Scattered Thoughts . . .

I had been very slowly recovering from my long-lingering COVID symptoms but things drastically worsened again this past weekend. We had about 13 inches of snow Friday night into Saturday so we had to head outside to at least clear off the roof especially since the snow wasn't supposed to stop falling for another 12 hours or so.  We didn't need a collapsed roof on top of all my health problems so we headed outside for a painful couple of hours.  It turns out we had another three inches of snow through the night on Saturday night after we cleared off the roof so it is good that we took care of the roof when we did. I started up the snowblower and made my way toward the driveway.  I had just broken through the deep snow with one slowblower-width path when it started making a terrible noise.  I noticed that one of the four augers was no longer held in place with its pin.  Fortunately, I had two spares on the control panel of the snowblower so that was a quick fix.  I started up th

Early last week was quite lousy as far as my health goes.  I was down doing absolutely nothing for three days.  As the week progressed, I started to feel a bit more like myself.  By Friday, I was feeling better than I had in recent memory.  Unfortunately, that was short lived, very short lived, as it usually is.   Feeling as good as I was, I actually did think that maybe my health was about to crash.  This is the usual thing for me.  I feel better than I have in a long while and then, usually within hours, my health suddenly plunges into anaphylaxis.  This time I felt really good through Thursday, then even better on Friday...  I must have been feeling pretty good on Saturday because I don't remember any remarkable problems.  I think I was thinking that with all the extra medications I took earlier in the week, I should be feeling better than I have in quite a while so I sort of pushed this old pattern out of my thoughts.   I'm still hobbling around with my knee injury.  Even t

O ther than writing about my badly sprained ankle, I haven't written much about my health lately so I figured I should attempt to write some stuff down.   Overall, my typical mast cell disease stuff has been 'typical'.  That means occasional anaphylaxic symptoms, breathing difficulties, dizziness, lightheadedness, and a lot of joint and bone pain.  Plus, regular gastro-intestinal problems, nausea, and too much time spent in a bathroom.   What has been worse for the past year...  far worse...  is the brain fog.  This may have been compounded by fighting off COVID-19 a year ago.  I have had brain fog throughout all my mast cell disease but it has been far, far worse in recent months.  I become non-functional for anything other than simply surviving from day to day.   While fighting off the virus last year, I also had consistent problems with vision and hearing.  My eyes were swollen and it seemed like I had a torn retina but that was probably due to the swelling in my eyes. 

I honestly don't know how often I write about it, but it is time to write about it again even if I have written about it often.  Fatigue is something I struggle with every day, all day. The past week or so has been pretty lousy when it comes to the energy vs fatigue struggle so I thought it would be a good time to write about it. "Overwhelming fatigue" is a much more accurate term than simply saying "fatigue". Telling my doctors that I am "fatigued" doesn't even come close to describing this debilitating symptom. Just saying "fatigue" sounds silly... childish... minuscule... not worth mentioning... it seems like something a nap will cure. Even calling it "overwhelming fatigue" doesn't seem to cut it either but it is the best term I know. I've had mononucleosis three times in my life (thus far) and I have always said I would never wish that fatigue on anyone... not even on my worst enemy. This overwhelming fatigue th

This entire week has been one health problem after another. I honestly was fighting back tears as my health crashed into anaphylaxis last night. The tears weren't because of pain nor simply because I was feeling miserable. The tears were because I have been so unproductive this week and I now had to accept the fact that the next few days would be, at best, a recovery period of more nonproductivity. This weighs so heavily on me, I suppose, because I want to do so many things around the house but can't... because each day I lose due to this debilitating illness, is one less day I will have in my life. Now, once again, I didn't just lose another day, I just lost a full work-week and this downtime of nothingness promises to be longer. We were doing some light shopping in Williston and South Burlington last night... the first store we visited was all it took. As we were walking into Bed, Bath & Beyond (we hadn't even entered the store yet), I was experiencing breathing