I'm still running, though! Maybe one day I won't be able to try, and some days it's a bit too much. To be honest, my fitness has dwindled to the point that almost every run sucks and it's appalling how high my heart rate goes up even when my effort is minimal, but it's still going on. I'm still hopeful, I suppose.
Anyway, let me sum up the last year and a half. After that 10 mile run in April of 2022, I caught some sort of non-COVID thing that made me cough a lot for a few weeks (my money is on human metapneumovirus (read why below)), and THEN I caught COVID just before a vacation. I'm still and increasingly more bitter about this. At least I found out before I spread it to the other participants of the race I was going to run.
Unfortunately, I caught it early enough that I was out of quarantine early enough to not extend my vacation. Even more unfortunately, I then had a particularly grueling month with persistent nausea. Fortunately, also anosmia. Meanwhile, it turns out that the test I was then ordering multiple times a day costs a couple of thousand bucks--it changed practically nothing in terms of patient care, but at least it identified an apparent human metapneumovirus surge. What is this virus? Who knows? Maybe I'm the only one who cares because I got fingers to point--maybe I would've fought off COVID without a preceding nasty cough that necessitated sleeping propped up for three weeks. While I'm at it, let me jab my index finger at hospital visitors hurriedly pulling their masks up when I walked into the room. It was so common even during COVID surges. Like, huh? You think all of your respiratory droplets instantly retreat back under the mask somehow? Long story, but this is probably how a certain elderly patient and I caught COVID. This was soon after I'd downgraded to a simple mask in non-COVID rooms, bless my innocent heart.
Well now I wear just a simple mask in COVID rooms too, not always intentionally but "Oh, yeah, I/he/she tested positive for COVID yesterday." Because several screening questions including one that specifically asks about most recent COVID testing/results aren't enough. But maybe these have been phased out so I should stop whining and just wiggle my jaw in that way that makes my mask gap. Like I maybe did again yesterday.
Because, to sum up my life after COVID...I've learned a ton and made some really good friends and my family is doing great too, and I've gotten faster at documentation by disdaining 90% of articles, possessives and proper grammar in general*, and I'm kinda tired and really want those 5 days off before those are phased out too. In the meantime, I'll stay hopeful and I'll keep trying to run.
*it feels really weird to re-re-read/correct something like this post.
