sometimes I really want to be a princess in a tower
Wednesday, 14 September 2022 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtyou know, I think that epic month-long 'flu may, in retrospect, actually have been COVID, because I am still not right - still coughing, phlegmy, tired, tending to throw out random medical wossnames to no fixed pattern. (Second breast abscess in a year! wtf? why the hell should my Truly Weird Boobs spontaneously generate deep-seated abscesses to no fixed pattern or purpose, by way of Interesting Addition to their existing tendencies to fibroids, cysts and Generalised Bra Loathing? the abscesses hurt like hell and make me feel like death, and the necessary 10-day antibiotic course to suppress them makes me feel only marginally less like curling up into a ball like a woodlouse and trying to hibernate for a decade or two. And then a UTI. Yay.)
And, of course, I don't know if the epic month-long 'flu was actually COVID or not because at the time, I couldn't find a COVID testing centre, and the doctor more or less shrugged and told me to self-isolate for ten days just in case. This country has, for reasons best known to itself but probably not unrelated to our very large segment of population living near the poverty level, proliferated COVID testing centres rather than making self-administered COVID tests freely available. Which is all fine and well, there was a drive-through testing station on Main Road a minute away from my house for two years, except of course we lifted lockdown and mask mandates about three weeks before my 'flu hit (which, suspicious timing, anyway), and the testing centres all folded their tents in the night and stole away. I have subsequently discovered, way after the fact, that my local pharmacist will still administer a COVID test on request, but nobody seems to sell them.
It's Schroedinger's Pandemic again. Although it's still around, we are studiously all looking in the other direction and going "la la la", so it's not really happening. Which I know is really a function of relatively high vaccination levels and a reasonable degree of exposure immunity, and most people who catch it are vaccinated and don't get it seriously, but still, it feels very laissez faire. (My mum informs me that the husband of a school friend caught it, spent six weeks in a coma and died earlier this year, so it's definitely still out there, but he was for no adequately defined reason not actually vaccinated, which seems mad under the circs).
Anyway. One result of lockdown for two years has been that I didn't use any of my medical leave allocation at all for that period. I've used ten days of it in the last month and a half. I am surprised to find myself thinking of lockdown with frankly wistful nostalgia - it seems to be better for my physical health as well as mental. But apparently in later life I am regressing to Princess in Tower mode. Despite the potentially significant fact that I have been randomly growing my hair long again, I shall resolutely ignore any potential princes.
And, of course, I don't know if the epic month-long 'flu was actually COVID or not because at the time, I couldn't find a COVID testing centre, and the doctor more or less shrugged and told me to self-isolate for ten days just in case. This country has, for reasons best known to itself but probably not unrelated to our very large segment of population living near the poverty level, proliferated COVID testing centres rather than making self-administered COVID tests freely available. Which is all fine and well, there was a drive-through testing station on Main Road a minute away from my house for two years, except of course we lifted lockdown and mask mandates about three weeks before my 'flu hit (which, suspicious timing, anyway), and the testing centres all folded their tents in the night and stole away. I have subsequently discovered, way after the fact, that my local pharmacist will still administer a COVID test on request, but nobody seems to sell them.
It's Schroedinger's Pandemic again. Although it's still around, we are studiously all looking in the other direction and going "la la la", so it's not really happening. Which I know is really a function of relatively high vaccination levels and a reasonable degree of exposure immunity, and most people who catch it are vaccinated and don't get it seriously, but still, it feels very laissez faire. (My mum informs me that the husband of a school friend caught it, spent six weeks in a coma and died earlier this year, so it's definitely still out there, but he was for no adequately defined reason not actually vaccinated, which seems mad under the circs).
Anyway. One result of lockdown for two years has been that I didn't use any of my medical leave allocation at all for that period. I've used ten days of it in the last month and a half. I am surprised to find myself thinking of lockdown with frankly wistful nostalgia - it seems to be better for my physical health as well as mental. But apparently in later life I am regressing to Princess in Tower mode. Despite the potentially significant fact that I have been randomly growing my hair long again, I shall resolutely ignore any potential princes.
