A Negative Experience

I was dreadfully sick for two weeks with a respiratory ailment in February that, in retrospect, I was sure was COVID-19.  Not that recovering from it makes you immune to getting it again, perhaps even worse the next time; no one knows. I  haven't felt 100% since then in any case.

I tried to get an antibody test in June from my health-care provider Kaiser to determine whether I was a survivor but a doctor called me when I requested such a test and told me after listening to my symptoms back in the winter that what I had had was "the flu" and not coronavirus because I hadn't been to China around that time and she said Kaiser didn't do antibody tests anyway, because what was the point?  My respect for Kaiser fell a long way then and I wondered what they do for the $12,000 in premiums I and my former employer pay to them each year for health care which costs me a co-pay each time I use it anyway.

But now Kaiser does do antibody testing, as I discovered earlier this month when I called to schedule an appointment for a flu shot.  So six months after I was so sick I went in for a blood draw to test for the presence of sufficient antibodies left over in my bloodstream that would mark a response to the coronavirus by my immune system.  It came back a few days later negative.

After four years of living in the dystopian chaos of Trump's corrupted America, where everybody has their own alternative facts in this formerly great country, where an American used to be able to trust a test result but now nothing is what it seems to be and we've fallen down the rabbit hole of anti-science and the politicization of everything, here's what I am left with.  I am happy to have had the test finally given to me but half a year passed by before I could wheedle the test, and the antibodies likely have diminished to an unmeasurable degree by now but at least now I know that I will never know if I had COVID-19 when I was so sick in February.  The test result also might be a false negative, because nobody in America trusts test administrations or results (or vaccines) anymore after four years under Trump, he of the falsity of "If you want a test you get a test, they're beautiful" and the idiocy of "Just inject bleach, it'll clean the lungs in a minute."

Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.

A few weeks back, our very stable genius was reveling during a jaw-dropping interview on TV how smart or normal he was, how a year or so ago he had heard and repeated back during a simpleton's cognitive test the simple phrase "person, woman, man, tv, camera;" and how amazed the doctors were that he could repeat back this trite five-word word salad, that basically constitutes two descriptive adjectival groups, humans and photographic devices a few minutes later.  I received a simple "psychological" test yesterday after responding to an appointment to have my annual flu shot at the local Kaiser facility.

The nurse explained that in these times of isolation imposed by the COVID-19 crisis, there was concern afoot that there were many in the general population that were "depressed" because of or during it, and would I mind responding to two questions handwritten on a sheet of paper she left with me while she went off to prepare my extra-special dose of flu vaccine, because I was over 65.  The questions were: I wake up and don't feel like doing anything at all---; and I feel out or sorts or despondent or depressed or hopeless---; and the answer to each query came from these four possibilities: 0) never or not at all; 1) occasionally; 2) several days each week; or 3) all the time.

When she returned, and before she jabbed my arm with the special cocktail she prepared (my arm aches today!), I said the supposed general feeling of ennui or perhaps hopelessness in our society only half related to the devastating, deadly pandemic, the other half of the current chaotic conditions afflicting our lives would addressed on November 3d, and she smiled, either knowingly or sympathetically.  For question one, the answer was three, and for question two the answer was one.

She said in a sympathetic voice, "I think you should speak with your doctor about these feelings."  So there you have it, I'm apparently either depressed or suicidal, as shown by this simplistic simpleton's test, during these depressing times that started on November 8, 2016 and have steadily and then increasingly only gotten much worse. 

What's this?! A test? In America?

 I was terribly sick for two weeks in the last half of February with a severe respiratory ailment, coughing my lungs out the first four or five days.  I started coughing with a scratchy throat on Valentine's Day while I was watching the movie Parasite in a theatre and by bedtime I was coughing continuously and could barely sleep.  

I woke up, more or less, on Saturday and got on the phone to Kaiser, my health-care provider, about what I was going to do about this sudden, dreadful cough I had developed in a matter of hours.  My GP wouldn't be back until Tuesday (Monday was a holiday) and the advise nurse suggested two courses of action: to go to the Kaiser Urgent Care Center ten miles away for double my normal co-pay or go to a pharmacy and buy an over-the-counter decongestant Mucinex expectorant, which I did and started to tough it out.

A day or two later I was coughing so long and hard during the day that I feared the oncoming night and thought that I was dying.  A few nights I woke up coughing so hard that I had to sit up in bed to catch my breath, several times.

But after two weeks I got over it, sort of.  I coughed occasionally, not too hard, I was occasionally short of breath, especially at night, my lungs ached, I was generally fatigued and I won't tell you the details about my all-day every day GI issues.  Now six months later I am still sometimes short of breath, I "go" several times a day and my lungs still feel inflamed so I haven't run a single mile since February because I don't want to further aggravate them and invite further inflammation.

I wonder what I had.  Everyone tells me I certainly didn't have Covid19 because it was too early (apparently the coronavirus first started roaming the land in March) and I didn't come from China.  Besides, there are no reliable tests in America even half a year later because, well, this is Trump's America and we have become a piteous country with no exceptionalism anymore, mocked or walked all over by the rest of the world.

I tried to get an antigen test in July so I could participate in blood plasma therapy if I had had Covid19 in February, but a Kaiser doctor called me and said: Naw, we don't do antigen tests, why should we; and if you think you are sick with the virus, call Kaiser and follow its long dance correctly and we'll get you a Covid test.  She assured me that what I described had in February was merely the flu.  I wondered aloud to her why the hell I got a flu shot in the fall if I still got so sick from the flu.  She assured me my ordinary flu sickness would have been even more severe if I hadn't gotten that shot.  Whatever.

Kaiser, which won't even let me in the door without going through the nth degree at the door ("Do you have shortness of breath? Nope, not me. Diarrhea? Nope.") and then taking my temperature, sent me a postcard to get a "driveby" flu shot this year.  I called for an appointment and got to complaining about Kaiser not doing any antigen tests and my, how things have changed.  I was referred to a nurse who got me an appointment this very day for a blood draw to be used for an antigen test.  I like operating on real information.  I'll keep you informed.

 

Visions of ice-cream bars

I have been hunkered down since March, taking only essential trips while fully masked such as to BLM Plaza in the District in early June to confront those silent, foreboding, anonymous soldiers in full combat gear in a line keeping the people away from the people's house.  Yesterday I traveled to INOVA Blood Donation Center in Annandale to donate whole blood.

A disconcerting sign greeted me upon arrival, telling me to leave immediately if, within the last 14 days: "You have traveled to an area with an outbreak of COVID-19. Currently the CDC has identified outbreaks in the following areas-All areas of all countries worldwide [including] cruise ships or riverboat travel anywhere in the world." I looked real hard at it to see if it was a Trump Tweet, it was so ridiculous. Yes, I ignored the warning sign and donated blood because I think I am not currently sick and perhaps sick or injured people currently could use a little O+ blood infusion (very sought after).

I had wanted to get into some kind of plasma therapy program because I think I might have had the coronavirus in February because I was as sick as I have ever been for two weeks with a cough-your-lungs-out respiratory illness but there is no antibody test I can get ("You only had the flu" said the doctor I talked to over the phone last month, who would have had to write me a prescription to get an antibody test but, she assured me, Kaiser doesn't do antibody test anyway) so I just donated whole blood.  Oh well, dumping a bag of whole blood in twenty minutes is a whole lot better for me anyway than spending 90-120 minutes hooked up to a a centrifuge machine that takes fluid out, whirls plasma out and returns the blood because it takes 6-8 units of blood (your body's entire volume) to get a unit of plasma.

After the donation, I went to the post-blooding refreshment center where I noted with pleasure that the center had added frozen ice cream bars to the water, juices and cookies that have always been provided.  I opened the freezer and identified the ice-cream bar I was going to enjoy but I left it in the freezer while I finished the orange juice I was drinking.  Meanwhile another old man like me shuffled in and stood socially distant from me between me and the freezer while he temporarily removed his mask (as I had) to drink his bottle of water.  Suddenly he erupted in a big, juicy cough into the crook of his elbow but without a mask on and I stared in horror at the freezer on the far side of him.  In it was the ice cream bar I had already identified as being to die for and which I really wanted since I haven't had ice cream in over 100 days.  I could, however, figuratively see an 8-foot square area of expelled droplets swarming around this man, directly between me and that freezer in this restricted indoor space.  Practically crying out in despair, I immediately executed a 180 degree turnaround and walked very fast out of the center.

If you want a test...

Repeating a fallacious claim he made in early March, President Trump said on Monday, "If somebody wants to be tested right now, they'll be able to be tested." Not that anyone with an IQ merely equaling his or her age to go along with a 6th grade education could possibly believe this charlatan anymore, it's just not true. I communicated with my health care provider Kaiser this week about my desire to get a Covid-19 test and was turned down cold.

A doctor called me back and after listening to my tale of how I thought I contracted the coronavirus in February which led to two desperate weeks of continuous coughing fits, especially all night long, and I still feel fatigued generally and short of breath two months later. I said I'd like an antibody test to confirm I had it and recovered to put my mind at ease that I probably won't get it in my depressed condition and also I would participate it blood plasma therapy which has been said to ameliorate the conditions of afflicted, desperately ill patients, as I have donated blood products at least 140 times in my lifetime anyway. The doc was unimpressed and said Kaiser doesn't offer antibody testing, period. She added the speculative diagnosis that I probably had "the flu," even though I dutifully received my flu shot in the fall.

Then I asked that, because there was no chance of my knowing if I was already afflicted by it in the past and being in the risk group (over 65), if I felt sick again, how would I go about getting a test? Or should I protectively hunker down alone in my house till 2021 or 2022 when the pandemic might, or might not, be over. She laid out the many guidelines, which were daunting and not very promising of leading to a test anytime soon.

If I got sick with the supposedly typical characteristics of this novel and poorly understood virus, fever, diarrhea, nausea, loss of smell, respiratory distress and pressure in the chest, and not least, where I had traveled to (nowhere) and who I was in contact with (nobody), then I could call Kaiser and set up a video exam. Then if the doc thought I merited further diagnosis, they would prescribe a flu test. When that came back negative days later, they would send me a long medical questionnaire to fill out. Then maybe if I fit into all the right boxes, I could be prescribed to receive a test which in itself would come back days after that.

Only in Trump's America. I'm still in Lockdown, with no test available for the likes of me because I am not currently desperately sick and had traveled to somewhere suspect or was in contact with someone who somehow had gotten a test that came back positive.

Some Good News for me

In July I started on a long medical journey to save my sight when I started to lose vision in my right eye and I called Kaiser Permanente on a Saturday for an eye appointment, which it gave me within the week, with an optometrist. By Monday I determined that I needed more immediate assistance and I called back and after describing my deteriorating eye condition, it gave me an appointment for the next morning.  Kaiser called me back that evening and told me not to eat or drink anything after midnight, never a good indication for an upcoming appointment.

Thank God I have excellent insurance, a byproduct of working for a quarter century for the federal  government, one of the few so blessed people in this great, rich country where lifetime beneficial health insurance is so niggardly given out.  The next morning, after my $20 co-pay, I was seen by a surgeon ophthalmologist who scheduled me for eye surgery that very day because I had several tears in the superior region of my retina and was losing sight in that eye rapidly as the aqueous humor fluid got behind the retina through the tears and was shutting my eye sight down.  I paid a $75 copay and was rolled into vision saving surgery.

That surgery didn't take and on my week-after visit, where it was determined that my retina was "rolling up," I was slapped back into surgery that very day after paying another $75 copay and they surgery filled my eye with oil (which would have to come out later in a third surgery, another $75 copay) to keep the retina in place during the healing process.  That third surgery to remove the oil was last week, and I went to the doctor's office today for the week-after checkup full of trepidation that I would be slapped into a fourth surgery if my retina was still "rolling up."  As I silently sat as the doctor examined the inside of my eye with his lighted magnification helmet, I heard him say, "Looks good, the retina is still adhering full."

Relief flooded over me, because eye surgery and its onerous recovery (google Face-Down Recovery) sucks bigly.  The doctor cautioned me that I'm still "not out of the woods yet" as I face two months of sedate living without lifting anything over five pounds and then another two months of non-strenuous activity.  But I am so encouraged that finally I might be on the road to recovery in trying to save my sight, at least in one eye, no matter how diminished the sight in my afflicted eye comes out to be (right now it's 2400/20).

Why, how nice of you to call me, doctor...

The phone rang and although I didn't recognize the number, it was a Virginia area code so I answered it.  It was my eye doctor, an ophthalmologist, the one who is going to be operating on me next week to remove the oil from my eye which has finally healed from the two retina detachment surgeries I underwent in July and August.

I am anxiously looking forward to having that third operation, despite another potentially painful surgery and onerous recovery period, because my oil-filled eye is driving me crazy with its occasional white flare bursts inside it, the lack of clarity of vision from it and my inability to see much in very low-light situations where all distant lights, such as street lamps or approaching headlights, look like blurry kaleidoscopes.  But I was suspicious as the doctor and I exchanged phone pleasantries, and I waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Sir, I am sorry to tell you but I had an accident over the weekend and I broke my arm.  I must postpone your surgery for eight weeks or more until it heals, although this time period will not have a deleterious affect upon your eye in the lest."

I earnestly wished him a speedy and full recovery as we ended our call.  As I hit the call-end button, I suddenly became very depressed.

Half full

My first eye surgery was on July 31st, and the second was on August 9th.  The first time I was awake and aware in the OR, by the doctor's design, and although sedated apparently, I suffered a lot of "discomfort" during the procedure as he later termed it.  The next time I was under and it went much better for me because I didn't feel or remember the surgery.  The night following the surgery, the most difficult point in the recovery period, was much better the second time.

Standard procedure for worsening retinal detachment or tears is to replace the vitreous humor with a gas bubble and wait for the lasered retina to heal and the gas bubble to dissipate and sight improves as it heals.  It takes 4 to 6 months to fully heal and don't fly too soon or your eye might burst.  They give you a green wrist tag to wear with this vivid warning.

If this surgery fails, an oil bubble is inserted into the eye which keeps it inflated for 2 to 4 months as the retina heals.  This oil has to be removed with additional surgery which necessitates another two-month recovery period for the eye to heal from that.  Then, yay! it's a permanent fix.

But if the oil ball treatment doesn't work, then as my doctor put it, there's only "one more bullet in the cartridge belt," surgery to band the eye.  I don't know what that procedure is and I shudder at the sound of it.  But I don't believe I'm headed in that direction, despite horror stories I've heard about this surgery being repeated several times that I hope are outliers.

Uh, okay so far...

I went in for the one-week-after check-up after my second eye surgery in a week for a detached retina but the prognosis following that surgery, after the first surgery failed, was okay.  I now had a gas bubble in my eye, which would have to be surgically removed later, instead of a gas bubble which would have just dissipated eventually if that surgery had been successful.

The surgeon said the repair of the three tears in the superior region of the retina, the subject of the first surgery, were pretty set now, and the subsequently deteriorating bottom of the retina in the inferior region, the subject of the second surgery, was still adhering although it was still "wet" (not yet adhering although still in place).  He set the next check-up for two months away.

I couldn't lift anything over 5 pounds for weeks if not months, or do anything that would induce strain including sneezing much less scrubbing a sink basin or a floor or pulling up weeds in the yard.  Try living alone and see how that goes as the weeks turn into a month or more.

The weeks of recovery started to drone on.  My eye hurt sometimes, and gave me occasional sudden pangs of pain, and it itched maddeningly, and I started feeding my paranoia by reading reports of persons who had this surgery multiple times, a half dozen or more, in the hope of it taking.

I had two eye surgeries in a week--don't try that at home!

Shockingly, eight days after emergency eye surgery on my "bad eye,"which was definitely rapidly going blind by the hour (three tears in the retina in the superior region), I was undergoing emergency eye surgery for a second time to save either my typical-or-less normal eyesight or to save my dominant eyeball. I was apparently, according to the ophthalmologist, a bad actor who didn't adhere to the severe recovery routine, but remember that he was the surgeon whose operation had failed, and I was discharged from this second surgery within the hour for my most important sense, sight.

My friend Steve drove me to my friend's apartment (all on one floor) (she was away for a family wedding) and I underwent a week of intensive eyeball-saving recovery routine.  Oh yeah, I did.

What had transpired was that I had had the first hopeful surgery to retain my sight, the insertion of a gas bubble into my eye (to keep it inflated) (90 to 95% success rate) (surgeons lie) fail, so now an oil bubble occupied my eye.  It would have to be removed, if the secondary procedure was successful, with a third eye surgery (the gas bubble dissipates, ending the surgical merry-go-round) to remove the oil.

An excruciating week followed wherein my head was flat on a table for 14 hours a day, forehead down.  It sucked hugely, and I went to my one-week-after doctor's appointment with great trepidation, because it seemed that every time I went to Kaiser they slapped me into the OR.

Nothing like it

After a restless night when I finally fell asleep for a few hours early in the morning, I went back to the doctor the next day. He wanted to check on whether the surgery was taking, and it appeared to be.

The technician ripped the tape off my closed eye, checked its pressure, which was okay, and held up various fingers for me to count.  I could see out of my affected eye, which was encouraging because the afternoon before, when I was wheeled into surgery, about 7/8ths of the vision was occluded in that eye.  Then the doctor came in and explained the surgery which he said had inserted a gas bubble into my eye to replace the vitreous humor and the bubble would dissolve over time as it was replaced by eye fluid during the healing process, and my vision should gradually improve as that occurred.

We discussed my discomfort during surgery the night before.  I don't think he appreciated me as a surgical patient because when he had cut into my eye I was awake and aware and I reacted badly, moving my head in response to the pain ("Lie still!  No talking!"), which I felt palpably, and I moaned softly as he worked, which allayed the incredible anxiety I felt as a burning sliver of metal was jabbed into my eye and thrust about (at least, that's what it felt like).

The doctor was reassuring although he considered the job incomplete because despite repairing the three tears in the retina with his laser, he hadn't fully cemented to his satisfaction the background or "wallpaper" as he called it because I was a moving too much.  But he cited the 90-95% success rate with the procedure as he assured me it was going to be an onerous recovery, and he said he would see me in a week.  Oh what a visit that would turn out to be!

Running out October

After scaling back to 77.2 miles in September while running 22 days following my surgery in August, which bothered me a lot in September, I ramped it up in October and ran 24 times for a total of 128.5 miles.  Following a 30-mile week at the beginning of the month I took a whole week off to let my surgery fully heal and then only did 18 miles, and 16 miles, during the two middle weeks of the month when I came back.  (My early morning runs in rural North Carolina enabled me to record some beautiful sunrises.)

That seemed to do the trick, laying off for a week and cutting back my mileage when I came back, because the numbness and perennial ache "down there" finally started to fade somewhat and I didn't feel like I was straining my abdomen whenever I ran up steep hills, forcing me to walk those hills.  Who knew the surgery would take two months, not two weeks, to more or less almost fully heal.  (On runs I always try to stop and catch up with people I know when I encounter them.)

I finished out the month on a strong note with a week of 31 miles and 32 more miles the last four days of the month.  My pace picked up too, finally, and I started doing some reps with the barbells before and after each run.  (Running in North Carolina where I was working for Hillary, to obviously no effect.)

So now I am working towards getting back into the same shape as I was in when I was in a happy place with my running the day I went under the knife in August for outpatient surgery to repair two hernias.  However did I put on ten pounds in the meantime that I'm having a hard time shedding?  (I love fall running.)

Numbers

Following my retirement at the end of May, I ran 100 miles in June and 135 miles in July.  My mileage suffered a setback last month though, as I underwent surgery on August 12th and had to take two weeks off as I recovered.  (My last run, at 4:30 am, on the morning I underwent surgery at 6:30 am.)

Since the surgery, I have run 19 miles, slowly, to finish out the month of August, giving me 90.2 miles for the month.  Happily, my weight was under 180 on the last day of the month, the same as it was on the day of the procedure.  (Coming home from Kaiser after my procedure, thanks to friends who took care of me that day.)

The conditions the surgery repaired, a return of an umbilical hernia (I had the same condition repaired in 2011) and an abdominal hernia, took six months to be scheduled after diagnosis (I was complaining of pain in my abdomen during long runs) by Kaiser Permanente, my insurance carrier.  That lengthy delay is unacceptable, in my opinion.  (A cut here, a cut there… .)

The cost was acceptable though.  I spent out of pocket about $235 all told, including testing and medications, although I'm pretty sure that's at least double what I spent out of pocket to have a hernia repair five years ago.  (I'm back to running, albeit slowly and for short distances for now.)