’t have that sort of love. It’s not like I am rejecting anything. I am rejecting looking for it. I am rejecting active interest in a partner other than my cat. What is wrong with that?
I do not ever want to reject hope. I am not trying to reject wanting. Hope and want are the deep and terrible ache for the Beloved. I do not reject that. I am still open, Beloved, to what you send, though getting more particular in middle age. A writer says that he uses a pencil and a pad, because no better tool has been invented. I take the same approach to wanting love. If the relationship is more work than my cat, for less love, why bother? It seems silly and until I go home to the Beloved, so far, I am best off with my cat.
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The first thing Sol Duc does when we go out for a walk, is roll on the sun warmed dusty sidewalk. The house faces south.
No, Elwha has not been found. I have lots of photographs. He was a funny cat. Ate too much and then tried to trade toys for food when I decreased what I fed him. He loved boxes and he loved tummy rubs. He seemed to think about food, tummy rubs and sleep, mostly. He would like to catch birds. He was not sedentary but was expert level at relaxing.
Or maybe the front one is the Starship Enterprise and the back one is an enormous rabbit chasing it.
I do miss bakeries. I still go in with my daughter and sniff all of the delicious aromas, but I can only eat the things without gluten. Never mind, I could eat whatever I wanted for half my life.
On Monday I walked with a group of friends. First I walked down from my house to the coffee shop, walked with them, walked back. It was cold but I was well layered. I want to see if I can up my exercise in spite of Long Covid and muscle weirdness. The initial reaction was fatigue. I took a nap on the couch from 2 to 6 pm and then went to bed at 7. I woke at 5. Fourteen hours of sleep.
That is not totally reassuring. Tuesday I did not feel particularly sore or tired. Wednesday, though, was bad. I started have muscle aches all over and I could not get my hands or feet warm. I lay down under an enormous pile of blankets and eventually went to sleep, starting at about 2 pm. I woke at 9 pm and then went back to sleep, warmer but aching, until 4 am. So that is another 14 hours.
This morning nausea and headache, but less soreness.
So, here is an article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44432-3 about the post-exertional malaise in people with Long Covid. They took people with Long Covid, matched them with people who have recovered from Covid-19, and then did muscle biopsies in both groups before and after maximal exercise. Results? “We show that skeletal muscle structure is associated with a lower exercise capacity in patients and that local and systemic metabolic disturbances, severe exercise-induced myopathy and tissue infiltration of amyloid-containing deposits in skeletal muscles of patients with long COVID worsen after induction of post-exertional malaise.”
Both groups were healthy before Covid-19 and physically active. The study uses many different techniques to measure muscle oxygen use and look at the muscles themselves at the microscopic level. As previous studies have shown, none of our current imaging, like x-rays and CT scan and MRI, can see the problems. This is at a microscopic and cell level in the muscles.
So I am having a post-infection or Long Covid flare the last couple of days, because I pushed too far against my limits. They have not done brain studies but the suspicion is that something similar has been going on. I have been spending a lot of time contacting temp companies and doing job searches, so I am going to take a few days off from that as well. Let the brain and muscles heal.
I still think of Long Covid as immune system PTSD, where the immune system is trying to protect me from further infection, though not necessarily in a way that I like. If the immune system makes me stay home and rest, well, I shouldn’t catch anything, right? Our immune systems are as diverse and complicated as we are, so the patterns are highly variable.
My immune system can’t bamboozle me. It wants me to stay home and take it easy. I get the message. Have a wonderful day.
Cats respond to drugs differently too. Sol Duc is quiet and contemplative on catnip. Elwha, well, guess.
I am supposed to write about envy
but what I am feeling is grief
I walked five miles yesterday
and it was fun, talking, a group
but then a nap from 2 to 5, three hours
and to bed at seven pm and up at five
so 13 hours sleep in response to exercise
It is time to downsize what I think I can do
I still have my mind, but the energy is halved
I can’t work full time as a physician
and I am not sure I can work half time
Do I try it? The risk that I crash again?
Pneumonia and death? Or do I curl into the grief
and find something else to do.
Even the thought makes me tired.
Not envy of other doctors, oh, maybe a little
but the truth is, my survival to date is something
of a miracle. Babies with mothers with active tuberculosis
usually die very quickly, infected, overshelmed.
My mother kindly coughed blood so the doctors knew
before I was born, from the protection of the womb
to the protection of the family, away from my mother.
She is dead, my father is dead, my sister is dead
so even if I cannot work half time
it’s still miraculous to be here at all.
I hope that each and every one of you
feels the miracle of not being dead and gone
some days. And that you do not envy
your dead.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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