On objections to "the violence and destruction"

Trigger warnings: graphic descriptions of racist violence including lynchings

For those clutching their pearls, "but the violence and destruction! It's just not how democracy works!"

1) Democracy is clearly not working.

(a) It's not currently democracy, because there are people doing everything they can to prevent actual democracy and we never really got it set up right in the first place.

(b) Democracy is the method we chose to try to govern in a manner that preserves stated rights.  Pretty clearly, the most fundamental rights are more important than the tactic of democracy.  If the most fundamental rights are clearly and consistently trampled and the majority will not, for whatever reason, fix the problem democratically, then there has to be another mechanism, or we logically can't claim to *actually* value those rights.

Ok, so, the violence and destruction.  The two words are used together a lot, so we don’t think about them separately as much, but in the current context this is a white-supremacist/pro-“capitalist” concept-laziness.  (“Capitalist” because a lot of people feel very righteous about us living in a “capitalist” society, which we don’t.  We live in a wealth-protection racket with a veneer of righteous-sounding words.  The veneer is wearing away.)

SO: an important distinction: violence is against living things, destruction is against inanimate things.  In some times and places, violence was against *people* and destruction was against *not people* (including animals and whatever the local society considered to be subhumans ... in America, non-whites sometimes, Blacks in, if we are honest, most times).  In this essay I am aligning with the more modern usage, which exposes our inhumanity, and our knee-jerk "capitalism," better.

Violence is against living things, destruction is about inanimate things.

In the context of the protests, violence (from either side) is against *people.*

It is worrisome at a basic moral-value level that burning stores or police precincts stresses many viewers out more than the absolutely over-the-top violence perpetrated by the police on the protestors, sometimes because of real but almost completely not-actually-threatening violence from the protestors, but often, often, just because someone on the police force decided they needed to "assert their authority" or "control the situation."  In the situations when the protestors were flinging ONLY WORDS at the officers in question -- which was a bunch of situations of police violence against protestors -- I'm a little horrified that I have to point out that there was not a "situation" to "control."  There were citizens peacefully protesting.  That is not a "situation to control."  In the situations where the protestors were "complying" as best they could, even with highly questionable orders, by moving away, or being still and physically non-threatening if they had been handicapped by a police weapon or had a preexisting handicap -- again, I'm a little horrified that anyone needs to point out that that is not a "situation to control."  That is a situation that is *already under control,* and further violence *is not justified,* even if under the laws of that locale some arrests might be.  Kettling, when followed up with violence on the trapped people ... that was not a "situation to control."  That was straight-up entrapment by your government authorities for the purpose of torture.

The *actual violence* perpetrated by protestors against the police or anyone else has been nearly zero.  The destruction?  Sure some of that was protestors in some places, but 

(1) a lot of it was outside agents trying to make the protests look bad.  White supremacists, cops, random entitled teens and twenties who don't have a damn clue and think it will be a lark, have all been caught on videos or on chat strings planning or implementing this.

(2) are you demonstrating that you care more about a Target than about all the black people murdered and beaten up and framed and sent to prison by police in that city?  Are you really?

Statistical significance would discount the violence created by the current protestors compared to the violence levied against black people not only during slavery, when white oppressors had a general financial interest in keeping most slaves alive and physically capable of working, but in the Reconstruction years, when militias and sometimes just local communities on the fly -- you know, I got nothing to do after church this Sunday, you wanna? -- would get together and hunt black people.  When they assassinated elected black politicians one after the other in a targeted and deliberate way, and then started on black candidates brave enough to try to run for office to replace the dead.  When they burned and looted homes and communities.

Most of what I just described was flat-out shooting-blacks-with-guns, and mostly it wasn't battles, it was just massacre and murder.

And that's not even getting into what we think of as "lynchings," which were common enough that towns in the South sold commemorative, collectible photo-postcards. 

Because lynchings were such a public "good" at the time, they didn't, as we have been taught in our society if we are talking about them at all, just involve "hanging." They were a blood sport, for an audience (whether just a few guys or a town Sunday picnic on the green), where the hanging was not expected to kill a person quickly like an execution. Putting a rope around someone's neck and dragging them up into a tree guarantees a 'botched' hanging, a lingering and terrifying death (with an avid audience, it should be remembered) *even in the cases* when the white folks doing the lynching didn't ALSO ADD FUCKING FIRE. Late in the period when public lynchings were still an acceptable social event, the lynchers managed to keep a black male alive for four hours, burning him not all at once, but slowly and carefully.  Sometimes they killed whole families in lynchings.  Babies included.  Sometimes they experimented with fun things like poking out eyes or cutting out tongues or pulling out fingernails or cutting off fingers.  Some of those body parts were kept as souvenirs.

All of which ignores, by only considering the deaths, the severe beatings that always accompanied lynchings, to disable the victim (and for sadistic race-superiority enjoyment of course) ... and the severe beatings that were casually levied, everywhere and anywhere, in the last 150+ years on blacks who were not lynched, because white folks no longer had a financial stake in keeping "the blacks" capable of work anymore, and it's very psychologically satisfying to assert one's dominance.  In way too many places in America that is not only acceptable but encouraged, even still.  Dominance-assertion as a psychological jack-off is pretty common in every part of American society.  Certainly it is still visible from waaaaay too many police officers.

Dominance-beatings very effectively instill trauma and ongoing fear (which is the point), and sometimes permanent physical damages.  The deaths, however incredible the numbers are, are only a small part of the story of historical racist violence against the black community.  The same holds true now.  For every story I've seen over the last bunch of years about a black person murdered by police, there have been several other black people talking about the time(s) the police beat them.  And if I rouse myself enough to go looking around the internet on purpose for those stories, which I have sometimes done, it is quickly apparent that the sample making it through the social media algorithms is very small.

So yeah. There has been violence against some people and destruction in the last few weeks, and I'll even (unlike some) admit that some (although certainly and provably not all) of that was actually done by actual protestors. And that's not ideal. It's even, in a simple sense, bad.

But, those numbers, amounts, and types pale in comparison -- even the destruction (of inanimate things) numbers, amounts, and types, but especially, *especially* the violence (against people) numbers, amounts, and types -- to the overt violence and destruction that has been consistently enabled, encouraged, and accomplished against black people (and often their allies) by white supremacists (which in some places is still most white people) and the white-advantaging, black-disadvantaging power structures in our nation and in our cities.

AND the violence (remember: against people) perpetrated by protestors is in every instance VASTLY LESS than the violence perpetrated by the police, who are sometimes just *starting shit* without waiting for "provocation" or any actual physical threat. Why is the violence from protestors getting all your condemnation, but the often (cough cough) "proactive" (aggressive), and always larger and meaner, violence by the police is not?

It is notable that these demonstrators are very few threatening anyone or anything with guns. (Hence FOX photoshopped the same white dude with a gun onto several scenes in the Seattle situation, to make it look scarier. So much for gun rights I guess.  Even white people aren't allowed to be visibly armed, if the rights they are protesting for are for *black* people.)

I'm not a proponent of violence or destruction. But if you weren't complaining BEFORE NOW, the whole rest of your life, about, and trying to stop, and fix, and prevent, the much vaster violence and destruction -- the much greater suffering -- that was forced onto the black community in **all the other years** (AND STILL IS, witness a cop murdering a non-aggressive black man in the goddamn middle of this social crisis ... pretty sure I haven't heard of any black people murdering a cop during the protests, not even an armed and dangerous cop who was threatening them, which is thousands of opportunities a day in this country right now, not *even* lynching the one that slowly and with apparent personal satisfaction and zero remorse choked the death out of a black man, when white people lynched black men for nothing and everything) ... 

... if you weren't *more* outraged by all the earlier violence and destruction against fellow Americans, it's not reasonable to suddenly "find Jesus" and be some kind of moral pacifist 'in alignment with your political beliefs' now.   Your 'political beliefs' clearly value property and the current power structure over people's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (but mostly over "life," let's just start with the most basic one) and JUSTICE.

Yeah, I'm against destruction, and I think it's generally morally wrong unless for real it is a move toward something better.  I wish people wouldn't burn Target.  I don't see how that moves the needle in the right direction.  I wish people wouldn't loot, but I can kind of see the justice of impoverished people looting, in the big picture, even while I mourn the livelihoods of the business people involved.  Burning that precinct -- after there was noone inside -- or trying to burn the Justice Center in Portland, when the few people inside that night could be expected to escape -- those made some sense as political statements and effective actions, against public structures and investments that *actively hurt black people in those locales.*  I'm still not down with destruction, but ... when there is evil, and it's entrenched, sometimes destruction is necessary.

DESTRUCTION OF THINGS IS NOT MORALLY EQUIVALENT TO DIRECT MURDER AND TORTURE-ABUSE OF PERSONS.

If you want to condemn some Americans for their violence, black people are not where to start to root out the problem.  Almost all black people have been conscientiously and deliberately choosing NOT TO TRY TO KILL the rest of us for 150+ years, despite having an arguable moral right, in the Old Testament sense (tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye), to *totally* do so.  Black people generally have consistently shown amazing humanity and restraint in the face of bald racism and hundreds of years of dehumanizing violence tolerated by their nation.  The fact that they've always trusted that actually, someday, the rest of us would finally step the fuck up is remarkable, and pretty much based on nothing in history.  It's an act of faith they chose and choose, and a gift of grace they offered, and offer, to the rest of us.

"But ... but ... the violence and destruction and looting!!"

Yeah, no.  Step up to fix the root causes, every day, at all levels.  If and when you have helped build a better system, so that the violence from the system pushed on black people is smaller than the violence done by black people protesting for justice and rights and basic safety, *then* you can totally complain about those evil looters and be taken seriously.  

Except, oops, there won't be any ... which is the implied goal of your freak-out, right?  

No protestors wreaking violence and destruction?

Win-win.

Why rejecting the idea of abolishing the police is intellectually dishonest

Pointing out the logical gap:  It is not necessarily true that the police need to exist, so people wanting to abolish police forces is not logically inherently worrisome.  It's worrisome based on fears, not reason.

If public safety and services can be more effectively and humanely delivered/ acquired/ designed in other ways (which we don't know yet because alternative solutions have not been tested), why is there a concern -- why logically -- with the police eventually being abolished?  Some version or part of the police might end up being socially necessary.  OR, we as a society, maybe we as a species, have just not asked the question seriously enough before and so have not yet innovated and tested less damaging answers.

We change how we answer social-management questions all the time.  Overall, that change is toward more recognition of individuals' right to manage their own lives, and our shared responsibility to help others when accident and circumstance lands them with need they cannot themselves supply.

Some activists are calling for abolishment.  Acknowledging that I (currently, personally) see a real need to police ourselves as a society, I don't see that a police force is necessarily the best answer for that.  

Abolishment should be on the table, and in some people's minds a goal, or we will never have cause to imagine how deeply we can unwind the authoritarian assumptions that keep us all enslaved to the current power-structure.

Acknowledging the possibility is necessary for most-effective discussion.

Parallel "necessary for the discussion" assertion in a very different arena:

I attended a conference about artificial intelligence development in vehicles in Michigan, with most of the attendees from the Midwest and a significant chunk from the NE.  I was the only West Coast attendee.  I was also one of maybe three people in the room whose impression was that truly autonomous vehicles were possible.  Most of the people I associate with, in related industries or on the streets, on the West Coast, believe that truly autonomous vehicles are at least possible, and lots of us believe they are basically inevitable.

The people at that conference, mostly researchers from academia and vehicle production companies, were seriously considering all sorts of mechanical, security, and social questions about the current situation and the future.  And maybe they were all right, and the West Coast research community is wrong, and cars will never get past level three or mayyyybe level 4.  BUT, because they couldn't seriously admit the possibility, there are reams of really important questions raised by others that they, and therefore all the demographics they each represent, are not really considering, and are not participating in the development of answers to.  And, they are not contributing their concerns by asking questions -- and given their apparent lack of trust in actually-autonomous machines, I can guarantee you that the questions they would ask, if they participated, would be qualitatively and importantly different than the questions *actually being asked* on research teams and in facilities on the West Coast, where generally we are (my quick-take impressions) either more optimistic or more resigned to the coming dystopia.

They have removed themselves from a conversation that might lead to radical social shifts in every aspect of life, because they reject at the start, "instinctively" (but not, since lots of other humans don't) the assertion that the change could ever be that deep.  They therefore risk people whose entire psychological approach to the question accidentally excludes them (optimism and resignation are neither of them deliberate exclusions of skepticism or pessimism) -- they risk that those thinkers, with an essentially foreign cultural-mindset, will make all of the decisions at the cutting edge of testing and implementation, just because those foreign mindset people believe the cutting edge, and the eventual goal, are way further out than the "sensible" people at that conference do.

In a third arena:

I can't get most artists to understand that no matter how cool computer art tools now are, until very recently they were exclusively built by mathematicians and logicians, not artists, and that means they serve a different type of mind and problem-solving process than most artists have/use.  As the computer-native generation comes into its own, that is already changing, but artists should be aware when they step into a computer programmer's best approximation of what they think the artists said they wanted, that that is *not* the same as what the artists wanted, and it limits the questions that can be asked artistically and the answers that can be levied.

I love the new computer tools; they can do really amazing, neat stuff.  But conceptualizing what the questions *look like* in the mind of The Other can teach you a lot about the tool that is proposed or handed to you.

And so: It is necessary to accept that abolishing the police is a legitimate consideration, and might be the best-case end goal, in order to participate honestly (in the mathematical/logical-honesty sense) in the change-discussions that are going on.

*And* rejecting the idea is just intellectually dishonest.  It's not at all apparent that it's impossible. It's definitely massively inconvenient to a lot of people's psyches and understanding of the world, and makes most people in America very, very uncomfortable.  But that doesn't mean keeping the police as such is either necessary or logical.

It might be the best solution.  It might be not the best solution but better than what we have going on.  It might be a very bad solution indeed (in which case I have little doubt that reimplementing a police force will be way less hard than dismantling it was).

It needs to be an honestly accepted part of the discussion.

COVID19: practical recommendations from our experience, before we forget

OK so.  This is meant to be a Very Useful Post about #COVID19, and a significant piece of closure about #KirstensCOVIDAdventure.

I've been gradually putting away the things that were brought out from storage to try to keep us as un-sick as possible.  A few days ago I put the items from my COVID Go Bag (which I'd packed for myself immediately after Lisa, my housemate, left in the ambulance) back in all the disparate places those items belong for more normal life-living; yesterday I finally cleaned off part of my sadly-neglected desk and was surprised how much accumulated 'clutter' was actually 'useful stuff that helped me survive' (but I was still relieved to put it away).

So, here are the things *I* recommend making sure you have on hand (highlighted in red), based on our experiences as sufferers of COVID19 and on mine as partial-caretaker of Lisa's worse case.  Orange stuff is what I think is vital management info, but is not a do/acquire item.

I might add to this list later.

DISCLAIMER: (hopefully obviously,) I AM NOT A DOCTOR.  This is all advice I am giving to friends, based on my experience.  If any of it seems edgy or not common-sense to you, check it by your doctor, or the latest published research, or all that sort of thing.  I'm pretty sure I thoroughly expose here my general outlook on medical care (I'm naturopathic more than allopathic), so ... let that color your 'listening' as your prejudices prefer.  You are forewarned.

SEVERITY NOTE: I had what I call "COVID-lite" -- still debilitating, but like half as bad as what Lisa had.  Lisa had the full shebang, a textbook-case, all the way up to pneumonia and hospitalization.

CHRONOLOGY NOTES:  For both Lisa and I, this was about how it ran:
--> 1st week, pre-bad: I had a strong sense I needed to quarantine asap and felt a little bit 'off', but that might have just been my intuition (but in any case I quarantined a little before it was required in my state).  Lisa felt actually somewhat sick, but didn't have clear COVID symptoms: "little dry cough - barely noticeable except for there being a pandemic on the way; then achy, headache, coughing more (dry). That last bit was just about 3 days then I felt better for 1 1/2 days and then I keeled over."
--> 2nd week, the first bad week, which I call the "fever week," because that was ALL that life was about for that week: fever on, fever off, fever on, fever off, sleep as much as possible, try to eat enough to survive.  Our brains lost competent functioning very quickly at the beginning of this week.  Lisa actually went from basically full-bore feeling great, moving great to literally keeling over with a high fever in the space of like 20 seconds, and then was almost-bedridden for the next three weeks.
--> 3rd week, the second bad week, the week after the fevers: the fevers broke, and for about a day and a half I think we each thought we might be getting better ... but then we clearly headed down some new slope instead, and Lisa began the descent into pneumonia; by the end of this week she was in the ICU.
--> 4th week plus: we both turned the corner ... I recovered faster because I was less sick; after Lisa was well enough to clearly not need a ventilator and be getting better (although she still had pneumonia) they sent her home (3.5 days in hospital); she was using supplemental oxygen for a week+ after that.  Recovery was fairly steady, but so, so, slow.  Brain fog and general no-longer-justified exhaustion were real problems which were not resolving at pace with the rest of the health issues.  Still way more sleeping than one would think could possibly be necessary.

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COVID go-bag and supplies

A bag (or bags) to be your COVID go-bag(s), and check you know the whereabouts of everything that goes in it (see original post: https://www.facebook.com/krayhawk2/posts/1529352300565043).

You will need a separate bag for each member of your household that gets sick.  It needs to be a sturdy oversized cloth shopping bag or a mid-sized duffel, because you or your person will, if put in the ICU, be 100% physically isolated except from the occasional medical personnel, so sending a laptop or a tablet, if you can, or at least a smartphone, and all the charging cordage, is pretty important for their sanity (and also, frankly, for yours, stuck at home knowing they might die), but that's also pretty heavy, and probably sharp enough to cut through non-sturdy bags, especially if it gets moved regularly while in the ICU room.  Locating such a bag or bags and making it/them easily reachable before you feel like crap or are panicking about your sick person is a good plan.

Please do read that Facebook post; there are a couple of items that most likely require preparation.

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Vitamin and mineral supplements to have on hand

Summary: A, C, D, zinc, and maybe iron are my takeaways.

2a)  A, C, D: As far as I can tell, these are both the obvious immune/health ones, and they have universal(?) yeses from medical-types.  Read up/talk to your doc about how much and when of each to take, prophylactically and/or during a fight with this COVID bug.

Myself, I pretty much slammed vitaminC in pill, Emergen-C, and juice form for the first few days of being sick (when I still had enough brain to kind of pay attention ... Lisa, with a much worse case of COVID19, only had that much brain for about the first day).  For many years I've used juice-based application of vitaminC directly to throat-cells to stave off all throat-itch-starting infections (or to treat throat/cough things I didn't catch early enough) -- I use half cranberry juice, half orange juice, and usually also a packet of Emergen-C, very warm (I call it a "vitamin C bomb").  Since I started doing this I have pretty much avoided getting sick in my lungs, so maybe(?) it was one of the things that helped me keep COVID out of my lungs (I never had any lung-gunk in my bout with this bug, thank God).

ADDED 4/28 because the pre-print result I'm about to link reminded me:  I also got a lot more consistent about taking vitamin D in the days after things started sounding serious for my locale, and tossed in some vitamin A's as well ... https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/first-data-published-covid-19-severity-vitamin-d-levels/

2b)  Zinc: There were early rumors of zinc being useful, but I couldn't find any explanation of why, then I heard and saw nothing about it for a long time, then there was ONE FRIKKING VIDEO from some doctor-type in response to the COVID treatment discussions, explaining that zinc -- when it can get into our cells, which is known to be tricky for it -- *stops viruses from replicating* (apparently one of those things you learn in medical school that it never occurs to doctors to explain to patients when they say, 'oh, and take some zinc for that viral infection' ... sigh).  Which I presume is why zinc is always recommended during flu season ... !  So that feels pretty important to buy, and maybe take prophylactically, although the video was actually explaining how chloroquine has in some study or other significantly helped the zinc get into the cells, because zinc has such a hard time getting into cells, so adding zinc to your body-system without a cell-wall-affecting something else does some good, but is not as revolutionary as "stops viruses from replicating" sounds.

Here is the video, which is decently understandable but hopefully someday someone remakes it with better clarity for the lay audience:  https://youtu.be/U7F1cnWup9M

(Some of my readers will remember that Lisa was put on a 5-day course of chloroquine, but it was started at the time she was already making a turnaround, and she, in her words, “didn't notice any improvement that wasn't already in progress.”  And neither did I.  During this period she had serious sleep disturbances/nightmares and terrifying anxieties which in real-time complicated her breathing during a time when she was still pneumatic … nightmares and severe anxiety are apparently pretty common side effects, we heard from many people who had taken chloroquine in Africa as an anti-malarial … these symptoms lasted past the course of chloroquine, so we can’t be sure they were side effects of the drug, but gosh DARN she did not need complications with breathing, and I, personally, blame the drug >:(.  The side effects of that chloroquine-related hydroxy-whatever drug Trump keeps touting are reportedly even worse, so ... do real thinking and research before you make your choices about these drugs, if your doctor recommends them.  At least be aware.)

2c)  Iron:  So this one is super-sketch as a "medical" recommendation, so I'm going to explain myself and my choices, and obvi you will need to make your own. I know that thought-article I posted on Fb that made me choose to dose with iron was written by an asshole, and some of it didn't make sense (it even earned itself a "false news" notification across the Facebook platform), but the symptomology he was describing closely matched the set of [my experience + what I observed of Lisa's experience + a lot of what I've read] ... 

So: At the time I read and shared it, something being wrong with my hemoglobin supply/ functioning (even if what was wrong was probably not his guess/ description for what was wrong) was a good candidate for explaining my then-remaining brain fog and general baseless exhaustion, which weren't getting noticeably better like all the directly-virus-induced symptoms were ... an ongoing lack of adequate oxygenation would cause those two symptoms, though ... so I took 48 hours of the only iron supplement I had on hand (prenatal vitamins from 2006 : P, so, 250% RDA each day, for 2 days), to test the hemoglobin-damage theory without injuring myself by taking too much iron, and just after 24 hours everything suddenly mostly cleared, and by the end of my personal 48 hour trial I was feeling basically normal.  Lisa also humored me and tried it (that article did not, of course, induce great trust), and her brain fog also cleared, but she feels, and I admit, that this getting better could easily have been within the scope of her overall getting better, so it can't be attributed cleanly to the iron supplementation.  BUT ... two days of iron supplementation to get my brain and body back to functioning was a pretty low risk, and I think the asshole guy is onto something quite true with the 'something goes wrong with oxygen delivery in the whole body' theory, even if his specific causal guesses are ... questionable.  Anyhow, if you buy an iron supplement and you don't normally need one, you can buy small, but don't buy cheap -- bio-availability is important, and nausea from taking the cheap kind is really unpleasant.  Read your labels <3.  Possibly just ask around: if a friend is willing to give you, if you get sick, two days worth of iron they already have around, you are covered.

With trepidation, but because it was pertinent to my decision-making, here is the obnoxious-person article that triggered me to try temporary iron-supplementation, because it made me consider that ongoing oxygen lack might be causing the problems my immune system seemed unable to resolve with its otherwise-remarkably-effective immune-functioning:  http://web.archive.org/web/20200405061401/https://medium.com/@agaiziunas/covid-19-had-us-all-fooled-but-now-we-might-have-finally-found-its-secret-91182386efcb

ADDED 4/28:  More and more reporting is coming out this last week about generalized damage in the body from lack of oxygen ... which def serves to support my impression that this guy was onto something important with *something* being all messed up in the oxygen-delivery system.  The reporting thus far still is focussing on the idea that the oxygen isn't getting through the lungs, but I had no lung-gross issues (and with a 20+-year-history of lung/bronchi infections, I have a very visceral sense of what stuff in my breathing system feels like) ... I agree with the asshole author that the delivery system is a better guess for where the kink in the system is.  Hopefully docs take a look at this sooner rather than later ... 

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Heat pad(s) of your preferred sort 

SUPER IMPORTANT during the fever-week.  I had my rice neck-pillow here (thank goodness we got a microwave this winter!!), but I definitely wished I'd had my big 24x48 rice blanket ... the good news there is that I left it at the farm (because we didn't have a microwave here until recently), so my parents can use it if they get sick.  Lisa used a normal plug-in heating pad.  If you use the latter, remember you are technically not supposed to rest or sleep *on* it (which is one of the many reasons I prefer a rice pillow -- not even a minuscule chance of fire or electrocution ;) ).

The heating pads were in use the fever week, so neither of us have super-clear memories about using them ... *both* of us did the "OH YEAH.  Those were TOTALLY IMPORTANT.  What ... for?!" thing last night, when I found my neck pillow in my desk stack ... but here's what we remember:  This had to do with back pain.

3a)  My back pain + heat story, with COVID-lite: I had a regular-level set of fevers (100-101ish), cyclically, for basically a week, which means significant and basically never-ending inflammation, so all my normal inflammation spark-points acted up.  Among these were my lower back (another thing I left at the farm: my insulating back brace, because I wear it while lifting stuff there ... boy did I miss that thing!) and my since-I-was-13 neck/shoulder tension (which I had ironically just finally gotten to release(!) in like February -- it screamed back to life, plus some!, with the fevers).  My rice-pillow basically rotated between my lower back (I tied it in place by wearing my robe over it) and my shoulders (also under the robe, for maximum heat-retention).  Besides pain relief, it helped relax the muscles, which felt like they were -- aside from the inflammation problem -- low-level seizing just basically all the time that week.  Sleeping with it, where the heat would be retained and time-extended under the blankets, was also key -- for the pain, and for my ability to sleep by lessening the pain.

3b)  Lisa's back pain + heat story, with full COVID: Lisa had the 'textbook' scary case of COVID19, with high fevers (103/104) cyclically for basically a week.  She remembers and reports that the heating pad helped her back relax, which helped ease or prevent some of the coughing, which helped her sleep.  I can tell you as the caretaker I observed that it helped her sleep, and that she said at the time both that it relieved pain and that it helped with the coughing, and I'm pretty sure (observing from outside, but with some prejudice from my experience) that the pain it was relieving was basically low-level seizing along the spine: it looked to me like the spine was visibly stiffening up unless and until heat was applied.

3c) Added Dec 17 2020, because I was reading a Tumblr post about "hysterical strength" from and I have NO IDEA if this is actually true but the back spasms definitely felt dangerously strong when I had them that this quote reminded me of my back spasms.  So ... yeah.  Just seriously, make sure sure sure you have a heating pad please:

--> ADDED JAN 2022: I really thought I'd aded this last year: YES THIS IS ACTUALLY A THING FOR REAL, a friend whose husband gets seizures because of epilepsy told me (when I posted about it once) that their docs emphasized this as a reason to definitely always very faithfully take the anti-seizure meds.  So, yeah, that's a thing.  Now y'all know.
 

4

Other heat-related things

Hot showers*, lots of blankets, big fuzzy robes, flannel sheets not smooth sheets, fuzzy blankets, hot drinks (all your drinks should at least be warm, even things you don't normally drink warm) ... basically, what you would need in order to try to be comfortable being snowed in without an adequate heating system for a week.  Fevers are your body's main way of killing viruses (well, since zinc can't get into our cells easily.  Apparently.).  (Yes, I'm still grumpy that this is not a commonly known medical fact.)  Physical brain damage does not occur until about 106 (ask your doctor to confirm and all, but this was told personally to me and to Lisa under wildly different circumstances by different, competent, mainstream doctors -- Lisa's was direct advice about management of her COVID case), so 104 seems scary as hell but it's not physically dangerous (unless you injure yourself because of fever-dreams/ hallucinations).  So support your fevers, don't fight them.  Stay wrapped in all the layers.  Take hot showers (this gives your body a break from producing the necessary heat).  If you have a caretaker, they will probably have to work to keep you covered, because sometimes you will want to throw the blankets off (other times you will feel like you can't get warm enough no matter how many blankets there are).  If you can stand sleeping with blankets over your head, or even just a handtowel (might be less trapped-feeling), keeping your breath warm and moist is a task that needs any attention you can give it.

*  Hot showers: please buy a reliable shower seat or find a borrowable one in your friend group if you have even a little bit of mobility issues and/or can't sit, for whatever reason, in your tub or shower stall.  Does a plastic chair you have around your home fit securely in your shower?  STANDING IS SOMETIMES NOT SAFE while fevering.  Both Lisa and I had episodes where dizziness was a real issue in the shower.  Lisa says she sometimes instead sat on the toilet with the hot water running -- an impromptu sauna.  If I'd had my small teak stool here (instead of in my storage unit) I might have used that for a shower seat.

Random notable symptom note:

Related to keeping breath warm and moist: At about the time the fevers were ending and the after-week (where you think you might be getting better but you really are not yet) started, Lisa said, "I feel like I need two glasses of water: one for my stomach and the other for my mouth."  I've no idea what the pathology of the symptom is, but there was no truer statement at the time: no matter how hydrated we were working to be, and even right after we'd just drunk a lot of fluid, dry mouth was such a thing!  Gross, and irritating, and who needs the extra aggravation while trying not to fucking DIE?  Anyhow.  No recommendation there, but now you are forewarned.

5

Electrolytes
(but avoiding sugar is probably important)

Whatever you can stand.  Hydration is FUCKING HUGE with this bug, especially that fever week.  You will not succeed no matter how hard you try -- this bug causes constant huge peeing (more about that later) -- but you should (obviously) try as hard as you can to stay hydrated anyhow.  The big tub of (green) Gatorade powder ended up being the least-gross overall in this household; most electrolyte solutions are way too frikking sweet, and most of those are because of actual sugar.  You will have to drink too much electrolyte stuff for the amount of sugar in those drinks; being over-sugared felt really bad ... what was fueling our fevers was apparently not sugar (it was apparently largely or all body fat ... more on that, also, later).  I cut the electrolyte solutions by half with water and that mostly worked.

My fancier health friends make their own electrolyte solutions to avoid all the sugars, fake sugars, food colorings, and general artificial-food nature of most storebought electrolyte solutions; as I recall, using potassium salt is a key thing ... ?  This would be a useful skill and knowledge-base to look into now, so you already know what you think about it and what you plan to do about it *before* anyone in your household gets sick.  Any friend who is into "fasting" in any vaguely healthy way can probably point you to some info about making a well-balanced electrolyte solution, or if you're lucky, your doctor will be aware and point you in a medically-vetted direction.

I've sometimes heard milk also counts as an electrolyte replenisher, for athletes?  I drank some of that too, although more to try to intake a little protein than to address the electrolytes problem ... Lisa did not, since milk is a mucous/coughing trigger.

ADDED 4/28:  News has recently begun talking about GI tract infections with COVID ... I now suspect (my intuition is not valid medical guidance, and all that) that my instinct to avoid sugars was related to not stressing my gut when it would have to be fighting off the virus ... anyhow, I'm glad to have a reasonable reason attached to my intuitive actions.

6 

Naturopathic'y / old wives wisdom stuff, or modern meds or tools:

for symptoms

6a)  Symptoms that are known from general reporting or at least logical from general reporting:  You will need meds of your preferred sort for:

Wet, non-productive coughs, and dry coughs.  Homeopathics for both of those helped Lisa be able to sleep.  Fever week was dry coughs, the following week was wet coughs.  (Result is usually about 20 minutes after taking them, and sudden and subtle so you don't notice it happening but you do at some point notice it worked.)  I took Chestal (also homeopathic) syrup preventively.

Anything that normally causes you aches and pains, because the inflammation will aggravate ALL OF THEM.  For me I knew from past experience that my inflammation-issues are toothache (I have a funky filling or something), lower back pain, headaches, and incontinence (a car accident in 2001 did some nerve-pinch thing in my lower back ... which is most of the time fine, but not when inflamed!).  So I had all those types of homeopathic sugar-dots on-hand anyhow (I usually carry them in my purse!).

Standard anti-inflammation meds also tend to cut fevers, so, logically, DON'T take those if you can relieve your pain(s) some other, non-fever-stopping way (see again #4).  If you are going to take an anti-inflammatory, Lisa reminds me that there was a big fluster about NOT taking one of the normal anti-inflammatories with COVID (ibuprofen or acetaminophen? please check with your doc this was actually Very Serious Official Medical Advice about real-time liver damage or something really important) ... this wasn't an issue for us because we were avoiding fever-reduction meds, although we both -- under normal circumstances -- sometimes take them for pain-reduction.

I use homeopathics, because they work with your immune system to help your immune system tune in on the things that need fixing, instead of modern meds, which are mostly designed to stop uncomfortable symptoms but don't help relieve the underlying issues.  Homeopathics, if you are not already familiar with them, take some (big) leaps of faith, and the sugar pills take some learned techniques for proper/ effective administration, so please seek (preferably via a tele-appointment with a well-reviewed or well-recommended naturopath) the needed knowledge if you are going to try them <3.

A friend sent me mustard-plaster mix (yes, that is very old-skool, I don't even think I knew people were still using it), which, when it was sent, was expected to help clear up chest congestion and coughing, but then I got better instead of getting worse, so when I did try it, it was to try to clear a chest-tightness more like asthma ('pretty sure it was a fear-reaction) than it was an illness-symptom ... but, it worked on that too, so ... now you've heard!  Who knew?!  (Also, I'm just going to mention that every single scene in an old movie about putting a plaster on someone's chest is about a male, which I'd never really thought about until I tried the plaster.  It turns out that them always being males was for the very practical reason that filming a female getting a mustard plaster would have landed the production company an indecency charge, lol!)

6b)  Inversion:

An old medical practice that fell by the wayside for whatever reasons:  if you rest with your head below your lungs, germy stuff and fluid clears out your mouth via gravity instead of packing itself more and more tightly into your alveoli via gravity, and gravity is (obviously) non-negotiable.

COVID19 pneumonia, especially if it progresses to ARDS and especially-especially if it progresses to the "cytokine-storm," is logically a worst-case scenario for sitting upright, and not great for laying flat, especially on your back.  Normal pneumonias suck and can kill you but don't regularly do the 'turn your lungs into completely fluid-packed bricks' nightmare-COVID thing; they (as far as I can gather) 'just' (just!?!) fill your alveoli (air sacs) except in very rare cases where they progress to ARDS.  Propping the patient up at a 30 or 45 degree angle is the standard advice (standard-enough that many of us know it even if we haven't had pneumonia ourselves) to help them breathe ... I presume (in normal pneumonias) this partially-reclined position concentrates the fluid blocking the lungs in as small a total area as possible, maximizing the area of oxygen-exchange while one's immune system is (hopefully successfully) fighting the germs.

There are not as far as I have seen any tests of inversion going on, and Lisa didn't get ARDS, so I have zero idea how effectively this would clear the lungs in an extreme case, but any clearing of the lungs (especially if it might help avoid the trauma of an intubation or the full-bore lung-lock-up of the cytokine storm) seems logically like it's a good plan ... ?

Real-time, albeit anecdotal, tests:  COVID/Lisa:  We didn't think of inversion at home, but Lisa used her adjustable bed in the ICU to gently invert herself (like 5 degrees, she said) and said it really helped with breathing.  Historical/me:  I eventually figured out inversion when I used to get bad chest colds or bronchitis (nearly every year for like 20 years, ugh), with great (if gross) success in clearing the nasties, and (more importantly!) after I discovered it, it was a significant aid to my relative quality and quantity of sleeping.

Pro tips to make this less disgusting (drainage might occur ... and lung drainage is inherently gross : P) and simple to implement at home, while reading or sleeping:  You will need to lie on your side or belly.  Add an extra pillow or two under the hips (make it comfortable!), with the goal to minimally but decidedly get the lungs pointed down-and-out toward your head (the only large-scale escape-holes available for mucous etc.).  Put a hand-towel where your face will be, to catch any drainage with minimal dirtying of the bedding (if you are awake you will probably instinctively swallow it, but if you are sleeping you probably won't), and if you think there will be quite some bit of drainage, have several replacement handtowels easily reachable for quick-changes.  Best case to avoid coughing and waking yourself up (you will need as much sleep as you can manage, with COVID19) is to put the handtowel half-on, half-off the side of your pillow and sleep on your side, with your ear and most of your head on that edge of the pillow, and your mouth and nose as the lowest point of your breathing system.  Avoid making your ear/sinsuses lower than the back of your throat; you definitely do NOT want ANY of the germy mess to leak into your sinuses for any reason -- if it gets out of your lungs+throat, it needs to get out through your nose and mouth.

(Gross gross gross, I know.  But, sleep is vital and pretty much forced during COVID19, so a realistic method of coping-while-sleeping is what I'm passing on.  Getting sicker is definitely worse than more grossness.)

6c)  Another awkward specific symptom, which raises kidney/liver concerns:

There is SO MUCH PEEING -- and it's real pee, not just water that technically passed through your system: yellow and smelly.  The fever week it was basically every three hours.  When I was sick I enjoyed thinking this must be all the dead germ bits being victoriously excreted (yay!), but after I got better it was clear that metabolizing my fat stores, and whatever unpleasant garbage was stored in the fat cells besides fat (sometimes a mammal body stores toxins in fat) was probably most of the cause of this continual excretion.  (My pooping was very boring, although I understand some COVID patients experience diarrhea.)  (By observation, Lisa also peed often, especially the fever week.  I did not ask her about her pee.  'Figure we should have SOME boundaries!)

-->  Action item: Clear the path from the sick person's bed to the toilet, or, if easier, make them a temporary bed with easy access to the bathroom.  Walking is not a reliable skill, especially the fever week.  Also consider the path to food and drink.

-->  Potential health concern:  From the peeing amount and color I derive that the kidneys and/or the liver were working SUPER OVERTIME during COVID, especially the fever week.  It would be logical, then, to do everything one can to support the health of their liver and kidneys now, as an investment in case of COVID.  I'm sure there are both allopathic and alternative medicine approaches to supporting the function of these organs, but I don't know what they are, because I didn't know it was a concern until after it was too late to worry about it -- but next time you talk to your preferred doctor, maybe ask about kidney and liver health supports.


ADDED 4/28:  COVID reporting is lately including serious damages to, or failure of, kidneys and liver as quite common (like 40%'ish of cases in hospitals, common, with unknown effects of non-hospitalized cases), but just underreported before because the world was focused on the pneumonia part.  That makes "talk to your preferred medical authority about kidney and liver health supports now, before you get sick" legit medical advice!  Please make sure you do <3!

7

Naturopathic'y / old wives wisdom stuff: 

for general/anti-virus* immune support, a miscellaneous list

A friend sent Lisa yarrow/elderberry tea, which I'm totally willing to believe helped, but we were mid-fever so I have no specific observations about that.

Garlic is all kinds of good for immune-boosting, I've always been told, and naturopathic and allopathic docs seem to agree.  So, while you can still talk yourself into eating, maybe eat that ... I have a friend who said he was eating raw garlic cloves every day in hopes of not catching this bug (so far so good ... ).  Because I am an inveterate reader of Good Housekeeping, I will pass on that about 15 or 20 years ago they published a note about a study that found that all the fancy important nutrition stuff that eating raw garlic gets you can also be achieved by eating cooked garlic, if you let it sit for 10 minutes after chopping before you cook it -- there's some enzyme reaction or other that frees up the good stuff.

A friend recommended thyme and oregano in oil, which can be taken by dipping a bit of bread or cracker into it, for clearing the air passages ... THIS WORKED IN REAL TIME, frighteningly well, actually: the second or third dipped scrap of toast swallowed produced an astonishingly uncomfortable burning sensation in my throat and nasal passages, which was always sudden-onset, but after I learned to stop at one or two, I just got 'healthy feeling' without 'burning and weird.'  (Edited to add: Since I only had grumpiness in my throat and nasal passages, and not my bronchi or lungs, I can't speak directly to effects in grumpy bronchi or lungs.  But I would expect it to affect them as well.)  ADDING JAN 2022: A friend who has paid more attention than I have to essential oils and such, says oregano oil can be mixed with coconut oil to cut the burn.  If you have essential-oils friends, it might be worth asking them about this technique.

Most years I keep on hand a couple of packets of this crazy herbal-soup anti-viral* stuff from my naturopath (big dried chunks of plants, not powdered bits, this stuff), but I was all out when COVID hit, so I can't say whether it would have helped or not ... but your local naturopath or Chinese herbalist or etc. can probably hook you up with at least a good list of herbs, and steer you to alternatives if you have allergies (I'm allergic to several virus-fighting* standards).

And of course if you eat meat, chicken soup made with bone broth** (and garlic!) is always good ... oregano and thyme are easy (and non-painful!) to take in chicken soup ... and when I'm sick, I add just a pinch of cayenne, to clear all my breathing.  (The first thing I cooked after my fevers cleared was a big pot of chicken soup.  I have no idea if it materially helped with our immune reactions.  It was tasty enough that we ate it, though, which was no mean feat for any food at that point, see (8), below.)  (Added 4/28: Please buy yourself an organic and/or pasture-raised chicken, or whatever is the maximally 'healthy' chicken you can acquire, for bone broth.  Minimizing rando chemicals and maximizing the chances the animal had a full and healthy life should, just chemically and ignoring any other concerns, be paid attention to when you are planning to eat a broth specifically because it pulled everything even vaguely water-soluable out of the bones of the animal!!)

*  "Anti-viral" / "virus-fighting" in this section means, "supportive in a manner than helps one's immune system better be able to fight viruses" ... as far as I know none of them actually outright "fights" the viruses ... although I don't know about that oregano oil!  It might kill anything exposed to it for too long ;).

**  Bone broth: simple but tedious.  Ask a keto friend, or any super-natural-foods non-vegetarian friend, to teach you. 

8

Food

This is a weird one, and one of the things that sets this virus apart from any other illness experience I've had or witnessed (I am the oldest of five kids and I have four kids, so ... yeah.  I've pretty much observed, in myself or close-up in people I was taking care of, all the non-novel, non-vaccine, non-STD germs at some point in my 45 years).  Many people with COVID19 -- definitely Lisa and I -- have some loss of smell and/or taste sensations, AND, as I think a separate pathology/symptom, some version of a loss of appetite:

I had basically anti-appetite ... it was this weird opposite of being hungry that I never before knew existed ... the concept of food or eating just was really unpleasant, even if I was hungry (mostly I wasn't).  Lisa says "I was very hungry at times but couldn't eat. Nothing sounded edible/good and when I did eat, everything tasted like a wet sponge" (she completely lost her senses of taste and smell during the fever week).  Some medical people are calling this loss-of-appetite symptom 'anorexia,' which *functionally* it sort of is, but it's not at all psychological, it's a really physical reaction, and sudden-onset, so I think it needs a different name.

Lisa had complete loss of smell (I accidentally tested this with something very good-smelling; it was true: nothing!) and reported at the time that she had an absolute loss of taste (dunno if this was just smell-based or actually total).  I didn't lose smell, but did somehow at the same time for two days lose all smell-related taste *even though I could smell the food* ... as if the neurological connections were somehow just not connected or something?! ... it was very weird, and it was the first time in my life that I truly believed to the core of my being that the tongue only has sensors for salt, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami, because those were *all* I could taste (this made the very-sweet electrolyte solutions particularly unpalatable at full strength).

Ok, so, in application: if you get COVID19:

8a)  You are likely to have a hard time forcing yourself to eat.  Choose your battles.  You are unlikely to be able to eat enough calories even for normal-times, and definitely not for fever-maintenance (more on this will follow).  I focused on protein, but someone with less fat stored might need higher-calorie solutions to maintain the fevers: fat (high calorie) and/or sugar (easy access).  Again, I'm pretty sure sugar is a really bad idea with this one ... it just felt bad bad bad, and I couldn't tell you whether that was intuitive or physical or both, but ... I just hope you can manage with minimal sugar.  I don't know why.  Sugar felt fine in the recovery stage.  Just not while I was sick.  I actively didn't want *chocolate* (even very-not-sweet chocolate) during the fever week -- if you know me, you know this really says everything about how instinctively I was avoiding sugar.  (Lisa mentions that sugar is supposed to be avoided when sick because it feeds germs.  I'm pretty sure it only feeds bacteria, not viruses, and can help maintain fevers in viral infections in general -- "feed a fever, starve a cold"? -- and don't usually avoid it for viral infections ... for flus a weak sugar solution is often all I can intake without barfing on the worst days.  Ask your doc if the question concerns you.  But in any case I personally think you should avoid sugar for *this* virus.)

(ADDED 4/28: see note added at end of section 5 for a possible medical connection on sugar)

8b)  (This is food-related, just wait for it to come back around.)  Once the fevers start, you will be sleeping ALL THE TIME.  Like, ALL THE TIME.  And when you are awake you will have basically no brain and will be exhausted despite all the sleeping.  Lisa could do about 20 minutes of standing in the kitchen, AT BEST, before barely making it to bed before she literally collapsed; I could do about 40 minutes to an hour ... once a day ... and then a couple of other times each day maybe 10 minutes.  Total time awake during both the fever week and the week after was like 2.5 hours a day, and I'm almost not exaggerating that most of that 2.5 hours was peeing and washing hands (especially since washing hands was additionally happening during attempted kitchen activities).  So not only will you actively not-want-to-eat, you basically won't physically be capable of feeding yourself.  You now have the warnings we didn't!

So: buy healthy convenience foods (frozen or canned) that you don't hate, enough for two weeks if you have the space, or enough for one week (the fever week) if you have friends you can rely on to shop for you after you get some parts of your brain back when the fevers stop and can text them a semi-coherent shopping list.  (The fever week you might eat only one half-meal a day, total, so if you buy for what you think of as "one week" it might last 1-2/3 weeks in real application ... #win?)  Remember that if someone in your household gets sick, the rest of the household needs to quarantine too (hopefully separated as much as possible from the sick one), so if COVID sneaks up on you, have a friend do the shopping for your freezer burritos and canned pears.  If you have money to do so, ordering no-contact delivery food is a frikking perfect solution to this week of physically-can't-feed-yourself ... I did a giant sausage, pepperoni, and olive pizza, which I could kind-of taste the first day I got it (yay!) and then could actually taste on the following days (it was enough to break through Lisa's tastebuds as well; she says it being spicy helped) ... I expect a protein-heavy, strongly-flavored Asian dish, or maybe fried chicken, would also be tasty enough and protein'y enough to be useful for getting past the 'can't taste, want to not eat, minimal capability' syndrome ... and seriously, one normal takeout serving will probably get you through like three days.  If friends offer to send you food, that's a good time to ask for comfort food that's easily reheatable (hot = good) -- one of Lisa's favorite things she got sent was Kraft macaroni and cheese, all made up, in a plastic container ... I gather that being a comfort food made it easier to eat, even before she got her taste sensations all the way back.  She also adds that "key for me was broth + soft things" (cooked vegetables and cubed chicken in the soup were both good; we ate avocados; eggs in ramen).

8c)  Food-related, as I was reminded by that last item:  Buy a microwave if you don't have one.  Just do.  Or have a friend who is willing to do without theirs for three-to-six weeks, as well as deliver it to your home (contact-free) if you get sick. 

DO NOT FUCKING TRY TO "REALLY COOK."
JUST.  
DON'T.  
Your oven and stovetop should be cordoned off while you are sick, and until the brain-fog clears during recovery.  Possibly literally cordoned off.  I am so very not kidding.  Your brain will be fried ... super stupidly fried.  My brother called it "nuked by oxidation," which was a nice, solid, memorable image (in addition to being a new and interesting way to be called "stupid" by one of my brothers ;) ).  (Added 4/28: the county health guy, when they finally called Lisa, casually called it "COVID brain" ... so it definitely has acquired a use-name, and is expected by the persons calling diagnosed patients.)

Your judgment, decision-making, estimation, and physical coordination processes will all be pretty wrecked.  Yes, ALL of them.  Every.  Single.  One.

The likelihood that you will injure yourself or burn down the house is SO FUCKING REAL if you try to use a stovetop or an oven, and you don't want to need emergency anything in addition to COVID while you have COVID.

And even if you manage not to break, burn, or drop anything if you try to cook, or FORGET TO TURN OFF THE FUCKING BURNER, OR TURN ON THE WRONG BURNER, EVERY DAY FOR THREE DAYS (can you hear the side eye happening here?) (cough cough, hrmmm!) .... even if you miraculously avoid actual and dangerous physical mistakes while trying to cook, you will probably *literally* not be able to stand up long enough to complete a cooking task (Lisa couldn't even stand up long enough to *microwave* food, especially the fever week).

But: you should eat and drink hot food, or at least warm food, every time you can, especially while you are still fevering, so as much food heating as you can safely do should be done -- so, please acquire a microwave!!

(Lisa points out that one of those automatic hot-water pitchers would also allow for most heated drink needs, and probably can't burn a house down, and isn't a microwave.  She is probably correct.  But it wouldn't have been easily useful for reheating food.  And neither of us was safe with the stove.  But, if you can't fit/ afford a microwave, definitely, an automatic hot-water pitcher is a good punt.)

Also: at the end of being sick, as you get to feeling better and better, give yourself AT LEAST 24 (and maybe 48) hours after you *think* you are well enough before you actually try to use the stove or the oven ... then you will hopefully avoid the scalds and burns that both Lisa and I acquired, trying to cook too early in our brain-recoveries : P.  The brain fog is so much worse than your fogged brain will probably realize, and the first few days that you are getting better you feel SO MUCH better (relatively, because the bad was SO BAD) that you will not have objectivity on how actually still wrecked you are.

P.S.  A microwave is also necessary to heat rice pillows and rice blankets without over-drying them.  They naturally can provide a (gentle) wet-heat instead of the dry heat of an electric heating pad.  I much prefer a wet-heat.  

8d)  Calories:  Lisa and I both burned many pounds -- and inches -- of fat off.  All those things they've been saying the last 40 years about women naturally storing fat, especially in their thighs, for times of famine?  VERY VERY TRUE.  I've experienced it before in pregnancy and nursing, but never before in a one-week go.  With most viral fevers, I can eat sugar as a partial calorie support.  This one, that didn't feel right.  Apparently both our bodies just flipped immediately into some special fat-access survival mode, even though our fevers were quantitatively, medically different (mine: reasonable, Lisa's: very high/scary).  I always prioritize protein, especially when my body is under stress, but I think at least one day during the fever-week I was burning so much fuel so fast that I went into ketosis, so I'm especially glad that the food I was eating (besides pizza) was pretty much all-protein.  This logically means that women who are thin, whether naturally or on purpose, might be in for a different and possibly much harder ride than Lisa and I had if they get COVID19.  And I have zero idea how men's bodies deal with famine conditions.

I still have enough fat on my thighs and belly to probably (eyeballing it) ride one more session of COVID19 (if, as some are now suggesting, we can catch it more than once).  I might have serious thoughts about purposely building my fat stores back up if I catch it a second time and we don't yet have a vaccine to keep me from catching it a third time.  That's how extreme the fat-burn-for-survival was, for my body.

****  SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THE WEIGHT LOSS: This disease is FOR FUCKING REAL, and in case this post travels out into the public and you don't know Lisa and I: we are both pretty tough; COVID19 was not a joke even at half-strength (me), and even before Lisa got bad enough to send to the ICU her case was pretty consistently terrifying -- and people in other rooms in the ICU with her *did* die, painfully, unable to breathe in enough oxygen, and without any family or friends having seen them in person since they were admitted.  The weight loss is NOT(!) WORTH GETTING SICK, and is especially not worth risking the lives of your household, your community members, and your local medical staff.  *****

I include describing it because it was a significant part of our disease experience and our bodies' health/ immune reactions, and worth warning people about.  And again, I suspect this fat-burn might stress your liver/ kidneys.

9
Protecting others:

Garbage and recycling notes

Everything near a COVID patient is probably covered with virus.  Test results about how long the virus stays viable on various surfaces seem to range from from 3 hours to 21 days (not counting the [vents of the cruise ship] 35 day result as applicable, unless you keep something moist and dirty, with plenty of circulating air ... yuck).

You will end up with a bunch of physical refuse.  Please consider how to not endanger your neighbors (especially in an apartment building basement!) or your service people.  Here are the things we thought of:

9a)  Garbage: If you don't already bag your garbage in plastic bags that tie shut, buy some of those.  Your garbage people do not need to worry about COVID-messed things falling loose out of your can and getting blown onto them.  We figure garbage is never actually directly messed with by a human after us (enclosed in a bag, into the bin, auto-dumped in the truck, auto-dumped at the transfer station, and boy do I hope they are careful while they move it into containers to travel and then be auto-dumped at the landfill), so we tied this up got rid of this right away (using a disinfectant cloth as a 'glove' to open and close the shared collection-bin).

9b)  Recycling you didn't put your mouth on: We normally collect our recycling in paper grocery bags, so the whole shebang can go out into the bin.  Because in our city the recycling is sorted on a conveyor belt by actual humans, we are quarantining any bag of general (and clean) recycling for 21 days (the longest reputable-seeming number we've seen reported).

9c)  Recycling you've put your mouth on (all drink containers, eg., from electrolyte solutions): we are quarantining those for extra time just in case.

9d)  Compost: As far as I know, in our city this gets dumped from our can into the big truck, and from the big truck into the compost facility, and I'm hoping there is not a lot of fussing with it until it's sat for a bit being composted, but I don't know.  In any case, our compost basically contains scraps from food prep or food that got too old (a lot of that from the weeks we were sick!), and basically nothing anyone actually munched on nor that was in a room we spent much time in (we didn't sleep in nor near the kitchen), so the potential for COVID was reasonably low ... no really good solution here, as keeping the compost around for 21 days brings other health hazards, like rats and bugs and mold, so I've been putting it out in the green bin in real time.  But anyhow, please consider how to best minimize the risk of your COVID germs traveling to new people on your compost, too ... 

(Note: All of these would logically apply to general life, like wearing a mask and using disinfectant when we can't get to soap-and-water, if we assume we might be asymptomatic but contagious at any time.)

10

Protecting others:

General

If you share any living spaces with anyone, consider how to prevent physical transmission.  If you need to buy or make something for that -- eg., I now use disinfectant wipes as a glove on shared doorknobs and gate latches, and when opening the garbage bins, so my hands never actually touch any of those things -- buy or make what you need.  (Good practice for prevention in any case, really!)  (EDIT: later I switched to plain, dry paper towels, since the virus doesn't transfer well surface-to-surface anyhow.)

11

If your coughing gets very bad, you will need these awkward things

Hard or long coughing causes not only various sorts of pain (muscle pain, headaches, and potentially throwing your back out), but sometimes vomiting and/or incontinence.  Think about how you want to deal with these problems.  I'm old-school, so I tend to keep a bunch of old towels around and just switch them out whenever they get, shall we say, compromised (this requires at least one member of the household to be laundry-capable, though).  With COVID, it's probably better to go more modern (so another household member does not have to have significant contact with a germy mess): Chux pads, appropriately sized disposable diapers or serious pee-pads, I don't know what else.  This wasn't right away, more toward when pneumonia set in, so you might have time to ask someone to no-contact deliver these from the store for you before you need them, but ... be aware you might need them.

12

Bedding/laundry

There will be a lot of laundry, especially the fever week.  This is a problem, because the sick person will not be able to do it.  I've got no good solutions here -- we got through it because we both had COVID19, so I didn't have to worry about catching it, but I had a lesser case, so I was (barely) capable of doing the absolutely vital-right-now laundry (and the rest of it could wait until better days).  I hot-water-washed everything twice (this was probably overkill but I was watching my friend nearly die, so I wanted to make sure all the germs were very, very dead) and dried it on the highest non-destroying temperature.  We don't have an outdoor clothesline with which to take advantage of the whole UV-destroys-germs thing.

Among our recommendations on this topic: if the person has the high fevers, they will need a change of sheets often from the sweating, and a mattress-protector that actually works (without naming names, certain stores that depend more on looks than practicality to sell things have historically sold some really non-functioning mattress-protectors).  This might also apply if they get the hard coughing --> vomiting/incontinence problem.

13

Simple, but don't forget them: hygiene and disinfectant items

$6/bar fancy soap, like a goats' milk soap or "Grandma's" pure soap lye soap (it's a brand ... it's so, so good): you will (even if you can't imagine it now) wash your hands even more in a COVID-active situation than you already do.  These (I know, I know, $6/bar is ridiculous) will probably keep your hands from drying out, or at least reduce the need to moisturize to only 1x/day ... I converted during the years I was cloth-diapering my kids, to get my hands to stop cracking and bleeding because I was washing them so often.  (The best-ever soap for skin preservation was a Burt's Bees tomato concoction, but alas, I only found it once, many years ago.  Google tells me that the few remaining very small bars can now be had for prices between $26 and $50(!).)

Lotion (make sure you are not allergic to it by testing it *before* you need it!). 

Squeezy hand-disinfectant, if you can find or make it, and/or disinfectant wipes, if you can find/make them.  This way, per an earlier note, if anyone in the COVID household needs to enter shared space of any sort (eg., go in and out the front door to collect a delivered package or bags of groceries), that person can disinfect all pertinent surfaces (doorknobs, gate latches, mailbox keys, stair rails ... garbage can lids, the pen if anyone is still requiring signatures for package-delivery ... everything!).

Not obviously a hygiene item, but actually it is: If you can, acquire and implement one or more commonly used payment apps.  CashApp seems to be the functional standard(?), currently, and I've done PayPal from my computer.  Why is this a hygiene item?  Noone wants your potentially-COVID'ed cash handed to them when they are so wonderful as to deliver groceries or takeout to your household!  I alcohol-disinfected a check (and my hands, and the pen) and wrote someone a check for groceries because she (I gather) didn't have an app, and I'm confident that check was germ-safe ... but an electronic payment is *guaranteed* non-germy, is guaranteed instant (brain fog is pretty likely to foil you being a good friend and economic partner if you don't send the money right when someone tells you how much you owe them), and prevents someone needing to travel to a financial institution to physically deposit a material thing (cash or check).

14

Relationships: people preparation (also pets!)

14a)  Teach everyone you care about how to video-chat, and get them a device that is capable of it.  If they end up in ICU or if you do, you'll want to have capable devices on both sides.  Especially in case they never come back out alive.  Lisa, each evening in the ICU, with her very limited energy, video-called her three most important people.  Although I'm sure it was a real-time emotional support for her and them, I only later realized it was also just in case it became the last time ever.

14b)  The not-logically-solvable, but you will need to do your best to solve them as responsibly as you can in your circumstances, questions of direct care:  Except in weird circumstances, like mine and Lisa's, taking care of a COVID person significantly risks the life of the caretaker.

I was already sick.  I don't know what we would have done if I had not been already clearly sick with what I was sure was COVID, because Lisa really benefitted even from the limited care I managed, and it's not illogical that she ended up surviving because we kept her body strong enough through the first weeks to eventually successfully fight the pneumonia.

I can figure no logical solution to that.  

I've seen a NYC ICU doctor recommend basically a hands-off strategy, in a video apparently originally addressed to his extended family(?) around the country: *as much as possible,* noone in the household should enter the COVID room or share any spaces with the COVID patient.  But with a bad case, that COVID person will (based on my observations and what I've heard and read from others) not be able to take care of themselves (maybe if the room has a big box in which to throw dishes, trash, wet sheets, and empty drink bottles?  if there are not a lot of bugs in your home and it's not too warm? really, I can't figure it).

But what the doctor said is indeed the logical thing to do to try to stop the spread of the disease, and pretty clearly, no matter how terrifying the sickness is to experience with no or only minimal help, most people would prefer to avoid infecting the people they live with.

The only sort-of-happy medium must be based on this:  Most of the reliable-seeming authorities say only spending *concentrated* time, or a lot of time, in the germy air is really the bad idea, when infection becomes pretty much guaranteed, so any caretaker absolutely minimizing time spent in the germ-space is important.

Or, if it turns out our earned immunity lasts a decent amount of time, those of us who have kicked the bug could become itinerant caretakers.  I really, really hope there is some kind of reliable information about immunity soon.

14c)  If you don't have a care-person, or even if you do, and even if you are an introvert who prefers to pull in when sick instead of reaching out: keep contact with reasonable outside-your-home helpers, who are smart about practical health things *and* smart about your emotional state.  Lisa says: "Yeah, I called 911 myself, but if I'd waited until the next morning, I might not have been able to."  Your people paying attention to you will probably push you when it really is bad enough to call 911 (in Oregon, we were asked to wait until pneumonia starts ... it's a weird rattling-in-the-chest sound) ... and then if your helpers don't hear from you in a reasonable time that you did call 911, they will probably call 911 on your behalf!  Having reasonable, thinking helpers might straight-up save your life.

14d)  Prepare yourself to ASK FOR HELP -- graciously (although sometimes also desperately).  Even if you use this list, or other lists, and are in theory completely prepared, I can't imagine that you won't need help.  Help with pets, with relatives.  With groceries, with prescription-pick-ups.  With listening to your doctor (seriously, think about whom you can include on a conference call with your doc, someone who will take good notes and ask good questions and be reliable about sharing back to you the information you later can't remember because of the brain fog).  With just *remembering* stuff.  Set other people who care about you and are reliable as alarms if you have stuff you need to remember.  (Set your phone alarms too, and clearly label them ... but the brain fog is pretty likely to land you with a dead phone at least once -- if you manage to keep track of your phone -- oh, and you definitely need a person can reach out to you via multiple channels.)

14e)  PETS.  Make plans for your pets to get cared for!

Have enough food and other supplies (CAT LITTER!) for four weeks, or a friend who is willing to buy them for you and be paid back when you have a brain again.  

If you live alone, find someone who will agree to take your pets, or plan to keep yourself so much in a closed-door bedroom that it won't be screamingly dangerous (although still dangerous) for a friend to come feed and water them (and hopefully socialize with them) every day.  Between Lisa and I, we (barely) kept the pets fed and watered, that fever week ... starting the next week I was functional enough to do almost all of it.

14f)  Your will.  A good choice to get that done before you get sick.  You will definitely not manage it while you are sick, and while the chances are not high that you will die if you get sick, 1 in 50 or even 1 in 100 is still ... actually significant.  And in America, for whatever reason, doctors keep saying they are losing patients in their 20s and 30s, not just older people, so ... write a competent will.  This is a key part of caring for your people during this time of chaos.

14g)  Who are the people the hospital staff needs to know to contact in case of your incapacitation (for decision-making) or your death?  Make sure those people know you've designated them.  Make sure they are listed, with contact info, in big, clear print on the brightly-colored piece of paper attached to your COVID go-bag.  Make sure also they know about any decisions you have recorded on your Advance Directive or equivalent document (both in kindness and practically, your family should know these things before they come up).

(Note: although I mentioned it in my COVID Go Bag Facebook post, which I hope you clicked through to and read way back up at section (1), I note here in case you didn't: reading about what "being put on a ventilator" actually means, especially for a COVID patient since it's materially worse than a lot of ventilation scenarios, is ... educational.  Inform yourself.  And please fill in an Advance Directive or your state's legal equivalent, and print it on bright paper that can't be missed, and make sure your family -- and, if you are admitted, the ICU staff -- know its content.)

14h)  Maintaining social media and other social connection(s):  This will matter more to some than to others, but Lisa notes of making a daily Facebook update or two:  "Mental health wise, this was the best thing I did for myself. People knew I was sick. People would miss me if I was gone. Greatest fear: dying alone and no one knowing for days ... ".  

I was posting sporadic basic updates on Facebook.  A week or two in, I realized my friends who are exclusively on Twitter had no idea I was fighting a life-and-death battle, so I updated there.  It was a week or two more before I had enough brain to realize two VIPs not on any social media needed to also know.  It would not be a bad idea to consider who-all your need-to-know list is, and pre-plan your outreach, so some of your best people aren't potentially left to find out two weeks after you would have DIED, like two of mine were : P.  This is a reasonable item to plan to ask for help with, if you get sick.  Lack of energy and lack of brain will both affect your communication capabilities.

14i)  Consider responsible community care efforts, depending on your abilities in real-time and your general connectivity levels.  Item (14h) meant all of Lisa's 2000+ Facebook friends had access to a real-time reality-check on COVID being real, since people outside the outbreak hotspots often hadn't actually had anyone they knew get the 'dread disease,' and it's at some levels really unimaginable, no matter how many plague or cholera narratives one has read ... and a remarkable lot of that 2000+ people actually reacted or commented on her posts, so she was getting widely heard.  I posted some updates, although more focused on information and ideas and less on my (far less exciting) immune-journey, but I also used some of my limited socializing energy to give a solid talking-to to a few people on friends' pages who were blah-blah-blah'ing about COVID either all being a fake or it being basically 'nothing worse than a bad flu' ... .  

I hope between us we saved a few lives, either the lives of the readers who had otherwise chosen to feel invulnerable, or the lives of the people around them if they were even a little bit less blase' in their transmission-possible activities ... .  Almost more than preventing a few deaths, I hope we helped prevent a *lot* of accidental transmission and sickness.  A serious or semi-serious case of this is deeply traumatic for the sufferer and anyone who loves them.  Prevention is so worth it.

ADDED 4/28: As reporting from medical staff becomes more comprehensive, the long-term concerns for people who were infected but not hospitalized, as well as for those who were hospitalized, are growing.  With serious damage to liver, lungs, kidneys, heart/pulmonary system, brain/spinal cord, and GI tract so far noted, and increasingly noted as *common* in hospitalized cases, COVID infections have probably has created for GenX and younger a version of what [unguarded pesticide use + nuclear testing] created for Boomers: damages that will kill slowly, but generally will lower life expectancy by 20 years.  Every infection prevented is likely a life saved and a chronic health problem or three prevented.

15

Some things you probably won't need,

that might surprise you,

at least for the fever-week

Books, computers, TV, etc.  Seriously.  You will be sleeping, or too zonkered to read or watch TV even if you are awake.  This is a stare-blankly at the wall (or the ceiling) sort of sickness.  The week after the fevers you *might* be able to do some reading or TV watching, but nothing that involves heavy mental lifting.  Not much Facebooking.

If you don't die, you can ramp up on all those things during recovery, but expect it to be a real ramp.  When Lisa was in the ICU, it took nearly all her energy to call/videochat her three most important people each night, and write one longish or two shortish Facebook posts for the rest of us.  I think it was fully two weeks after the fevers ended before I attempted watching a TV show or movie that I wasn't already familiar with.

ADDED JAN 2022: The chatter about LongCOVID suggests STRONGLY that pushing either physically *or mentally* during the recovery period makes the chances of LongCOVID much higher.  Anecdotally, this tracks to Lisa (clearly has it; did the normal American "I feel so much better though!" thing) and me (probably doesn't have it; did the poverty "noone is going to keep me from dying but me" thing and was SUPER cautious about recovering).

--> COVID nervous system (includes brain) damage recovery at minimum needs to be treated with the same incredibly frustrating feels-WAY-too-long patience as a concussion, and probably that's true of all the other organ-systems as well.  Reading in "disability Twitter" is sad for how many post-virus folks are in the position to say "we've been telling y'all for so many years but noone listened" ... I hope hope hope y'all listen now.  LongCOVID is not a shocking new result, it turns out, just one that has been consistently denied since at least the 1990s (first time I read about the post-virus theory for CFS, although I didn't connect it to LongCOVID without disability activists speaking up).

16

Important things Lisa reminded me that I forgot:

I know there is at least one important thing I keep remembering when I am away from my computer but then forgetting by the time I get back to my computer, so this will probably get at least one edit at some point.  Here are some things Lisa reminded me of, some of which are solid duhs.  Commentary is mine, she just listed topic-names.

HOUSEHOLD MEDICAL EQUIPMENT:

--> Thermometer, if one (or one's doctor) will want to know numbers (I operate on a 'low, high, scary' basis, and haven't used a thermometer since a bunch of research around about 2010 showed that mothers can reliably identify fevers).  A thermometer is more important if you live by yourself, as fevers are definitely harder to read on oneself than on someone else.

[Side note/ pro-tip: there are in my mothering-observations two main brands of fevers, which can either or both be low, high, or scary: head fevers (test with your inner-forearm to the forehead), which Lisa's and my cases of COVID were both certainly producing, and gut fevers (test with your inner-forearm to the belly), which I didn't notice as significant with COVID, but with some germs a person can be running quite a high fever in their gut but have no discernible head-fever at all ... (this latter is another reason I stopped bothering with thermometers).]

--> Pulse oximeter (PulseOx).  Although important if someone gets as far as or worse than pneumonia, this is NOT a simple "Yes" item, but a "Yes, But ... " item!  [EDIT 4/28: important independent of pneumonia, actually, apparently, as some patients without pneumonia have presented with severe hypoxia]  I gather that around April 20 the news finally hit the NYT that oxygen levels in the blood were a huge management problem with COVID19, and that within about 48 hours the article(s) had done the run of social media and basically all of the pulse oximeters in the nation were sold out.

OK PEOPLE.  

Yes, Lisa did need a PulseOx.  By the time she got out of the ICU, there were none to be found in any Portland stores she called.  A friend (whose family member had one from some preexisting condition which was not currently active) loaned Lisa theirs.  The first week+ that Lisa was back from the ICU, especially the first few days when she still had pneumonia, it was so(!) important to get blood oxygen readings(!) ... for her peace of mind when it was high enough, and so she could mitigate movement and focus on breathing, and use the supplemental oxygen machine, when it was dipping too low.

So I **get** that COVID people will need these.  BUT, I hope everyone who has a pulse oximeter is ready, when they are not themselves needing it, to loan it out to people who couldn't afford one or just didn't get the news in time!

Please -- this could save a life ... when someone is heading down the oxygen-deprivation path, they don't notice at first and, since oxygen increasingly dropping directly messes with thinking clarity, sometimes they don't notice until the need is fairly acute, and they are gasping and instinctively beginning to panic because they are suffocating(!).

Lisa had a hard time managing herself on this; when I was awake I could see she needed oxygen before she would get to the panic point (her eyes would get a little glassy/unfocused, her mental connections slower), but I still had to sleep a lot ... I slept on the couch so I could hear her, and I woke up several times to her gasping for breath, trying to call my name, trying to scrabble the oxygen tubes into place ... .  Everything was vastly, materially better after her friend's PulseOx was delivered, so Lisa could easily keep tabs on her oxygen levels whenever the thought occurred to her, and manage herself!

If you are so lucky as to own a PulseOx now, please don't be the reason someone didn't have a chance to know they were losing oxygen, while they still had enough time and energy left to get back to their oxygen tank/ machine.  Please be a resource for your community of people <3.

SELF-MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES:

-->  Anxiety: What tool(s) do you use to untrigger or calm anxiety?  People who have suffered from life-impacting anxiety might have a leg up on the rest of us here, because they probably have developed or learned techniques for managing an anxiety attack.  If you are not one of these people, not a bad idea to look into management techniques.  Lisa began getting bad anxiety attacks and sometimes panic attacks in the isolated ICU room; luckily one of her nurses had some techniques to teach to her that worked, well enough at least to calm Lisa's breathing.

-->  Trauma/PTSD awareness (in at least the layperson sense ... maybe in the diagnostic sense in years to come).  On this I am just noting the general concern.  This pandemic is probably traumatizing even those of us who don't get COVID19 and never directly see COVID19, as well as those who actually have to deal directly with the disease.  Each of us exploring the concepts in "trauma-based care" and other related topics would be a good investment for ourselves and those we care about.

17

... someday I will remember what the other important thing is ... 

[as of: April 23 2020]

Edit January!!! 2022!!!

I FINALLY REMEMBERED WHAT THE OTHER THING PROBABLY WAS HOLY SHIT.  (Sadly, only because one of my kids has caught a bad case (we are in the Omicron wave right now, which I've heard is the "fifth" wave in America) and I'm sending their dad advice, sigh.)

FAN(S) and/or HEPA AIR FILTER(S)!!!!

Window fan(s) for the sickroom(s) and the bathroom the sick person(s) will use.  Blow that virus load out into the UV light instead of letting it collect in the house.  Preferably aimed not at the next door neighbor's/apartment building's windows.

HEPA air filter: I can't afford this but if I could I would have put one in the bathroom, which is the one space that will *definitely* get viral-loaded if someone is sick.  It's tiny, the person does have to use it (A LOT), and the person won't be moving well, so they will take extra time to do every single thing while they are in there.  I don't know how HEPA filters do with humidity so maybe it needs to move out when the person with a fever takes a sauna-shower.  But definitely if I hadn't already been sick, the bathroom would have been the panic-point for me while trying to take care of Lisa.

ADDED APRIL 24

Very important: records and timekeeping

A way to simply record events (levels of sickness, time of onset, etc.).  I used Google Calendar, since I am very familiar with it and have reliable internet and electricity.  A paper calendar or even a spiral notebook would also be fine.  Simple and bedside (or nearly so) are the two key things.

At least one and hopefully two sources of accurate date and time information -- for me, my computer and my phone.  There is basically no time-tracking by the sick person during the fever week.  My phone got plugged in by my bed (per usual) and lived there for three weeks (not usual), but if you might move your phone (and therefore might lose it), that's when you need a second source that is less likely to be be lost (my computer).

Misc update: "COVID brain"

Lisa got a call from the county health department yesterday that I sat in on for part of.  The information-gatherer (a person of some sort of formal medical education, although I didn't catch which) used the term "COVID brain" as if it were one he commonly used and expected others to understand.  So the brain fog has its own name now.

[as of 11am 4/24]
[added a bunch of in-line notes, and edited for clarity, 4/28]

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ADDED DEC 3 2020 (during the "third wave" of the virus in the U.S.):

When people mention or link to this I reread it; 'found three typos this time (doh!).  Sadly, a friend  of mine linked a friend of hers to my Fb post yesterday, because that other person now needs the info :(.

Medical news update:  Although I haven't been paying as close of attention to the medical news this fall (or there's just been less of it, due to the amount of preposterous political blathering both before and after the election taking up all the "news" time since late summer?), oxygen intake and/ or delivery has definitely continued to be a huge concern; I have not seen a specific explanation for it.  The closest I've seen was in the summer when the doctors were all talking about the the type of receptor that the virus specifically uses to get into our cells ("AE2" maybe?) and which is specifically found especially on all the organs that have been noted as affected in a case of COVID19 (nasal passages, lung lining, heart, intestines) AND ON ALL BLOOD VESSEL WALLS ... there was quite a lot of chatter about blood vessel inflammation and damage being the explanation that linked all the weirdest symptoms, and I expected the next round of chatter to be 'ah, and this is why oxygen transfer is messed up,' but then it was debate/ election season, so I guess we'll never know <rolls eyes>.

Home-level personal recovery updates:  While I seem to have made a full recovery back in April and maintained it, I see, re-reading this, that my presentation of Lisa's recovery is too rosy.  *Relative to how bad it was,* this was appropriately rosy.  But relative to baseline health, no.  Lisa had residual, very very very slowly getting better but still noticeable (to me), thinking deficits (especially word recall and sentence-complexity) all summer, and although she had another significant bump towards recovery partway through September (so I only rarely notice her 'gapping' anymore), she still notices herself mental-gapping significantly.  She still can't smell properly, nor taste much at all (it's always very exciting when we find a food or a spice combination that she actually can taste, and although she loves to cook, she has to rely on other people to tell her whether the food tastes good/ needs something). ... And in the end I guess I have to note that I didn't make a full recovery: a bunch of the back pain and shoulder pain I'd spent like 6 years getting unwound (through chiropractic and other modalities) tightened up like crazy when I was fevering and never really released again, although some days are better than others (and I'm again working on it, of course).

Doctor-level personal recovery updates: Lisa has been donating antibody-plasma since the summer <3.  Neither of us has been to a doctor for a full physical or anything, although I'm pretty sure Lisa said last week she has one coming up.  I definitely plan to ask for a full workup when this whole nightmare is over; I feel fine and am not going to add risk to the local medical staff and my COVID-circle right now by making a non-urgent appointment, but I would really like to confirm that my kidneys and liver and heart were not long-term damaged.

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ADDED Jan 2022: Holy moly I was sure I did at least one update here during 2021 but I guess not.

Lisa definitely has LongCOVID of the brain and although her mental capacities continue to extremely slowly improve the doctors and she both are pretty sure some of the damage is permanent.

I haven't noticed LongCOVID for sure, but just recently I did some truly heavy mental lifting for the first time since I had COVID and it caused me to need to sleep 14+ hours/day, so maybe I have a subtle case after all, ugh.  I've done a few rounds of truly heavy physical work since then and I seem to be OK with that.

I added a couple more notes in the body of the post, but mostly the original post and all my original guesses from April 2020 held up (I'm both proud and a little bit horrified).

I still haven't seen an explanation for the oxygen-delivery mystery (frustrating), but there have been some months when I was very busy with other things, so maybe I just missed that news cycle.  Anyhow if I get brain-foggy (has happened a couple of times since April 2020), I take iron for a day or two and it clears up; whether that is psychosomatic or chemical I couldn't say, but I'm glad it works.  If someone does know, link it in the comments?

.