Cea, No Evictions  🏘

Hi friends. I had COVID in March 2020 & again in January 2021. Both cases were mild at the time, but I just went to my umpteenth doc for post COVID ailments and the news was (not surprisingly) that I should expect to be like this for a while.

I’ve had tendinitis in both wrists since 2004. I’ve had aphthous ulcers in my mouth since 2009. Both conditions have made it hard to impossible to do basic things like play an instrument, eat, write, lift things. I had them both pretty well under control from 2013-20

I changed my diet, I took care to make sure I was preparing my body for the things I was gonna do. It was slower but it made things possible. Starting in Jun ‘20 I started having new pains that built on the old ones, & playing the guitar was one of the first things I had to stop

I went to docs, tried OT. Things kept getting worse. When I got COVID the second time, the mouth and wrist stuff all went to shit. This winter and spring was rough. My mouth was often in a place where talking, eating, drinking water were all excruciating.

My wrists and hands and forearms hurt in different ways but on bad days I would lift up a full mug and think wow this is too heavy. There was nothing wrong with my muscles or internal parts a variety of specialists could detect. I haven’t played the clarinet w/o pain in 2 months

I’m not as depressed as I was in the winter/spring (on meds for the first time, that helps). But I’m sadly inured to the new status quo. It sucks.

Went to the Mt Sinai #longcovid study today. They were very kind but mostly said hey you’ve been smart in seeing the specialists you have. Might want to try a couple other things but really this is just a matter of seeing how things heal over time.