A Bug's Life

We went up the hill. There were roses. Nobody knows why. Gideon has theories involving dead people.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Update time: I posted here on Day 2 of the new Long Covid, today is Day 16, I posted the below on Facebook on Day 9. I'll make this public for a week so I have something to share on short form social media, then make it friends only.

Since the FB post last week not a lot has changed, no trajectory of improvement, largely managing to not make it horribly worse but I am having to spend a lot of time on bed rest. I've bought a wheelchair (£200 from Argos, lovely smooth thing) and been out for a short trip with Toby, me walking 2-3 minutes then pushed for a while. It's useful to be able to get out and walk a bit. Friend C is dealing with prescriptions. Mum is visiting tomorrow to chop loads of veg for batch cook (but at 80 she's retired from wheelchair pushing). I've booked in the gardener for early-mid Oct to put the garden to bed. I've cut 8" off my hair so now it's "just" shoulder length.

I have days where the heart rate feels precarious, where anything could set it leaping; and days when it feels more solid, and I can plod a bit at washing up and things, and some of those days it stays solid and others it only realises what I did a couple of hours later and soars then while I'm resting.

Stop adding things Bridget and go and lie down.


The FB post as posted:
Hello Facebook, I don't post here often (bugshaw on Bluesky or Dreamwidth usually) but it's a good way to reach a lot of people at once to say...
I'm having a big big Long Covid relapse.
Like the old days five years ago, sometimes can't prepare food or fetch drinks, barely use stairs (where the bath and study and books and papers are), felt a bit better on Friday and sat for 30 minutes at big computer for admin, crashed badly on Saturday Sunday so I'm still getting the delayed effect after apparently overdoing things but not feeling like it at the time. I can't see myself getting out of the house in September, hopefully eventually being able to do occasional things within 10 minutes walk e.g. Co-op, Light cinema, and visiting Toby in his house of many stairs (it's like a zig zag front and back).
Had three great months in the summer, garden parties, painting the garden fence, day trips to London, 3 mile walks with Toby. Was looking forward to doing more, hatching out of the last five years to a more functional life, doing more visits.
But got Covid in late August. Just my second time, the illness was noticeable but mild (that brief sore throat like I'd swallowed sandpaper), this time I'd had all the vaccines and boosters and been on Metformin for a couple of years which has a protective effect against LC. I knew to be careful, return to activity very gently. 10 min gentle gentle walk one day was fine. 20 min the next day was fine. 25 min the next morning was fine. After lunch, BOF! puppet with strings cut energy, heart pounding, oh dear I recognise this. Got myself settled downstairs with a quick bag of essentials from the upstairs where it happened. Couple of very bad days, few slightly better days so I did tiny things and got bad again.
I have rather lost track of where I am, doing long text on a small phone.
... Argh, FB cuts it off here so I'll put the rest in comments. NOT HELPFUL FB.

Part 2
But yes, probably housebound for a month except essential appointments, no London trips till at least February. Any thoughts of returning to work are right off the radar. My plan for a September full of craft and sewing projects for Christmas is off. I don't know when I'll be up to it again. This is only Day 8 of the relapse but it feels precarious and there's nothing that looks like an improvement trajectory. Ask me again in 3 months.
Good things: I know what's happening and how to manage it. Still no treatment I'm aware of but I'll let the GP know. Almost everything important is on the ground floor - bedroom, loo, basin, washer and dryer, kitchen. I've got plenty of healthy food in store. I'm ok for cash flow with the two lodgers, who also help with small things. Supportive friends and family. It's the time of year where the garden stops being desperately needy. Lots of music, podcasts, streaming video, ebooks, physical books according to energy levels. I just need to wait it out again. Sometimes I'm patient, sometimes I'm frustrated and miserable.
But that's where I am at the moment.

Part 3.
Oh you poor thing! Is there anything I can do to help?
Well actually I have given that some thought! Friends could help me:
Accompany in taxi to appointments eg GP, blood test.
Drive to appointments.
Help me buy an entry level manual folding wheelchair for occasional use (Cambridge Mobility in Sawston?) and tiny displacement rearrange furniture to store it.
Collect prescriptions from Mill Road.
Batch cook for freezer.
Veg prep for salad grab nibbles.
Visit for brief socialising.
Take masses of fresh growing basil before the season turns, there's loads and loads in the garden trough.
Check if garden needs watering.
Tiny grocery shop if delivery services let me down.
Take a ukulele - bought it last year thinking I'd learn. Not going to happen.
Bring your clippers and give me a 1-2" haircut - I've got two months of root growth and not going to get to a hairdresser for a more sensitive and gradual dyed black to natural grey transition. Bit nervous about this one but it will take away the difficult task of hair washing for months and months, gives me back a day per week it's so strenuous. I think I'd prefer a friend to a professional mobile hairdresser I don't already know, as I have very little energy for the getting to know you, discussing prettiness objectives, no I don't also want it washed etc etc. It seems like it might exhaust me before it's begun. I might be wrong. That got long. Like my hair.

Part 4 the last part.
Lodgers are fully on top of the bins and regularly refilling my 2 litre water bottles.
I know a cleaning company if I need it, and a gardener who made it a lot lower maintenance and nicer who I hope will put the garden to bed for the winter.
Best contact is email, WhatsApp, signal, text, phone. FB is very difficult on my phone and messaging is unreliable, don't know why, I have the app, it prefers the big upstairs computer.

TL;DR Bridget can't come out to play till spring, she's got to bed.
Bridget Ken from the Barbie movie: My job is bed!

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To catch the last possible September afternoon, next weekend we'll be in the garden of the Green Dragon down by the river from about 1pm-5pm.

The pub opens from 12pm including Lebanese street food so some people may arrive earlier.

Everyone is welcome, including partners and children if you think they'd enjoy it. If you're not in Cambridge, you're very welcome but I don't expect you, we'll make time any time you are here! :)

Posted by John Kovalic

https://www.dorktower.com/2025/09/19/signs-of-the-times-dork-tower-19-09-25/

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I am happy to see that "should receive" the covid vaccine or booster includes infants; children and adolescents who haven't already been vaccinated; anyone with a medical condition that puts them at higher risk of severe covid; and all household contacts of anyone at higher risk.

Everyone aged 65 or older should receive two doses, six months apart.

All healthcare workers "should" receive the vaccine, as should anyone who is pregnant, contemplating pregnancy, or has recently been pregnant, and a few other groups.

Everyone else "may receive" it.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-2025-2026-respiratory-illness-season-covid-19-vaccine-recommendations/download

What I saw is Massachusetts-specific, but it says it is aligned with the recommendations of the new Northeast Public Health Collaborative, which includes New England except for New Hampshire, plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

Ooh, I thought, that's a really cool t-shirt! And the price is only £24, that's actually pretty reasonable!

Except no, it's £24 plus £6 tax plus £7 shipping *that takes up to 6 weeks*.

And this for an item that's print on demand. Which means, theoretically, they could print it in the UK in the first place and not have to presumably ship it to me by alpaca from Kazakhstan!

Shame, really, it's a nice t-shirt. But not £37 nice.

Or rather the text message to book my covid & flu vaccinations. "For 75+ and immunosuppressed". I just double-checked and "have had a blood cancer" is still top of the NHS list of qualifying conditions, so that's my armour when the GP surgery gatekeepers are like, you're too young and you might be DEPRIVING someone of this vaccine who NEEDS it. (This has been the conversation the last three times I got invited to get vaccinated, sigh, and then they get a manager to look at my medical record, and then they grudgingly admit that maybe I can has jabs.)

Date is the Saturday when all the Cambridge undergraduates arrive, so just in time. I'll mostly be avoiding students for the first couple weeks of term to let the freshers flu play out, but I will be playing ice hockey so not entirely. Also getting in and out of the city centre that day may be entertaining, probably best done on foot.

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A week and a half ago I ordered a couple of K-Pop Demon Hunters hoodies for the kids from Amazon. I didn't realise quite how much of a trip they'd be making:

8th - Taken from warehouse in Shenzhen (China) and handed to massive chinese shipment company SF Express.
8th - Driven an hour up the road to Dongguan shipment centre.
11th - Transported (presumably by road) 1,100 km to Ezhou (SF Express hub airport, also China))
12th - Flown to Liège Airport (Belgium), stopping over in Almaty International Airport (Kazakhstan)
14th - Flew in to Heathrow
14th - Then arrived in Stansted for customs
15th - Then handed to Hermes in London
16th - Who got it to me in Edinburgh the next day

Total cost, including shipping: £24 (£12 per top).

I am both impressed and somewhat aghast.

I just got this year's covid booster, as a walk-in at CVS. I'm glad I called first, because the CVS closest to our house doesn't have the vaccine; the one where I get most of my prescriptions does.

The pharmacist asked me if I wanted to get the flu vaccine at the same time, so I told her I'm waiting, on my doctor's advice. The actual injection was faster than I expected and didn't hurt much, so that's good.

The pharmacist gave me a coupon for $10 off a $20 purchase (with the usual list of exclusions). Kitchen trash bags were on the shopping list, so I picked those up, then added a box of envelopes and a bottle of dish soap to get the total up to $20. I got home and saw we may have too much dish soap, given limited storage space, but we will use it.

No, daddy, it's definitely not a "pointy duck"! Have you even read the sign?
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

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