Tuesday, January 4th, 2021, 12:19

Mood: Cranky

Been a while since I updated on here! Probably because honestly this new year has already kinda sucked right from the jump. I know multiple people in three different states now who are either just getting over covid or they're just starting it. It's everywhere. Seriously y'all. I don't know if anyone actually reads this but, if you do, I want you to go get vaccinated. January is my birthday month and so that's a present you could get me, is getting fucking vaccinated. Seriously.

My mom just told me this morning that a family friend recently passed away from the virus. Growing up in Madison, I struggled to make friends as a child, so most of my childhood friends from before about the fourth grade were other children like me from this type of family: immigrant Filipina mom, aloof American dad (probably white, probably a veteran, lol!). That was just the format of the kinds of families I grew up around. I think it set some really bizarre standards for me as an adult when it comes to householding and family, but I'm not gonna get into all that right now, I'm just saying this is how I grew up, and that most families were like mine. I could tell always that John really loved his daughter Abigail, who was four years younger than I was. I can only imagine what Abigail and her mom Amy are going through right now. PLEASE GET FUCKING VACCINATED!!! This virus is seriously not a joke or a hoax!

Since where Siren goes to school, the other families don't really take covid very seriously, and Patrick works as an auto tech, and I'm going to be teaching a class in-person next semester, I have resigned that I am just going to get the coronavirus soon. I have taken all the steps until this point to prevent getting it. I haven't been to a concert or show in over two years now. I miss it, terribly. I still wear my mask everywhere. I don't attend large parties. I don't do anything and it sucks. And I got both my Moderna doses and a booster. I'm not screwing around with this. But I do have some comfort in knowing that I am not immunologically naive anymore, and that this omicron variant seems to be treating at least vaccinated people far more kindly than did delta, alpha, and the original strain.

My big concern with my health is long covid. I often have terrible post-viral syndromes and autoimmune responses to viruses. In 2018, I got norovirus, and it led to an ER visit where lab work showed I was back in hyperthyroid again. Fortunately that did resolve on its own. I got "long flu" in 2020--by the way, long flu is a thing lmao--and that was just terrible. I had horrible fatigue, my migraines became vestibular--so, meaning, I had inner ear problems that led to vertigo and severe nausea and dizziness--and I had one that lasted three weeks. My POTS went crazy and I was struggling with it for months. And, out of nowhere, my mirtazapine I take for nausea and gastric emptying just up and stopped working, so I lost several pounds as well. I was miserable. It took several months to fully recover from that flu. Even in 2021, which has really been the best year for me health-wise since I was a child, I did get two cold viruses and two stomach viruses. They were fortunately extremely mild, but the first cold virus I had left me with lingering symptoms for three weeks. From a cold.

Living with EDS sucks ass. I literally do everything I can to stay on top of my health, and it's still often a game of whack-a-mole. Please, if you are the kind of person who doesn't take it very seriously not to spread germs, who goes out and about when you are sick, think of people with chronic health conditions. Relatively speaking, I have it very easy. The people in my life who have things like cancer, diabetes, and live organ transplants don't have it as easy as me. It takes a really selfish person to not think of others when it comes to health stuff like this.

Well, that was a very long rant. I'm just frustrated. I'm sleep-deprived because of some drama that happened that I'm not gonna get into on here. I have so many friends out with covid right now and I'm just so frustrated that people could be so unwilling to do anything to save themselves or others! I have basically given up on my hopes of being productive today and am just chillin on the couch watching Dr. Todd Grande videos. I figure I should really learn more about my own mental health problems, on account of they're mine and all. Yesterday I caught Siren recreationally watching a video about how to identify red flags of emotionally abusive relationships, which was really wild for a nine-year-old to come up w all by herself. I think because I have tried to demonstrate to her that we ought to be constantly interrogating these kinds of interpersonal subjects. She has the emotional maturity of someone at least twice her age, I s2g.