?!?! THE LAST TIME I WROTE ONE OF THESE WAS APRIL?! EXCUSE ME, WHAAAAT?? And it's already mid July?!! Why is time suddenly going at superspeed?! Highly alarming; I literally need a moment to just pause and absorb this information. Wow.
~✨~✨~
I'm gonna go ahead and start this by talking about my health as that's what's been at the forefront of my mind and what I primarily want to log at the moment.
I guess I'll have to rewind and first write about what happened back in late April/early May that really threw me for a tizzy. Funnily enough it started just 3 days after I published "page 2"—sharp pains in my lower chest and above my heart, especially when taking deep breaths. Since my lung surgery, I've survived many minor chest/lung pain scares that turned out to be nothing so I patiently waited it out a few days until everything suddenly culminated on my birthday, May 2nd.
The chest pains now were accompanied by high blood pressure and anxiety, sleep deprivation mixed with caffeine, and an unexpected allergic reaction from dinner. (The context for the first couple points is stupid as heck—I stayed up late after work for many nights redecorating my Animal Crossing island so that I could invite ppl over for my birthday and was earnestly stressed about it bc I'm horrible at decoration. 😔) Since I rarely have allergy attacks, it wasn't for a while until I described my sudden extreme sore throat and impaired breathing to Fome that we figured out it was probably an allergy. Thanks to my lovely friends for treating me so well, I had a good day!! However that night I remember just like..... wondering if I should go to the emergency room. Debating if I should wake up my parents from their precious sleep to take me to the emergency room.
And a raging pandemic is a terrible time to be found at the ER. In the end, I slept and was fine (phew!!) but the chest pain persisted and I began fostering paranoia over my asymmetric torso lol.
After a bit of internet research, my noob self-diagnosis was that I was experiencing a "small pneumothorax" in my left lung, meaning that a blister (which I was told I do have so I should always be mindful of my lung) had popped—not the whole lung—and it's minor enough to be resolved without treatment. (Btw what happened on my right lung was a large pneumothorax meaning the whole lung collapsed!) A couple days of phone call chase later, I was able to get an x-ray and phone appointment with a lung specialist.
...Except the person who helped me down at the x-ray department got confused about the new COVID policies and thought that all chest x-rays needed to take place in the emergency room..... and so they sent me to the emergency room aka the one place I wanted to avoid the most lmaooooo. Sorry this story is getting long so I'll wrap it up. IT WAS NOT MY LUNG AT ALL. I had inflammation in my ribs—painful but as harmless as a sprained ankle, the doctor said. After a while it got better by itself, yay!
ANYWAY SO I think I have rib inflammation again, this time on the right side and much less severe. Coincidentally on the same day that began I also seemed to have another allergic reaction (throat closed up, impaired breathing) and my ear was hurting and yesterday my eye was swollen so it's just been not a comfy time for my body LOL. What worries me is that my throat has been in poor condition since... Especially because aaaaa I need to record lines..... Thankfully it doesn't seem like I'm on track for a serious COVID-19 infection at least.
But. BUT. the more information that comes out about the mild or asymptomatic COVID infections, the more I worry about that being a possibility?!?! I don't know?! I read that there was a study where they found asymptomatic carriers still had lung scarring—a..and I was also told that the lung surgery I had could cause lung scarring, so I'm just like ?! would I ever be able to tell the difference?! And the persisting sore throat is scary!!!!, I say with a panic as I conveniently forget that I've absolutely had sore throats before the whole pandemic.
The biggest kicker is that when I look up rib inflammation, I get articles about costochondritis (cannot confirm if that's what I had/have) and when I saw that one of many possible causes of it is "Respiratory infections caused by viruses" I just 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
Anyway, that's what's been on my mind! I'll keep monitoring myself and avoiding people, don't worry LOL. It's probably nothing, as it always somehow turns out to be. Ha ha ha ha
~✨~✨~
On to what I've been up to in everyday life!
A significant change that I'm proud of is that Gemi-SWOLE (me, Chiisana, Ryan + Mimi when she isn't dealing with life struggles) has been working out almost every night for nearly TWO MONTHS!! The most effort and consistency I've put into exercise since mandatory PE in school LOL. We regularly spend an hour on call together following along videos for muscle training, k-pop dance zumba, stretches for increasing flexibility, stretches for better health. The one downside is that I lose an hour+ every day from being able to do other things, but what we've got going is a really great thing and the social obligation forces us to keep at it. :'D
My job throughout most of May and June was freakin' insane with hardly a breather. I've mentioned a number of times here but some of the most personally gratifying projects I work on are ones that reward young scientists—I make a lot of videos that support science faÃrs for teens AND THIS SUMMER.... THEY ALL WENT VIRTUAL. It's a whole new challenge that most of the folks organizing and supporting them have never tackled before and it just means that...everything.....is video. Everything requires video. At one point during the peak of one of the events I was regularly working up until 2-4 AM lolol. One piece I worked on was this—which I [embarrassingly] spent 90 hours on over the course of two weeks. Overwhelmingly was I not qualified to take on that project, but in the end I see it as a successful learning experience for myself and I don't dislike it? ;v; And I hope those brilliant, hardworking teens were happy to see themselves! I tried to include as many of them as I could up until the airdate.
Right now we have a few weeks to chill a bit.....until we're back in the storm of more of these events. 💪😬 It's a good cause, it's a good cause..!
~✨~✨~
And lastly to comment on the state of the US and our leadership........ At this point it's no longer that they're stupid—but that they're straight up, immensely, fucking evil. Ignorant people can at least be educated but this is now just oppression and murder perfectly executed with transparent intent.
I really want to just stop there, but I feel like for the sake of keeping a comprehensive log of my pandemic experience I need to go into more detail of what's happened between April and now—but god where can I even start? Can you believe that *masks* have become an object of political polarization and ire?? People just refuse to wear a little cloth for short amounts of time?? I only go out to Asian supermarkets so I've personally never encountered an anti-masker fortunately. Way too much of the US reopened for no good reason and we're seeing the fatal consequences of it. I had no idea until I drove by one the other day, but the local mall was open. The mall. Why does anyone need a mall right now? I wholeheartedly thought you were better than that, Bay Area.
Here in California, different counties have been making up their own rules which unfortunately empowered a few of them to listen to their anti-masking constituents and announce that it's fine to go without. SCREAMS. A little late but luckily the governor declared mandated face coverings for the entire state last month. Oh and apparently some places started opening up indoor dining?? But they rescinded a ton of reopenings a couple days ago, phew. Now the national hot topic is about schools going back in session in the fall—and fingers crossed that one day I can write one of these and say, "Thank god they decided not to kill all the kids and teachers."
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