Story 12March2022: Exhaustion

I managed to start at 6:30AM with taking the steroids. This is cycle 3, day 3. I am unsteady for a moment, but that seems to be fatigue and not frozen joints as I had last time. I do not need the cane. But the cold sensitivity is extreme, and I feel I could trip the strangling breathing issue again even in 68F. So I turn up the heat! With some difficulty, I manage to make coffee.

I then manage peanut butter toast for food. I am tired, more than I have been before, and I am sure the adventures at the ER have me pasted it on my energy levels. I manage to read some news and email. I write the blog.

I decide to stay in PJs for the morning. First, I watch some of the news, but Bloomberg is running re-runs. So I switch to CNN for a while. Next, I fall asleep in the chair. I then walk to the bedroom and read more Americana.

I still like the book, but it is not connected with the experience of farmers and black sharecroppers. But I do enjoy reading the coverage of the mineworkers (one of my first jobs in computers was the Coal Minners’ Pension Fund in Washington, DC) and the building of the trusts. More shenanigans at Wallstreet, mostly price-fixing, would impact all in the USA, so I do not feel the narrative has drifted into a false all-white-lived history report. President Teddy is now muck-raking and trust-busting, which is good for all Americans.

I manage to order Mexican using GrubHub, but it is hard to eat as I am so tired eating seems a chore. Thank you, Michelle Vondenkamp, Gary, and Erika, for the GrubHub cards. I fall asleep in the chair again and head to bed after calling the Forest Grove Rehab and Care Center and telling the nurse, Nichelle, that I would not make it in today. She will relay the message to Susie. Susie was fine.

I rest and read some more and finally get dressed and shower. I have to heat the shower before I get in. The new shower had a showerhead you could pull down and a bench to sit on. I use it to spray all the surfaces with hot water. The new handholds are in place too. It is very safe. It is also tile and hard to slip.

I feel clean and relaxed and ready to sleep some more. But, I resisted and tried some news and email. Then, I made an easy dinner. I make just steel-cut oatmeal with walnuts, brown sugar, a touch of maple sugar, and brown sugar. I need other areas of my body to start flowing and had taken a laxative already. So, some high-fiber and easy-to-digest food is my usual answer.

I set the clocks forward. I watch some more of the show Upload and like the direction, the show is going. It is light and interesting to me–the jokes and irony fit me well.

I chat with the Smiths. We talked about various topics, including Grammarly. I use it to write the blog and other things. I do not use that many transitions in writing the blog, but Grammarly loves them, so I update my text with about 1/3 of the suggestions. It also fixes all the Oxford commas that I can’t stand to type, finds basic mistakes and suggests improvements as I have the professional $140 subscription. I usually make four passes through the blog. One with just Grammarly happily installing commas, removing commas, and sometimes changing its mind a few times. I then fix the wooden language it misses. This gets another fun bounce with Grammarly as it will usually want to make transitions that I have resisted and apply very sharp conciseness cutting that I will not always go for. One more read to check that meaning is not too bent by the process and then done.

I took the pills at 10:30, about 9:30, before the change. So it was about 1/2-way for the time-change, and thus it worked out.

So a dull day, but no ER trips, no strangling from cold air, no falls, and progress on all pills and health issues. Showering was done safely, and sleep was acquired.

Exhaustion and fuzzy thinking followed me all day.

A late add: I did update my Python on the Mac and enjoyed all the pain that includes. It was fun to use the brain and code just a tiny bit. I managed to update PyCharm and make it work, my editor and helper. But, Python is failing now. The M1 chip is not Intel and Intel math routines, fantastically fast and stable and free, do not work on my new Mac–they just fail out instead of turning off with more grace. So I had to install a new enviroment which meant making Anaconda work which is now a pay service (!?) that I may need to get a professional license to use (or install pythong without it). I create a Python 3.9 version–new Python. And once that worked I manually installlig the Python math routines into the same instance of Python known as Numpy, I was able to get my basic Pi calculating again. I suspect the AI stuff will be harder to repair.

I am better this Sunday morning. The time-change is terrible, but it always is. Someday we will get California to sign-up, and Washington state, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona will no longer do this madness.