My head is full of cat hair and nickels. Ping pong balls in an airplane hangar. I need something so much stronger than caffeine, but not illegal and not drain bamaging. I don’t know how I get through the days anymore. Autopilot has never been more helpful. It’s taken weeks of thinking about writing a blog post before I could actually do it. It’s not brain fog, more like brain muck. Brain clog?
This year. This year defies description. But I’m going to try to write down as much as I can remember - all the stuff we’ve been through in the past year. The stuff that happened before the world started ending.
At the moment, in another browser window, I’m looking at apartment listings in San Francisco. So many people are moving out of the city, rents are plummeting. We joked that maybe we could get my old place for a good price. I laughed, then said Let me check!
Of course we’d never move back to a studio apartment in SF. Not with five cats and a bird. But SF is my one true home and I miss it more than I ever imagined I would. I watch shows/movies/videos shot in SF and get weepy about being so far away.
When we moved to Bend last year, we never could have imagined what was coming. We were in the midst of so many of our own changes, much was already a blur. One minute we were in the Bay Area thinking about maybe eventually relocating to Bend, the next we were here, buying a house and trying to think about what the next 5-10 years might be like.
Shortly after we settled in, my dad had triple bypass surgery - doing well now, thankfully. Then my mother had her second bout of breast cancer - this time a more invasive variety - and another surgery, seemingly getting it all in one go. No chemo or radiation - all seems fine.
Then David moved the (very heavy) coffee table with a strange posture and blew out a disc in his lower back. He’d done something similar to his neck years before, but this was different. The pain was so bad we had to get to the ER to get it under control. Worst day of our lives. I’ve never felt that kind of stress before. (He eventually got a cortisone shot and that seemed to do the trick - so far, so good.)
Soon after his back exploded, the herpes virus that’s lived dormant in my body for 25+ years (thanks, ex husband) triggered something called Erythema Multiforme (EM). Never heard of it? I hadn’t either, until I saw a dermatologist who knew what it was.
It started with canker sores inside my mouth - all over. When eating anything, my mouth felt like it was full of broken glass. Then I developed painful red spots on my hands and feet. They were painful to the touch, but never blistered. Both thumb and index finger nail beds were red and inflamed. On the advice of a local nurse, I went to Urgent Care. They had no idea what it was, but prescribed anti viral meds. That knocked it down pretty quick. But it wasn’t too long after that it was clear I was going to lose some finger nails. That took months.
So, EM is not HSV I or II, but can be triggered by those infections (and others). Now I have this whole other thing living inside my body that has to be managed, if it reoccurs. Along with Epstein Barr Virus (EBV), which might be reactivated, thanks to the stress of 2020.
On top of all that, we’re doing our best to avoid COVID-19, if we haven’t already had it, because of course there’s no way to know. No good antibody tests exist yet, and even if they did, we may not retain antibodies long enough to show up on a test! And maybe that’s another virus that lives inside your body forever that will have to be managed somehow.
Is it possible for one virus to kill off other viruses in your body? Probably wouldn’t feel very good, but that would simplify things.
2020 has felt like 5-10 years in the span of 9 months. There’s no way to plan for the future at this point. But somehow we made this move at the best possible time to avoid the Bay Area exodus and the extreme lack of housing inventory in Bend. Our realtor said that for the first time, she’s having trouble finding homes for clients and she’s seeing multiple offers, with homes selling in a day or two instead of weeks.
So, while I dearly miss my one true home in San Francisco, I’m glad we’re here in our own little semi-rural bubble where we can ride out the rest of 2020 and hope 2021 brings better days.
Upcoming posts I want to remember to write about:
EBV - I’ve learned some things I want to pass along that could be life changing. I know - terrible teaser, and it’ll be the next thing I post.
Hypothyroidism - specifically, sub-clinical hypothyroidism - maybe related to EBV, maybe peri menopause, but it’s happening again.
Peri menopause - the five Ws I’m using that have helped me, because of course that really got going this year, and why not? Now I know what hot flashes feel like. Pretty interesting.
Eczema - I seem to have cured mine - and that’s an important distinction - there is no single universal cure - you have to figure out how to cure yours, in your own way.
Fasting - one tidbit I recently learned about intermittent fasting that was a huge light bulb moment for me.
Plant-based diet - why we made the switch and what we’ve noticed (spoiler alert - it’s related to what cured my eczema).
Stay safe and be well.