Looking Forward to Better Days

[kml]

Bttrfly - tell your brother from another to try a low histamine diet and two kinds of antihistamines - a non-sedating antihistamine like Zyrtec or Claritin (called H1 blockers) and the stomach acid blocker Pepcid (a different kind of antihistamine called an H2 blocker). I follow an online group of Long Covid patients, and of all the things they have tried, this seems to be the intervention that helps the most people.

Also many long haulers seem to develop POTS, when they do they may respond to POTS treatments like beta blockers.

[kml]

Hope all are having a happy New Years Eve - safely. CMM had chemo today, we will be drinking a little Prosecco tonight (very little for him if I have my way!). A box of Sees candy (was given a gift card for Xmas). While he was having chemo I got some things done. The four Covid patients I am watching right now (plus a couple husbands who aren’t my patients) all seem to be turning a corner. The one I was really worried might end up in the hospital has been hanging on and slightly improving. Not out of the woods yet but I’m relieved.

[kml]

Started my Thousand Mile Challenge this morning with a quick two mile walk before breakfast. I’ll try to get another mile or two in later today. I’m determined to reach my goal this year. (Last year was a total bust for many reasons but mostly CMM’s illness). CMM will just have to sit with his anxiety over me being out walking (in my super safe suburban neighborhood! ) He might even have to reconcile himself to me walking at night , but I’m gonna try to get most miles in the morning if I can.

We had a nice quiet New Years Eve, drank some Prosecco and danced to Frank Sinatra as we watched the ball drop in New York.

[kml]

Got three miles in this morning before breakfast. Got my downstairs hall closet cleaned out and rearranged yesterday, working on my bedroom closet some more today (needed to get the downstairs closet done to get rid of a couple things that had been in my bedroom closet).

I’m moving my drum kit downstairs to the living room and that will make it much easier to finish my closet cleaning/reorganizing. I’ve taken two bags of old
out already. I’m sure I’ll probably have another bag before I’m done. I can get in a ruthless mood when I’m purging!

[kml]

Just had a convo with a friend who is a nurse at a local hospital. He tells me that yesterday 10% of the staff tested positive for Covid. (They do routine screening testing).

Also yesterday my city had 4400 new cases of Covid and 58 deaths. Two months ago we averaged 350 new cases a day. And don’t forget , Covid patients that end up in ventilators end up in the ICU for weeks or even months. Rationing of care is already here, even if it’s not being admitted yet.

Be very careful out here folks.

[DonH]

Fascinating to watch how all of this has transpired. Remember when New York, Jersey and a few others were just getting cratered? At the same time my state and much of the west coast had very little. Now NY has been doing much better but California is getting blasted. Yet is there a state that has more lock downs, regulations and requirements than California, yet with all of these the numbers are still way up and hospital beds are still running short. Meantime my state has few regulations, peaked a few weeks before thanksgiving and finally had a handful of patients use the 9 million dollar over flow temporary facility as hospihlizations topped 2,200 which was about 85% capacity for us. All sorts of warnings came that it would get worse after thanksgiving and we’d likely run out of beds. Instead the opposite has happened and we continue to be on the downward end. By Christmas we were down to 1,350 hospitalized. Today we are just over 1,000 or well under half of only 2 months ago and clearly the opposite of any holidays spike - TG or it would appear Christmas though a bit premature to tell for certain for Christmas. The 9 million dollar facility is again vacant having treated 168 total patients before going dormant again. Was checking EarthCam over NYE and was surprised to see Dublin Ireland shut down again. Sure enough they are having a third huge spike with higher numbers than ever before! So clearly it’s not just the USA. Hmmmmmmmm.

Clearly the ability to accurately predict and certainly effect the numbers has proven to be very limited. Places with huge restrictions are doing no better than some of those without them. Places that started off really bad are doing better, until they are not. One county in my state had zero cases through nearly summer. Not a single case for months! Now they are at the top of the list for new cases. It’s their turn. It would be nice if we could take meaningful measures that proved to make a significant difference. So far I’m not seeing them. To me it sounds like most of the rest of medicine. Other than infections, we don’t cure much, we just manage it. Cancer and heart disease are still huge killers despite great efforts. We’ve done pretty well with HIV and AIDS. Hopefully it will be the same with covid. But I think back to the predictions and reactions to HIV and see not much has changed. We still have a lot to learn about the practice of medicine. Hopefully covid will run its course in CA and get better like NYC. Lots and lots of people in one area though. So far I hear for my state that 1 in 12 people have been infected since this all started. At least 92% have not. The record breaking time that operation warp speed started getting effective vaccines into peoples arms will probably save more lives than everything else that was tried - combined. I’m thinking thats our best chance out of this, which if we even keep to 1 in 10 being infected before vaccines are wide spread, that would be pretty good. Sadly I’m not sure we’ve learned anything. Everyone still thinks their way is the right way, politicians think they know more than physicians, and stopping the spread of a virus has proved to be a huge task. Hopefully I’ll be in the 9 out of 10 group. On my third bottle of hand sanitizer trying.

[kml]

I think the rapid increase in my state, while partly due to irresponsible holiday behavior starting with Halloween, is also likely due to a mutated form of the virus that is more contagious. We are something like 43rd in terms of nations doing genomic testing on the virus, so I believe we just missed it when the newer, more contagious version appeared. Now that they are looking they are finding it wherever they look in my state.

I’m just waiting for my turn to get the vaccine and hoping it comes in time. Taking my vitamin D.

[kml]

Phew! Master bedroom closet is done! While there’s still a little purging and arranging I could do, it looks pretty good. Only problem is where to put the Goodwill donation bags. I suspect they are closed for donations right now due to the lockdown so I may have to find a spot in the garage right now. (Anybody need any hangers? Lol)

I learned I do not need to buy any more shoes for the next couple years. Or any clothes really. I learned I’m far too ready for cold weather that never comes (ski jacket, wool scarves, a wool pea coat that I’ve never really worn because it’s too warm!). And that I have a boatload of band T-shirts. And if the occasion ever arises again to wear fancy dresses, I have outfits. Seriously I can’t foresee any event in the next couple years that I don’t have clothes or shoes for. I’m not a clothes horse but I seem to have accumulated plenty. Which is ironic because I tend to wear the same few outfits every week.

Next step will be to organize the hanging clothes by categories (work clothes, casual weekend clothes, dress up clothes, onstage performing clothes, freak cold weather clothes Lolol).

I got rid of a shoe rack which I realized hid the shoes too much - I didn’t know what I had and kept buying near-duplicates! I substituted an open shoe rack that I happened to have instead and it’s much better - I won’t forget what I have.

I also ruthlessly purged any shoes that weren’t perfectly comfortable. I’m too old to suffer for beauty.

There’s still nooks and crannies in the house that need organizing but these two closets this weekend have given me great satisfaction, and surprisingly large amounts of stuff have been purged.

Here’s to a new year unencumbered by excess stuff.

[AndrewP]

I try to follow the "one thing in - one thing out" rule although there has been more out than in for some time. I was actually just trying to think and I believe that I currently have about the same amount or perhaps less stuff than when we moved into this place from a one bedroom apartment if you don't count my workshop. And that is just a couple of stationary tools plus "stuff".

One thing that strikes me about the somewhat minimalist way I have with stuff is that it opens up so many possibilities. That and the financial ability that if I need something I can just go and buy it helps.

A friend of mine from Guatamala once described to me how the used clothing business works. It's quite the process going from collection in richer countries through sorting, packaging, distribution and out to the people who re-sell the clothes out their back door in poorer countries.

For your old clothes and shoes would perhaps the local Woman's shelter be taking donations? I would expect that your surplus items are all of good quality.

[Dawn70]

I worked on our bedroom closet one day last week and it was a TON of work. I should probably say my closet, because while it is not a huge walk-in closet or anything, it is a decent size and Sparky has like 5 things hanging in it and one suitcase in the bottom of it. Everything else is mine. So I went through and really ruthlessly culled clothes and shoes. I am one of those people who has a crap ton of clothes but wears the same 5 or 6 things all the time. There really is no need for that much stuff. I have some nice blouses and dress pants that I never wear and since I'm a fat girl, I figured a local consignment shop might be my best bet because they are usually short on plus size clothes. Right now, the bags are still sitting in my dining room, because I didn't want to drive to town last week just for that, but I'm going to stop by a local shop this week while I'm in town for work and see if I can offload the stuff. That way I can earn a little money but not have to mess with it. Barring that, I don't know where I will donate them because I am not sure our local thrift store is currently taking clothing items.

It really is a huge task to fully clean out and organize a closet. I thought I could do it in an hour or so and I literally worked like 6 hours one day getting it done and still need to make another pass through and cull out some more stuff. I have decided, though, that January is my organization month. I get up at 4:15 am with Sparky and he leaves for work at 4:45. I don't leave for work until 5:45 so that gives me an hour to get ready and organize something. So, I'm making a point of organizing one thing every morning in my "down time" before I leave for work. This morning, I tackled the kitchen drawers. We have a small, galley style kitchen with only 4 small, narrow drawers so I had to be creative in how I organized them to hold all of our stuff, but still be usable. I also purged some of the extras of the several veggie peelers, extra pizza cutters and metric crap ton of paring knives of varying quality. I was pleased with how it all looked when I left, if I do say so myself.