For the last 2 weeks this has been my sickbed by the masonry heater. By late afternoon on Tuesday the 18th, I’d become dehydrated from the nausea from the headache pain and ended up in the ER, again.
Too dizzy and weak to sit in a chair I laid on the cold floor of the waiting room for 2½ hours before a room opened up. They did a test and I was positive. They rehydrated me, gave me something for the nausea and the head pain and did a chest x ray. It came back I had covid pneumonia. Because it’s a virus, they can’t treat it like a bacterial pneumonia, so they sent me home.
The sickroom supervisor was delighted with me on the couch. This meant she could pester me any time she wanted. I’d started having problems with light sensitivity in the patient room at the ER from the LED lights.
On Wednesday I lay on the couch with eyeshades on and listened to David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II all day. The headache wasn’t much better and the nausea meds barely worked. I drank as much as I could but didn’t eat much.
I’d called everyone to tell them to stay away. Everyone but Tom did. Tom came in and “worked from home” and took care of me on Wednesday and Thursday, getting various preparations and making up a special electrolyte drink.
I’m not sure where he found this but he made it with blueberry juice, left out the honey and citrus and it really worked well to keep me hydrated and not so nauseous.
On Wednesday night the light sensitivity got really severe and I spent all day Thursday functionally blind. Any light hitting my eyes was excruciating. It lasted about 24 hours, then abruptly stopped.
A trip to the bathroom late Thursday evening revealed the old hot water heater had died. Fortunately, just the week before, I’d decided to shell out for a bypass system to tie the old and new systems together, in case something happened to one or the other. Tom was able to get them working on Friday, more or less.
The temperatures dropped over the next few days, and I discovered that the pipes without their insulation couldn’t hold the water temperature over the long span it had to travel to reach the bathrooms.
Tom finally figured out how to raise the temperature on the new system and now there’s warm, not hot, water in the bathroom.
For most of the next week, all I could manage was keeping the stoves going. My son kept wood in the house. I spent most of it on the couch. By Thursday of the 2nd week, I was finally strong enough to go sit in my chair in the office for short periods. I managed to get the bubble lights done and put away. The tree was finished.
The wood guys came and moved as much wood as they could into the shed that day. The pile under the tarp was under a leak in the tarp and had frozen. They were able to move about ⅔ into the shed. We are getting pretty low on wood.
By Thursday the weather man was getting quite excited by a nor’easter due to hit on Saturday. Tom came out on Friday and helped get all ready for it, checking the plow truck, bringing the snowblower to the house, etc.
On Friday I finally got some appetite, but not much. This is the 4th or 5th time I’ve had pneumonia, and it’s always taken a couple months to recover. So I’m not expecting anything different.
On Friday I was able to sit at the computer and go through hive posts for the first time in nearly 2 weeks. I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on. Bills to pay as it’s the end of the month, try to plan gardens so I can order seeds so I will have something to start on March 1, if there’s any seeds left to buy…
I have the end of the year stuff to do, tax stuff to compile, and once I am clear (I am still testing positive and have symptoms) the carpenter will be back.
It’s been a rough month. I think I’m going to move my birthday to May… It’s no fun in the depth of winter…