One year, 4 months & 2 weeks - Covid Free & Fully Vaccinated

 One Year, Four Months plus Two Weeks - Post Lemtrada

March 4, 2021

Since my last post, the kids and I somehow managed not to catch covid from my husband; I got new blood work results; I've been on Vyvanse for four weeks; people in this State literally froze to death in their homes; the US hit 500,000 covid deaths; the governor of this State thought it was a good idea to lift the mask mandate before most people are even eligible for a vaccine; and I got my second covid vaccine shot.

I have no idea how the kids and I did not get covid.  The day my husband tested positive my sinuses were feeling a little dried out and weird.  I don't know how else to describe it.  I did my neti pot that morning.  After he tested positive, the kids and I were taking extra Vitamin C, Zinc, and some airborne.  I was also taking licorice root.  Even though I was sleeping upstairs, I wore a mask around the kids and used a separate bathroom.  I thought for sure I was going to come down with it; how could I not?  My sinuses started feeling better two days later and after another two days I was feeling a little more confident and not being quite as careful around the kids.  I am still shocked that we didn't get it...definitely, another bullet dodged.

I got the Vyvanse and for the first couple of days got pretty light headed within an hour of taking it.  I would say that it's helped my energy level some.  I am definitely a little speedier. 😉 I have a follow-up with the neurology nurse practitioner next week.

I wrote about the winter-apocalypse in a separate post.

The US did hit over 500,000 deaths.  It's just unbelievable to me and I am not sure many people let that hit them.  They are numb or don't care; I am not sure.  Half a million people in a year, just in this Country and people want to make wearing a mask a political issues.  It's very upsetting to me.

I got my second covid shot last week.  The City health department is behind and the winter storm pushed them another week behind.  It ended up being six weeks between my shots.  The last one didn't bother me except for a sore arm.  This one knocked me down for about 48 hours.  About seven hours after the shot, I got the chills. I don't remember ever having the chills that bad. I had three blankets on me and I was still shivering.  I was achy, my balance was off a bit, and I ran a low grade fever. That lasted for about twelve hours after that I was just fatigued as if I had been sick then after two days I felt fine.  Two days of not feeling great is worth the piece of mind.  I am tired of being scared of everyone.  On a related note, have you seen the flu case numbers this winter?  We are at about 1,500 cases for the whole country.  Compared to the 147,000 cases at this time last year.  I am wearing a mask every winter. 😷😊

My February blood work was normal. My lymphocytes were up a bit and my TSH was up slightly, only to 0.07 so not enough to excited about.  I did my March blood work today and my T3 & T4 were rechecked.  My follow-up with the endocrinologist is in two weeks.  I don't know how long a temporary thyroid issue can go on before it's not temporary anymore but I am losing hope.

That is all I have...take care and stay safe.

 

One year & 4 months - frozen

One Year & 4 Months - Post Lemtrada

February 22, 2021

We were frozen in the heart of Texas this week.  Last year taught us to expect the unexpected and here we are again.  I saw some of this coming; weather forecasters were predicting snow and the extreme cold temperatures for about a week.  I had bought some extra groceries and planned to stay home and off the roads for a while but thought we would be thawed out and back to normal by Friday at the latest.  The extreme-ness of this event caught me off guard.  We were lucky to be on the same circuit as a nearby hospital so we had power and heat except for a few short outages on Friday but we had no water for a week.  Even though we had power we were asked to conserve so we had our thermostats down to 65 and had been using as little electricity as possible.  I'll say, we were very uncomfortable.  My house was not built for that kind of cold so even though the thermostat said it was 65, it was not really 65 everywhere in the house, we were using pool water to flush our toilet, we were reheating food so we didn't dirty dishes (it was cereal, chili, chicken noodle soup and frozen pizza all week) and we had both of our outdoor spigots break so my water was turned off 24 hours before the neighborhood lost water pressure and turned back on 12 hours after we got it back.  I say very uncomfortable because it was miserable but others had it much much worse.  Some people had no power or heat for 4+ days and we were below freezing for 8 days in a row with lows in the single digits 2 nights in a row. I bought extra groceries and made a big pot of soup and a pot of chili before our water went out but I also had power so I didn't lose all the food in my freezer and I had a way to heat our food.  I think it was a combination of the magnitude taking people by surprise and losing their food but there were huge lines just to get in grocery stores, shelves were bare and the roads were so bad (we don't have much to treat the roads or snow plows) that deliveries weren't coming in.  

The schools were closed on Monday for President's day, on Sunday they announced school was going to be 100% online for the first part of the week.  Once the snow storm hit and everyone lost power then water, the school district canceled school for the whole week.  Over the weekend, they canceled classes today and tomorrow and will be 100% online the rest of the week because school buildings were damaged and so many families are trying to clean up and recover.  

Events like this bring out the best in people looking out for each other but it spotlights the worst too.  We were sitting in a cold dark house to save energy for our neighbors and the downtown areas of Houston and Austin were lit up like Vegas.  The cities had to ask the DDA's to ask their "partners" to conserve.  The cities had already asked people to conserve that should have been enough, they shouldn't have to make another special ask.  As you can imagine, when pictures were posted on Twitter of all the lights people were livid.  Over the weekend when it had warmed up but most people still didn't have water, many car washes thought it was a good time to reopen.  Again, folks without water 🙋 were not too happy.  Again, the city had to make a special request to something that should have obviously applied to them too.  People were also reminded that Texas State Legislature had hearings on why the power grid failed after a winter storm 10 years ago and they allowed power plants to voluntarily winterize their equipment and here we are again.  I am sure you've also heard about the insane electric bills some people are getting.  Sorry about that lengthy discussion but that was a major event.  

Since this ended up being long, I am going to leave it here and my next post will be health related.

 I grew up in Michigan so I know this looks like nothing but we actually got 6 inches of snow and I had drifts that were close to 2 feet in some spots and it stayed on the ground for 5 days. The biggest snow storm we have had since we moved here before that was this January when we got 2-3 inches of snow and it was on the ground for over 24 hours.  There has been a couple winters where we've gotten a dusting of snow maybe up to an inch but it's typically gone in a couple of hours.  Here you can't even see where our front walk is.