Tag: health

More Updates

I tried to stop by my mom today, explaining here in advance that I am just stopping by for five minutes (she is on day three of isolation). I have no idea whether reinfection may or may not happen, and I have no desire to experiment. She previously asked for Russian Rye bread, which meant that I had to wait until today to be able to go to the actual store. I didn’t find any Russian Rye, but I found a German Rye and some marmalade. When I came to her, I realized that she didn’t get the concept of “for a couple of minutes” and wanted me to look at what was not working on her phone and at the blood pressure monitor, and change the printer cartridge, and whatever else.

I yelled at her that this could wait until she was out of isolation, and she started to ask whether she would need a mask if she decided to go for a walk tomorrow morning. And she asked me at least twenty times whether she could use a KN95 mask more than once…

Also, it’s close to impossible to make her track her symptoms, and I am going to stop now because my rants won’t change anything.

The good part of today: I biked to the Mill and back. And there are going to be a couple more warm days. And I finished Chapter 13 🙂

Updates

Mom is still asymptomatic. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue that way – it would be close to a miracle!

I am finally symptom-free entirely, including not being completely exhausted by 8 PM every evening. Moreover, I did a massive cooking (I made some progress in cleaning up my freezer in the course of the previous couple of days, which was also good!). The tests are still positive, though, so I am not making any specific plans for the next couple of days, except that I can now officially go out wearing a mask. I didn’t lose any work time (almost), but the backlog on the book continues to grow, which really concerns me. I know that, objectively, there is very little left, because all of the remaining chapters were worked on, and some are “almost” done, but I also know how misleading this “almost” can be.

Life goes on 🙂

My Trip To London…

It is not going to happen after all, and that’s one of these situations when the universe tells me loud and clear that I should not. I feel fine, and I didn’t have any fever today, but my test was still positive (which was expected, to be honest).

I was thinking about whether I would still be able to go, having all the dates and guidelines, when I need to test, and so on, but today, my mom tested positive (which is in perfect alignment with when I think was my first day sick).

Having this, and having that she does not understand what the symptoms could be and she does not understand what isolation means, I am afraid to leave.

Oh, well. I hope that things will not be that bad with her.

So, I Had Grand Plans…

And the funny story is that I accomplished a huge portion of what I planned for this long weekend, except for – I tested positive today. The only reason I decided to test myself was that I had a fever, and I usually do not get it.

Now, I am wondering whether I have already had it on Sunday. I know it would be super weird if I did Bike the Dive with COVID, but I had a little bit of a runny nose for two days before that, and I felt a little bit not myself when I woke up for Bike the Drive, but then everything was perfect.

Now the biggest question is whether I am flying to London on Saturday. It would be five days since, but I am going to keep testing myself and see whether I will get any more symptoms.

Also, it’s my first anniversary at my company, so I was hoping to be at work, and it’s super sad that I won’t be there.

Well, it could definitely be worse!

Health Updates

After my biking accident and the doctor’s appointment a week later, the x-ray results came earlier than I expected – on Sunday. The results stated I had a fracture with minor displacement. On Monday (June 11), the doctor whom I saw on Friday called me with “I told you!” message and sent me to the orthopedic doctor. That doctor took yet another bunch of x -rays and said that he did not see any fracture and I did not need to wear a splinter, wait for this whole thing to heal, and come back in three weeks.

Because of my travel and the holidays, I ended up going back only today. Both my left thumb and the left index finger hurt to some degree when I was doing something with my left hand, including applauding at the concerts, and overall, I was not convinced that I didn’t have a fracture. But just a couple of days before this last visit to the doctor, I started to feel much better, so they said everything was fine and I do not need to come anymore unless I want some special hand therapy. I am not going to waste my time on that.

The last mom’s physical therapy session was at the beginning of June, and I told our physical therapist that I was going to do all the exercises he prescribed to my mom. So that’s what I am planning to do because my left thumb still bends only a halfway in comparison to the right one 🙂

Updates And How Is Life

By the end of the week, I went into another spiral of “everything goes wrong, and I am behind on everything!”

On Thursday, I decided to call my doctor and ask whether I should see her for my broken nail situation It turned out she just went on a long vacation, but her medical assistant suggested I see another doctor, just to make sure. I made an appointment for Friday afternoon since I was going to work from home because of another appointment.

Then the day went not as planned (and I already had a backlog of things, as it always happens by Friday.) My other appointment got canceled last minute, and when I went to the doctor, my appointment was delayed, and when the doctor finally came, she said she wanted to make sure there was no fracture (I still can’t bend the thumb). So she sent me for the x-rays, and it took me a long time to find where I needed to check in and where to get the xrays (people were sending me back and forth multiple times). Not worth going into the details, but I got increasingly frustrated that it took so long, and even though I took Uber both ways, I was at home only at 4-35, three hours after I left!

There is a high chance that I indeed have a fracture. In the beginning, I was focused on the nail and the pain around it and attributed all the discomfort to that problem. But now, when the wound is stabilized, I understand that the pain comes from the thumb itself and my attempt to use it.

Since the x-rays were taken at the very end of the day, I do not expect the result until the end of the day on Monday. I know that regardless, there is no specific treatment for the broken thumb if it’s indeed the case I am just extremely annoyed that everything takes twice longer than it should take.

No excuse for not finishing the next Red Gate article and not replying to a couple of emails asking for my professional advice.

The day is gorgeous; it should be a day at the beach, especially because Sunday will be cold and rainy. Oh, well…. Back to the tasks of the day!

And One More Accident

Just to complete the list of this week’s horror stories. On Saturday morning, I went on a relatively long bike ride. I had a long to-do list, and my cleaning person was going to come at 8 AM, and another contractor was going to show up at 8-30. I was determined to take advantage of an early sunrise and make it to the Mill and back within an hour or an hour and ten minutes.

Everything was perfect, including the weather. I was on my older bike and was moving very fast (I still need to figure out why the new bike is slower). I made it even a little bit past the Mill and was returning, and almost at the end of the Lakefront Trail, there was a lady suddenly walking with her bike between her legs, bypassing a heap of sand.

Since I had already passed this sand on the way forward, I knew it was fine to bike over it, and I decided to pass this lady on the left (and on the sand), which… didn’t end up well.

I didn’t ever realize at first that I had an injury: I didn’t hit my head at all, and the bike was fine, and then she started to yell at me that I shouldn’t have tried to pass her, and thee was a reason why she was walking and that I need to go to the emergency because I am bleeding.

I thought that it was just a scratch on my knee and waved her off. Only when I mounted on my bike again, I realized that the nail of my left thumb is barely hanging on a thin strip of skin and was bleeding. I tore it off completely (what else could I do?), took a tissue out of my pocket and wrapped it around my thumb, and then continued my ride home.

I didn’t even feel much pain. I came home, parked my bike, went upstairs and watered the flowers on the balcony, and set down to type a short email to Boris. Then suddenly, I felt that I had trouble breathing, and I started sweating, and everything around me went dark. I tried to stand up, and then I realized I needed to lie down on the floor because otherwise, I would fall down. Perhaps, I did fall down anyway because my watch asked me whether I had fallen!

Long story short: it is not fun, but 1) good thing it happened this weekend, not the previous one! 2) Good thing it does not prevent me from typing! 3) it will take a very long to heal, and the surface will continue to be very sensitive for a while 4) but it will grow back eventually!

Sleep

For the past three or four months, I have been making an effort to sleep more. I had a feeling that recently, my five-and-half hours were not enough anymore, and for the longest time, I had a battle with myself to get six hours of sleep every night. I rarely succeeded (except for when in Finland), but I kept trying. I thought I managed to do it rarely often and was surprised to see that my Apple watch rarely tells me that I met my sleep goal.

A couple of days ago I finally decided to look at the stats in the Health app, and I found out that the length of my sleep didn’t change for the past two years! When I was trying to sleep more, I ended up having more time “in bed”, but exactly the same sleep time, which is something like 5 hours and 15 or 20 minutes.

Now I am going to stop trying because lying in bed and not doing anything is a complete waste of time! (Sleep is a waist of time in general, but even my body needs some :))

Updates

As if I didn’t have enough to deal with, I started to experience pain in my right eye. That happened Sunday night, pretty much out of nowhere. I thought it would get back to normal soon, but it was not getting better, so on Tuesday, I when to the doctor (“any doctor available”). They told me a lot of horror stories about my eye and how it’s an emergency situation and wrote a prescription for two kinds of drops.

I am not going to comment on all these horrors because 1) I didn’t listen well since I was shocked 2) I am going to see the same doctor on Friday, and we’ll see. Now (Wednesday evening) it feels better than yesterday (finally), so I hope it will be even better by Friday.

Two things bother me in the current situation. First, my eye hurt so much in the past two days that I had trouble working on my computer so I fell behind again after I almost caught up on Sunday. Second, I have to wear glasses (God knows for how long), and I can’t see right, and my head hurts all the time. I thought that my prescription was not updated, but it turned out I updated the glasses last summer. It’s just that I am not used to glasses.

I know that is minor in comparison with serious problems other people have, and things are not bad in general, and I know that no timing is right for health issues. Still, I keep lamenting about what an inconvenient time that it all happened!

iPhone Upgrade

I was planning to upgrade to iPhone 14 when I discovered Sprint quietly terminated the FlexLease program. I spent some time “yelling” via chat at their sales rep (her explanations were pathetic) and then paused to see my options. It turned out that Apple itself now runs a similar program without any attachment to a specific carrier. The only unplanned expense was paying back the remaining cost of my iPhone 13. That also had a certain advantage because now I owned it, and I passed it to Boris.

I was cautious about when to make a switch because previously, I had all sorts of complications and had to visit a store or chat with a rep.

This time, it was the most smooth transition I have ever had! Zero interruption in receiving calls, and all the apps migrated without problems. The only thing I had to set up anew was a FaceID (and the new one is better and n=better recognized). Also, I had to confirm adding credit cards to Apple Pay on that phone, and that was it.

There are several new cool features on the iPhone 14, one being the “always on” option (it turned out it consumes a lot of battery, but it is nice to have it). The screen goes dark but not completely black, and important notifications remain. I also love the new and improved camera (what is the primary reason to switch to the next model anyway :)?).

There are also some new features in the apps. It is entirely possible that they were there before, and I just didn’t pay attention, but nevertheless:).

I looked at the Health app because I noticed that it reports the sleep time differently and wanted to see what else is new. It turned out that it now reports way more data on sleep, including the phases, but while I was there, I ran across something else.

I verified how my medical ID is set, and the app asked whether I wanted to connect my medical records. I replied – yes, and it started to sniff around and look at the medical institutions close to my house. Then it found the one where my family doctor is and asked whether I wanted to link my medical records. I said yes, entered my credentials, and my medical records were linked. I know that many people find such app behavior intrusive and dangerous, but it means that if I call for emergency medical assistance by pressing the button, the paramedics who arrive would have instant access to my medical records, my doctor’s contact information, etc. And I think it’s very important.