It’s Naht A Toomah

As the venerable Arnie once said.

It’s also not COVID, but as I am discovering, I have most of the COVID symptoms most of the time. It’s special.

It’s nearly 5am and I haven’t slept yet, because I have a terrible headache that isn’t worsened by looking at screens but is bad enough that I can’t sleep. This is an almost constant these days, because my pituitary is inflamed and thus there is swelling in my brain that is putting pressure on my optic nerves, which is also messing with my vision.

One of the more frustrating things about my state of being right now is how vague my symptoms are. Like I said, I have most of the symptoms of COVID most of the time. Fever? Check. Tiredness? Check. Cough? I’m prone to dry coughs because I have lung scarring from the pulmonary embolism back when I was 25. Aches and pains? Check. Gastric issues? Check, especially when I’m having an adrenal crash. Headaches? Super check. Breathing weirdness? Yup, again especially when I’m having an adrenal crash. Chest pressure/pain? Sure. Aphasia? Heck yes. The only things I’m missing are anosmia, skin rash, and discolouration of fingers and toes. Although as weird as it sounds, COVID is actually not something I’m particularly worried about personally. I’m high-risk if I get it, but I doubt I’m likely to get it. I only ever leave the house to see the doctor these days, or maybe visit go to a shop while wearing a mask. I’m worried about everyone else, but not me personally.

I think most chronically ill people are dealing with something like this at the moment. “Well, yeah, I do have those symptoms. I always have those symptoms. I could either freak out about it or just sort of go eh about it, and going eh is less tiring.”

But that’s the frustrating thing about having multiple conditions. I felt awful last night and couldn’t figure out why, and I’m still not sure whether I needed painkillers, valium, or food. I ended up having all three and things improved a little bit, but obviously not very much because of the aforementioned not sleeping.

Food is a frustration at the moment too. Last October, I started seeing the obesity clinic at the local hospital, and they were very helpful. I’d started on a very low calorie meal replacement bar thingy, both to give my gut a bit of a rest after the years of chronic gastritis that we have since discovered was caused by the adrenal insufficiency and to see if it would help me shift some of the weight that I have never been able to lose, and I’d actually managed to drop 10 kilos, with the help of swimming. I was still eating dinner with the housemates, but a meal replacement bar for breakfast and lunch was fine. I didn’t feel deprived and I didn’t feel physically off.

And then COVID hit, and the Thing That Happened in April happened, and everything has gone out the window. I can’t swim, because even if the swimming pools open for public use, I’m not physically strong enough to feel safe swimming on my own in case I need to be able to get home quickly. We might talk to the Engineer’s parents and see if they mind us coming to their place on weekends to swim (yes, they have a pool. Yes, I am jealous) but I’m wary of visiting too much. They’re in good health but they’re older so, you know. Concerned.

And food is an issue now. I still don’t have an appetite, because I have nerve death in my gut, but now, if I don’t eat a pretty substantial amount, I get really physically out of whack. I’d always heard that steroids tend to cause weight gain because they increase your appetite, but that’s not what I’m finding. I’m just finding that I seem to need higher-energy food just to not feel like crap. It’s not great. I don’t even enjoy eating it.

But you know what? Right now, I can’t care about my weight. If I have to be a fatty fatty fat fat in order to not be exhausted and weak and headachey all the time, then I’ll be a fatty fatty fat fat. It’s not like I’m ever going to be in “good health” anyway, let’s be real, and I have to focus on something. I choose to focus on trying to be actually functional. I miss actually functional.

But hey. It’s naht a toomah, and it could have been. We did an MRI and everything. I’ll take that as a positive.