Updates and Upgrades
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Since last you left your would-be heroine, much and more has occurred. I will attempt to pick it up in narrative form, as I know that anyone who happens to stumble on this will have no idea who I am or why this is here… There was a post about that back in he beginning somewhere, but this page is a continuation—or rather, a re-subscription—of that story.
In February, we had suffered a random, 100-year freeze in our area. It threw me off, but I wanted to get back on track. I tried. Sort of. But life was life, and things didn’t go as planned. I abandoned all semblance of care and simply put my head down to get through the end of the school year. I had too many students who didn’t care, too many administrators trying to change too many things, and too many people in my world suffering in one way or another.
I had a son get Covid, then a daughter. Neither were bad, but then the same daughter, a couple weeks later, got Strep throat. All of us have been sick off and on. My best friend got sick, probably Covid, though she never got confirmed on that. She did, however, lose her sense of smell and taste, and they’re just now beginning to come back. Her illness overlapped the end of the daughter’s and the beginning of my husband’s.
Meanwhile, during all of this, my eldest daughter graduated from college, my middle daughter, her boyfriend of four years, and my godson all graduated high school, and my goddaughter graduated 8th grade. The state lifted the mask requirement for any and all government buildings, including schools, but many businesses have kept theirs on their own grounds—though that appears to be a losing battle at this point.
Also during this time, our poor, sweet little puppy got sick. We don’t know if she got into something in the trash or something outside, but she was clearly not feeling well. She began to struggle to breathe one evening, and we took her to the emergency vet, where they put her on antibiotics and steroids, but sadly, she did not make it through the next day. We had to take her to the shelter for cremation, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. This summer is starting off with a bang!
At that same time, after trying to attend graduations in too-small seating and ill-fitting robes, I was once again utterly disgusted with myself, but I knew from experience that I can’t do this alone. I can’t rely on my husband or my best friend; there’s too much history and too much, IDK, conciliatoriness, I guess. I want them to be happy, they want me to be happy, and we can all hold one another accountable for a few days, but then it all breaks down…. I began to research what was out there that might help.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I also picked up the sickness that was going around, and I can’t really speak for anyone else, but I felt horrid. I couldn’t breathe, and I was coughing, and I just wanted to curl up and sleep for years. I was measuring my oxygen saturation, and for about a week or so there, the highest it got was 92%. At one point, on Thursday night, after coming up the stairs, it was at 77%, and I felt like I might die! I resolved to go to the doc Friday morning.
On Friday, my bestie came over and took me to the clinic. While we were waiting, I started to feel faint, dizzy. The world began to close in, and I knew I was about to black out. I told my bestie, who told the Nurse Practitioner, who handled the situation with none of the grace and alleged medical training she had. She wouldn’t let me lie down anywhere, kept hapring on about masks, and called 911. She was rude, and unprepared, and had no idea how to handle a crisis at all.
In the end, I was placed in an ambulance and taken to the ER. The short version of a long, boring wait is that I had an acute upper respiratory infection and strep throat, and while I was sitting and waiting, the combined effects of my blood pressure meds dropping my pressure too low with the lack of real oxygen for a week made me nearly pass out. I was put on breathing treatments, steroids, and antibiotics and told to rest up at home.
Also during all this, that previous week, I had found and wanted to begin my new weight-loss plan. I’ll put more on that in another post, but suffice it to say that it has been a rather eventful few weeks….