Covid Support Thread
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Happy early birthday @ktfran! Glad to hear you are getting better. Sorry to hear r
COVID ended up getting you too.I’m feeling more in a rut than usual. I am aware that I need to go on walks or hikes. I just feel so unmotivated and down. It’s a vicious cycle. What are people doing to cope now that we are all two years into this?
Happy early birthday, @Ktfran! Glad you’re feeling better.
Right now, to cope, I’m staying in, staying warm and being very good to myself and my family. That’s all I can do.
My husband bought a bike trainer (you put your own bike on it, indoors) it’s app driven and he’s been riding nearly every day for stress relief and exercise. When it warms up, I plan to start walking first and then hope to start jogging as it gets warmer and I feel like doing it, which I absolutely do not right now. I like some aspects of winter but I love to hibernate inside.
@ktfran Happy early birthday! Sorry you have COVID, though I hope it’s at least a relief to know what you actually have, and that you continue to feel better and better.
This time of year is rough in Chicago even without COVID. It’s cold, it gets dark early. For the first time in my 7+ years in this city, I feel somewhat unsafe when I go outside after dark (lately, people getting robbed at gunpoint in my immediate area) so right now I’m cutting evening walks short. All this to say, I’m probably not a good person to give advice on coping, but: I signed up for my first marathon in October and should probably start building up my running base now. Today felt like a heat wave by comparison to the past week or so, but neighborhood sidewalks are still too icy. I’ve been trying to keep busy with reading. I’m currently planning a trip I may or may not take next month. Just boring, gentle self care kinda stuff around here. My moods usually start improving as the daylight hours get longer.
My husband is positive for Covid. He hasn’t had any symptoms, though. He’s triple vaccinated and has a pretty great immune system. We’ve been together 14 years and in that time he’s only gotten sick once, for 3 days. So I’m not surprised that he’s asymptomatic, and feel confident he’ll pull through this just fine. I’m actually more focused on how he got it. I tested negative at the same time, but I can’t think of any way he could have gotten it except through me. We’re both disabled, so we haven’t had exposure through work, and we live with just the two of us. I’ve been in a bubble with my elderly parents since Omicron started. I haven’t visited anyone else but them and have been avoiding restaurants, not going to the gym, and only going out to places like the doctor or the grocery store and even then always wearing an N95 mask. My husband went with me to the store twice in the last 2 weeks wearing an N95 mask and social distancing, but other than that hasn’t spent time around anyone but me in weeks.
I did visit my elderly, high risk parents early last week though, but I didn’t bring my husband. My parents, my husband and I are all triple vaccinated. While no one had any issues that day midweek my sister tested positive for Covid. I’d seen my sister in passing for a moment from several feet away and said hi earlier, but didn’t get near her. I was close with my parents for quite awhile during the visit, though. My sister has 1 J&J vaccine and had a high fever, sore throat, aches and pains, headache, exhaustion, and lots of phlegm. Apparently she’d started showing symptoms mid-week, but I didn’t hear about it till the weekend. I had gotten some green phlegm and nasal drip toward the end of that week but otherwise felt fine. But I got a test that weekend just in case and tested negative, while my husband who got tested the same time was positive. But I don’t know how else my husband could have possibly gotten it if not through me. We’ve been isolating so carefully to avoid giving anything to my parents when I see them. My parents finally got tested early this week and it was negative, too. So again I don’t know if my sister gave it to them and they gave it to me and I gave it to my husband but we all got tested too late to notice the intermediary steps or if somehow my husband got it another way.
Maybe I want it to have been through my sister and then my parents because that would mean my parents, who are in their 70s and high risk, would have gotten it and transmitted it but still have been okay. If that were the case they would have had it but the vaccine did it’s job and I could unclench and not worry about them so much, at least till the next variant. During the height of the pandemic I went a year without seeing them to make sure I didn’t spread it to them. Eventually I started visiting them once a week again, but I was so careful in every other part of my life to make sure I didn’t pass it to them. Even though my parents, myself, and my husband are all triple vaccinated now I’ve just been so worried about my parents this whole time because they are so high risk. My Mom is in her 70s and has 3 other pre-existing conditions, so I’ve been terrified this whole time that she might die if she caught Covid. I’m in my mid 30s but have two pre-existing conditions that would affect this, so it would be a relief to think that I had had it but was fine, too. My parents have also been really careful, but they’ve had to go to work in person. They always wear N95 masks and haven’t gone out to eat since the pandemic started. My sister was really good at first, but after a few months got tired of things and has long since stopped any precautions.
I’m just…so tired of this. I wish that after my husband and I are through self-quarantining and have both tested negative again I could just worry about my parents getting this less. I’d really like to go swimming at my gym and eat at restaurants again and still see my parents each week at the same time without worrying about passing this to them. And if my sister was the source of it – I’m kind of irritated that I’ve been so careful to not spread this to my parents just visiting them but my Sister’s actually living with them and has not worried enough to change how she’s lived her life for a long time now.
@Akeath – I”m sorry that all of this is weighing on you. But I’m glad that you and your husband are vaccinated and well. And your parents and sister too.
Your fatigue and frustration are understandable and shared widely.I’m about to move out of NYC and there’s so much I’d like to do – final trip here, final visit there, final burger from that place. But I won’t and I feel like I’m just slithering out of the city.
Feh.
Turns out the pandemic significantly worsened my distance vision, because of sitting in front of a laptop all day. My vision hasn’t changed in years, and isn’t supposed to, but the eye doctor just told me it’s gotten sig worse since 2019. I now have to get special glasses for working, separate from my regular glasses.
Just a PSA to get your vision checked and have the right prescription for work!
I just had to get progressive lenses. Super depressing. My eye doctor gave me a speech about how my body was going through changes that made me think of puberty lectures.
Yeah she said next time progressive lenses.
But definitely working remotely has done a number on my eyesight. Before, you’d walk around, go to face to face meetings, commute, not be laser focused on a laptop screen for the entire day. I haven’t been wearing glasses at all because I needed them for driving, movies, etc… stuff I don’t really do anymore, and those glasses weren’t right for sitting at a computer. I’m pissed I didn’t realize sooner I needed different glasses to wear for work. Now the doctor says I need to be wearing glasses all the time. Ugh. But at least I have eyes, and a computer.
So my aunt has been stuck in a nursing home since 2018, and she’s not mobile, but mentally totally sharp. It sucks. And she has never had a cell phone and I don’t think she’s able to use the iPad my parents gave her. My dad logs into her email and reads it to her on the phone, then replies back whatever she dictates. Anyway, I mention this in case anyone else would find this useful for a relative, we got her this photo frame that you can send photos to. It has a remote control, and when she turns it on, it will tell her she has so many new pics from so and so. It’s set up so it will accept emails from certain people. It’s so easy to send her pictures from my phone, it’s like texting (except she doesn’t reply, but we can talk on the phone about it). I can even send memes and screenshots of funny headlines. My dad manages the app so he can clear stuff out and just keep what she wants. She told me how this nurse from South Africa told her about baboons going in grocery stores and stealing food, so I googled it and sent her pics. Or when my husband picks the dog up from daycare, he takes a pic of the hilarious dogs that work at the counter. Or this lady from MA won a trip on The Price Is Right… to New Hampshire, so I sent the headline from the article. She actually really likes the frame and uses it, and the remote is manageable even though she’s shaky.
It could be good for any grandparent, but especially your folks who are bad with tech. The brand is Nixplay, and they have it at Best Buy.
That is so fun @Kate! Yeah my eyes have deteriorated over the pandemic too. There is the 20 20 20 rule. Every 20 minutes look at an object 20’ away for 20 seconds. You can also blink 20 times.
Alright, Ontario is basically fully opening up and come a March 1 there will be no mandatory vaccine. Masks still mandatory AFAIK. I think we are on the right path COVID wise. We stopped allowing anybody to test so I have no idea what our case counts are like, but ICUs are coming down. Vaccines aren’t as effective as omicron so it makes sense to remove that mandate but I don’t know how comfortable I am eating without knowing everyone else is vaccinated. I just hope that by opening up now we will still be ok come summer (selfishly partly for my wedding).
We went to a museum yesterday with my friend who is visiting from the UK. It was nice to feel like a tourist after not travelling for so long.
Edit: I am just so freaking embarrassed by the Freedom Convoy.
