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Collecting scars that don't seem to fade


You can get pretty good at feeling pretty bad

I didn’t make it very far into January on my “picture every day” project, but in my defense I got COVID.

On Sunday January 7 I felt like shit – I was freezing cold, like in my bed with the electric blanket turned up to 10 and still could not get warm. So I knew something was wrong. That day we had a big snowstorm – got about a foot of snow, so in the early evening I went outside and raked the roof, and then when I came in, still feeling shitty and dizzy, I decided I should probably take a COVID test.

It popped positive nearly instantly.

At that time C tested negative, so I set myself up to sleep in the basement. By the time I went to bed my temperature was up to 101.8, and I spent the night tossing and turning, alternatively incredibly hot and freezing cold, and woke up the next morning soaked in sweat – and covered in hives.

By Tuesday the hives were much worse, my entire lower back was swollen and red, I had huge blotches on both my arms, on my knees, and was starting to get some on my stomach. I ended up being able to get in to see the doctor, and she put me on prednisone, which cleared the hives up in a couple of days. Aside from the hives and a bone deep exhaustion I didn’t really have any other symptoms, but I continued to test positive for 10 days.

C did also end up testing positive so I only spent two nights sleeping in the guest room, which really honestly bummed me out. Like obviously I didn’t want him to get sick, but also I just really prefer sleeping alone, and don’t get to very often. But it is what it is.

Today is the last day of my prednisone taper and I am so, so glad to be done with it. I cannot even begin to describe how bad the mood I’m in is. Everything makes me angry, everything is frustrating. I also want to eat everything in sight. I hope this all starts to clear up soon, I am miserable.

Not leaving my house for 12 days and being so fatigued really fucked up all my routines. I did manage to get some good work done around the house, my office is cleaner than it’s been in ages and I’ve been doing a great job of keeping the kitchen/living room area tidy. So hopefully I can keep up with that. But outside of that I need to get back into regular eating habits, regular cooking habits, getting outside, moving my body more, all of that stuff that fell by the wayside.

Eating in particular has been a struggle – the illness and the prednisone have had me craving pretty much nothing but carbs, and on top of that I just really haven’t been moving around much at all. I managed not to gain any weight but everything about me is just. . .softer and bigger. My pants are too tight, my muscles feel weak, and I am generally feeling uncomfortable and unhappy in my skin.

So I am giving myself this weekend to kind of ease back into normal non-COVID life and get back on track. I want to get back into my bullet journal habit – I started one early in January but like everything else I stopped when I got sick. I want to get back on my “picture every day” project – so I missed a week or so, that doesn’t mean I have to give up on the rest of the year. And next week I want to try and start getting back into the habit of going to the gym after work. I’m definitely going to need to start slow, but I need to start somewhere.



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