rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

I hate to say it, because Facebook neighborhood groups are the worst thing ever, but such local fb groups might actually be good for finding that kind of thing, if you have a decent-sized one for wherever you live and can stomach searching through the curtain-twitching and worse. The big group for my local area has had some good tips lately amidst all the usual nonsense.

I've seen a couple of sites covering South London, which as we know is the important bit. This one's a blog I follow anyway and seems to do some of the job. I don't know if there's a more authoritative single source: https://www.rocketandsquash.com/eating-in-in-the-time-of-covid-19-ingredient-shopping/

ok i might try asking my local whatsapp group, which is much less awful than the FB groups seem to be -- it's heavy on info to help the vulnerable* and so far very light on performative crackpot stasi beef

*i am not really in a vulnerable group (until my birthday lol) but i guess the info would generally be helpful

We got a massive double fruit/veg box plus milk, bread, eggs and butter from Knock Knock. Quality was decent, if not the stuff I’d usually have chosen. For anyone in the Peckham area, Khan’s on Rye Lane are doing deliveries.

Bizarrely, jaguarshoes - next day delivery, we ordered after the cut off last night and it still turned up at 2pm today - they even made a second delivery last week to drop off the bread they forgot in the first one:

https://jaguarshoescollective.bigcartel.com/

jaguar shoes? Were you ordering negronis??

The advice is that seven days after the fever goes you're safe, but since I never had a fever it's shruggy-emoji time for me. I've been out to a shop once and was almost phobically distanced all the time I was there. Madchen is working on masks; will feel a lot happier when I have one of those on.

there seems to be confusion about this. I’ve heard both from a person on the NHS 111 service as well as from the nurses that gave Emma her blood oxygen tests that it’s 7 days from when you first got symptoms, and after that, if you don’t have symptoms, you no longer need to self-isolate. they are vague about this on the official page:


https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isolation-advice/

FWIW, on this side of the pond the CDC advises people to stay home for 72 hours after fever has disappeared and when all other symptoms (shortness of breath, cough) have also disappeared.

What do the Taiwanese health services say? I'd follow their advice, personally.

tracer i dug up some delivery possibilities (i have tried none of these but various friends suggested them inc.mr farrell above -- some are uk-wide but we think most shd cover yr part of east london?) (crossposted on the "bring me soup mfers" london quarantine distress thread also):

Crosstown
Dishpatch
HG Walter
Jaguar shoes
Natoora
Pale green dot

Aha! mark thank you!!

deliveroo and uber eats were also mentioned in the relevant whatsapp discussion, leading to a squabble abt the respective ethics of using each lol

A london-living acquaintance has had symptoms uncannily similar to mine/TH and just tested C19 positive which is probably the closest I'm going to get a test myself any time soon.

Progress-wise I think I'm pretty much over it. Don't much fancy a trip to the gym yet, but no active complaints or anything. So, hurrah, I guess.

good to hear, stet

Do ya feel indestructible now? Like you can hug anyone you want?

I've been frustrated because I've had mild chest pain coming and going for about five days now, and no fever for six. Since I technically still have symptoms, I'm staying in... but if I had these symptoms during ordinary times they wouldn't stop me from going out. My phone tracked about 5 miles' walking/day for the week before I developed symptoms, and now it's around 0.2. Granted I had been walking more because 1) walking is good and 2) there wasn't a whole lot else to do... but now there's less.

I realize these are pretty minor problems compared to what others have been facing, including in this thread. But I'm antsy. Like I was listening to the Rolling Stones doing "She's So Cold," and it was like it was about not being able to go outside, a kid cooped up too long. My energy level must be good, anyway!

So indestructable. I even ate indie fried chicken from the scary shop last night.

On the other hand, I'm just waiting for the "study shows Covid survivors are at massively increased risk of X" news to drop now.

i’m so glad you’re feeling better<3

cheers stet

Yay!

yes great news stet. Do you have any symptoms at all still? I still feel dehydrated all the time, more than a week after shaking the fever. And I still have the ringing in my ears.

the ringing has gone right down but still there if I concentrate, and I'm still get tired much quicker than before when exercising but that's about it

i biked for 15 minutes yesterday and played ping pong with my annoyingly skilled 11-y-o and that night slept for 10 hours.

Glad that the worst us over for you both

still get tired much quicker than before

altogether understandable after what the virus put your body through. great to hear how much better you're doing.

Yeah, great to hear recovery stories

glad you're both well on the way to recovery, stet and tracer

i'm a lot more certain now that mrs g probably has the 'rona than i was the last time i posted itt - we're now on day 12 of likely infection and she spent a few days at the start of week two with a bit of a cough and she was struggling for breath when she did any kind of moving around, which according to the doc she spoke to on 111 is a pretty common second-week progression

it's eased off a bit now she's exhausted all the time and her temperature remains a bit elevated, although not quite high enough to be feverish

still no way to know wtf is actually happening to her, of course, but the length of the time she's been unwell is really unusual for her, and the 111 experts seemed fairly sure that she was showing the symptoms of a mild case

thankfully i'm still not showing symptoms, and at this stage i think it's getting less and less likely that i will, so i've been able to look after my daughter and her but, man, even a much milder case than tracer of stet's really sucks!

i would say don't be spooked by the week 2 dip but pay close attention and if the breathing thing gets significantly worse you should call your GP. there are clinics you can go to in order to get blood oxygen and lung capacity checked.

my wife found it really helped to sit up rather than lie down, and to do gentle exercises that would open up her chest, i.e. holding her hands above her head and breathing deeply.

Blowing up ballons (a tip I read about in the Guardian that seems to have some early backing in pneumonia studies) also helped me. Wishing you both well BG!

^^ my nurse wife says "that's a good idea"

thanks folks - i think the worst of the breathlessness is over but the exhaustion remains

i got an incentive spirometer for her from amazon to try and help her recovery but she doesn’t seem to think she needs it

Very good news :)

tragically i cannot return it to amazon for a refund so i guess keeping three plastic balls in the air with the power of my lungs is my new lockdown hobby

bg, glad to hear your wife is making progress, even if slowly.

my wife found it really helped to sit up rather than lie down, and to do gentle exercises that would open up her chest, i.e. holding her hands above her head and breathing deeply.

This mirrors my experience: I've woken up, lying on my back, with the chest pain; then it tends to lessen when I'm more upright, not leaning back in my chair, etc. It's still disconcerting that I'm on day 8 of mostly just chest pains (day 13 of symptoms overall) which waver from day to day rather than diminishing over time. But it's reassuring to know that the unpredictability is similar for others.

if you can, I've read that laying on your chest is better for lung function due to your lungs being closer to your back, and the lesser weight on them

I don't think I could do that for more than a brief rest or a nap, but it makes sense

Yes, they’re putting a lot of hospital patients in the prone position, I read.

Neue Jesse Schule how are you doing?

how's everybody else?

Saturday 25 April

I'm a month along and tbh I still don't feel 100%. I tried to go for a run yesterday. Felt great for the first 5 minutes and then my chest started really feeling it. Prior to getting covid I was no runner but I had gotten into the habit of a daily run that would last 35-40 minutes. So something's a bit weird there. When evening came I was beyond knackered.

My taste for alcohol has really dropped off a cliff too. I can drink half a beer, maybe one at a push.

Still have the ringing in my ears.

I don't know if it's damage of some sort that I need time to recover from or if it's still rattling around in there somehow.

Thanks for asking! If I'd answered yesterday I would've said I was completely recovered, no symptoms at all. Today I woke up with mild chest pain again. I think it has a lot to do with how I slept—like mh said above, lying on/leaning against my back seems to prompt symptoms.

Bronchial problems haven't really gotten in the way with the relatively mild exercise I've taken lately (long walks, 10-15 mile bike rides), and I don't feel any unusual lethargy. Haven't been able to run lately anyway because of longer-term hip and foot issues.

I left my apartment after 14 days inside on the basis of the CDC saying you can stop isolating within 7 days of the start of symptoms, three days after fever has subsided, and when other symptoms have "improved"—which is a little ambiguous, but I took to not necessarily mean "completely and absolutely disappeared."

I hope you (and I) don't have damage! I did see a speculative news story about permanent organ damage from the virus. It doesn't seem to help to think about that. It's looking like I may be able to get tested within a few days, anyway....

this business about when you can leave quarantine / resume normal activities has been a problem for me, too. (i know someone who's in a similar boat timeline-wise, too.)

i have been sick since mid-march. fever and throat and chest symptoms that were taking longer than the two advised weeks to dissipate while i was waiting them out at home. i did a tele-consult with a local clinic and was told i probably had the virus and possibly bronchitis as a result. (testing has been hard to come by here.) a while after that i woke up with more labored breathing and bluish lips and fingertips and was scared enough to call emergency (that's one of the symptoms they warn you on, apparently much more so than i had, but then i had never turned blue before). the emts checked my stats and didn't want to take me in but i insisted, worried about falling back into my usual under-estimation or under-acknowledgement of my need for help (in anything). in the er they took some vitals, listened to my symptoms, and x-rayed my chest. they said my lungs were healthy (i.e. no ground-glass opacities, no pneumonia, no signs of other pre-existing or resultant problems like popping a lung) and that given the timeline i was most likely over it / on the downhill slope. and that what concerned me was probably just some minor passing mucus blockage, which i should keep trying to clear. so they didn't admit me, just sent me home. more than one staffer i interacted with told me 'good luck'. : /

it's been a couple few weeks since and my symptoms have been frustratingly slow to leave. my temp stayed elevated but rarely hitting 'fever' range, more often just a persistent hot flushing. no real cough of the involuntary sort because it depends on my chest which still gets tight and hard to clear, but generally in familiar, diurnal ways by now. i keep working at it with expectorant and as my temp seems more mild still, i get the picture that most of how i feel could now be correlated with the bronchitis (i don't know how 'residual' viral infection works—am i holding un-attacked lodes of it? can mucus that becomes more watery unleash it in the process of being cleared? idk) because of the symptoms and their responsiveness to otc meds. (nothing really new has seemed to happen with them since earlier in the illness i thought something had gotten to my lungs. so i am assuming that the doctor's assessment would continue to hold good. though it is hard to just rely on that sort of thing with all the uncertainty circulating, and the magnitude of the worst outcomes.) i've been doing a lot to change my position, it seems to help, but then it's all so erratic that it's hard to know for sure. i've recently started taking walks again—pretty much my normal and only exercise—and they aren't notably worse than i'm used to, just perceptibly affected by the condition of my chest and medicated status at the time of walk. i think if i were a runner i would probably find something like tracer has found—at times my deeper breathing is inhibited without intentional deep breathing, and i would need to get at it for more exertion than walking. (i could see the difference between last night and tonight by my heart rate. speaking of which, a friend recommended a pulse oximeter and i have been consulting it faithfully since the doctor at the er pronounced my oxygen stat 'excellent'—making sure that i don't take a turn for the worse there.)

i'm on the hook for about $2500 that i can't afford now for the hospital visit, and though i'd surely like to keep consulting a regular doctor that's an extra hassle on top of everything now. i am pretty sure i will lose (i.e. fail to be offered) my regular summer teaching job any day now. friends have been bringing me groceries and naturally i am on the computer nearly every moment, but otherwise i have been alone. aside from routine commerce and coffeeshops and infrequent meetings with friends that's actually normal for me, but in all this it has not been appreciably nicer because of that. it's been wearying and mildly harrowing.

j. have you applied for unemployment? i'd look into it. even if your employment situation was weird / contract-only you should still qualify for the cares amount. also the eidl / ppp loans if you're w-9. they're out of money right now but i think there's more in the pipeline. glad you're feeling a little better.

glad you've got some good friends bringing groceries j, all the best to you.

j. take care rooting for you

likewise (and everyone else here)

Get well soon, j.

get well