Well that was something… maybe
I mentioned a few times over the past 68 days that I’d been sick. Symptoms I had work for covid, flu, Lyme disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and any number of illnesses that me and the clinicians were working on narrowing down but as I’d tested negative for all the top ones was in a meandering state of getting worse for over a month and then day by day getting imperceptibly better.
TL;DR – getting stuff online might try and kill you.
Losing the ability to go down stairs was a new one on me. It’d started with coughing and then my lymph nodes swelled enough to pop my kneecap out of whatever alignment it required to let me extend the leg.
I spent from March 6th to May 8th pretty sick. At some point it seems my wife joined me for a hot minute on the coughing train but jumped off pretty quickly. I coughed for weeks, she was maybe sick two days.
I was so sick we stopped my blood pressure medication (new stuff, had only been on for a month,) because it felt like I was rapidly dying and that was something new… but I kept getting sicker. I mean losing the ability to stand up and walk was kind of drastic.
At one point I was on steroids and started getting better and that went away the instant they ran out. The clinician I was dealing with because my freakin’ PCP left that month was of the “oh, it’s a virus going around some people are taking six weeks or so to get over it”… uh yeah… not helpful… that’s the “have you tried unplugging the router?” tech support tip Google gives you when you ask why a routine you’ve had working for years has suddenly failed.
About six days ago I had lost 19 pounds without trying since March. I decided to wash a mattress topper I had just recently purchased online because I had been in bed a lot and I could smell the sort of sick me. It took a couple of days to wash it because the washing machine went off balance and I accidentally hit power once and basically it took three tries. On day two I started attempting to dry it. It had been perfect weather for drying it day 1 but now it was not… so tumble dry for an hour on medium, take it out and rotate it. All in it took 3-4 attempts at drying it because it was a huge ass mattress topper. That ran into day 3 and it was still a bit damp but it was hang out and dry levels of damp.
I noticed I was starting to actually get better. Not the imperceptible day by day better, actually started feeling better… I checked when I’d gotten the topper, and it was about four days before I got sick. Checked, and it was bamboo fiber, not space age material. At least supposedly. Checked on the product page and now it’s listed as “Noiseless Down Alternative Fill” – in other words “something we’re not listing.”
So, today I am feeling about 80%. That’s a whole lot better than I have in two months.
So yeah kiddos, got a random illness that’s lasting forever? Check your bed… I’m pretty sure in my case that was it. I thought it was just a cold, then thought it was covid (tested negative,) etc etc etc. Really, it got to the point I was not able to stand or walk down stairs.
