Alas! The flu!
Jan. 30th, 2018 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hillarygayleAh, my friends. I've been doing SO WELL this entire season. I want to say the last time I was actually sick was sometime last spring, perhaps early last summer. I had strep throat, & my colleague A wrote me a scrip for prednisone & penicillin. For most of my life I could say I was going to catch "what's going around" at least 3-4 times per year. This year I just kept waiting & waiting and somehow never managed to get sick. My mom even commented that I had made it really far into virus season without getting sick. Well, on Saturday my streak ended. Just after work I started to feel a bit crummy and on Sunday morning I woke up with malaise, myalgias, sinus congestion, & a headache. It's lasted through today without signs of stopping. I wore a mask yesterday at work; no I didn't take the day off. I'm a contract employee & we don't get sick days. I didn't want to spread the flu to people who came in with injuries or unrelated illnesses, though, so I wore the mask. Just as I was about to leave for the day my Grandma called. I answered because I thought maybe she needed to bring in her husband; he has severe COPD, wears continuous O2, & gets pneumonia at the drop of a hat. No, apparently my mom had told her I'd FINALLY gotten sick. She asked how I was & I told her I was just about to leave work so my day was looking up. "You went to work?! You'll get pneumonia! You'd better go to the doctor!" I laughed & told her "Grandma I AM the doctor! And bonus points I can see 3 physicians from where I'm sitting!" I doubt my colleagues would let me fall over of sepsis. :)
Let me just say I'm very good at makeup that makes me look Not Sick. I was super happy with my eyeliner on this day.
Still feeling like reheated poop today though. I haven't checked my temp but I don't think I've had a fever, so this may not be the flu. We also have another respiratory type thing going around which isn't the flu but still has crappy effects. An adenovirus or rhinovirus I'm sure. So I'm treating myself the way I tell my patients to treat it: ibuprofen/acetaminophen for the body aches (alternating every 3 hours so one is always in my system at an effective level), nasal fluticasone, pseudoephedrine, and an antihistamine. I also added Afrin nasal spray at night so I can breathe through my nose while I sleep, but I don't suggest that to laypeople. You CANNOT use it more than 10-12 hours frequency, and CANNOT use it more than 3 days. The rebound congestion is dramatic and horrible if you do, and people won't understand that & they get themselves caught in a cycle with it. I'm also using some adjunctive therapies I give my sis-in-law & sister crap about: essential oils. They think they can prevent cancer & cure arthritis with the damned things (seriously my sister recommended them for the 20-year-old post nerve damage in my hands and that is Not Going To Work), but for most respiratory complaints, a eucalyptus/tea tree/mint oil is actually quite good. It's not curative but being able to smell ANYTHING when I'm in this state at least makes it FEEL a lot better.
The other thing is herbal tea: I like echinacea ones & slippery elm ones. Slippery elm is for sore throat specifically, usually combined with anise, and tastes truly awful but wow. With some honey to make it nearly palatable, it's SO EFFECTIVE. I drank some echinacea tonight, & dropped some peppermint oil in. Does it really boost the immune system? I'm not convinced. But does it make my sinuses & head FEEL better? Yes it does.
Had to get a new Joycon for the Switch.
We got the version with the blue (L) and red (R) Joycons, but yesterday Ganon found the blue one wasn't working. Specifically the joystick had stopped registering L vs R and would only move up vs down. Ganon thinks it's because the neighbor kids were over & treated the controllers too roughly, but I think joystick problems are a bit of a known issue with the first edition of the Joycons. We pondered over what color we should get & decided that neon yellow makes for a cool looking Switch as well.
Ganon made his own supper tonight. Little dude is actually becoming quite comfortable in the kitchen; far more so than I was at age 11 and maybe even more comfortable than his dad is now! He made teriyaki chicken: put the rice in the Instant Pot to cook while he made 3 grilled chicken strips on the George Foreman grill, then shredded the chicken with the sauce & put it all together. Literally no help from me or Bryan. Bryan said he also made his own Bagel Bites this Saturday, preheating the oven, putting them in, taking them out & everything. I actually think he could follow my recipe for chocolate chip cookies all on his own.
Also tonight: we started the audiobook of Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone! Ganon's school does Accelerated Reader (AR), so he has to read books & take tests for points. He's required to make a certain number of points by certain milestones like 9 weeks. Up to this point he's been doing 3-4 point books, maybe 7-8 if they read them as a class at school. BUT SS is a 12 point book. If he does well on the test that knocks a huge chunk out of his 30 point goal. We'll be listening to a single chapter each night with him following along in the book. 17 days to go!
Joe update: still getting large. Must be deterred from chewing shoes. Plays fetch! First dog I've ever had that would actually do the classic "chase this stick, & bring it back for me to throw again" thing!
Let me just say I'm very good at makeup that makes me look Not Sick. I was super happy with my eyeliner on this day.
Still feeling like reheated poop today though. I haven't checked my temp but I don't think I've had a fever, so this may not be the flu. We also have another respiratory type thing going around which isn't the flu but still has crappy effects. An adenovirus or rhinovirus I'm sure. So I'm treating myself the way I tell my patients to treat it: ibuprofen/acetaminophen for the body aches (alternating every 3 hours so one is always in my system at an effective level), nasal fluticasone, pseudoephedrine, and an antihistamine. I also added Afrin nasal spray at night so I can breathe through my nose while I sleep, but I don't suggest that to laypeople. You CANNOT use it more than 10-12 hours frequency, and CANNOT use it more than 3 days. The rebound congestion is dramatic and horrible if you do, and people won't understand that & they get themselves caught in a cycle with it. I'm also using some adjunctive therapies I give my sis-in-law & sister crap about: essential oils. They think they can prevent cancer & cure arthritis with the damned things (seriously my sister recommended them for the 20-year-old post nerve damage in my hands and that is Not Going To Work), but for most respiratory complaints, a eucalyptus/tea tree/mint oil is actually quite good. It's not curative but being able to smell ANYTHING when I'm in this state at least makes it FEEL a lot better.
The other thing is herbal tea: I like echinacea ones & slippery elm ones. Slippery elm is for sore throat specifically, usually combined with anise, and tastes truly awful but wow. With some honey to make it nearly palatable, it's SO EFFECTIVE. I drank some echinacea tonight, & dropped some peppermint oil in. Does it really boost the immune system? I'm not convinced. But does it make my sinuses & head FEEL better? Yes it does.
Had to get a new Joycon for the Switch.
We got the version with the blue (L) and red (R) Joycons, but yesterday Ganon found the blue one wasn't working. Specifically the joystick had stopped registering L vs R and would only move up vs down. Ganon thinks it's because the neighbor kids were over & treated the controllers too roughly, but I think joystick problems are a bit of a known issue with the first edition of the Joycons. We pondered over what color we should get & decided that neon yellow makes for a cool looking Switch as well.
Ganon made his own supper tonight. Little dude is actually becoming quite comfortable in the kitchen; far more so than I was at age 11 and maybe even more comfortable than his dad is now! He made teriyaki chicken: put the rice in the Instant Pot to cook while he made 3 grilled chicken strips on the George Foreman grill, then shredded the chicken with the sauce & put it all together. Literally no help from me or Bryan. Bryan said he also made his own Bagel Bites this Saturday, preheating the oven, putting them in, taking them out & everything. I actually think he could follow my recipe for chocolate chip cookies all on his own.
Also tonight: we started the audiobook of Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone! Ganon's school does Accelerated Reader (AR), so he has to read books & take tests for points. He's required to make a certain number of points by certain milestones like 9 weeks. Up to this point he's been doing 3-4 point books, maybe 7-8 if they read them as a class at school. BUT SS is a 12 point book. If he does well on the test that knocks a huge chunk out of his 30 point goal. We'll be listening to a single chapter each night with him following along in the book. 17 days to go!
Joe update: still getting large. Must be deterred from chewing shoes. Plays fetch! First dog I've ever had that would actually do the classic "chase this stick, & bring it back for me to throw again" thing!
no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 12:42 pm (UTC)Go Joe Go! Pippin has NEVER understood "chase and fetch". Maybe if the toy/ball was chicken flavored....
no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 04:45 pm (UTC)