Long Covid Diaries: Summer Break
When I moved Digressions to Substack, I had hoped I could write my way to a new career mix with more time for reflection. But I have learned that the market for paid subscriptions for my kind of pseudo-scholarly writing is very niche. Unfortunately, I am a culture-war rejectionist, and I have no interest in being canceled.
Having said that, I have a general sense that the quality of my writing is ‘back’ where I want it to be, and I still find it very therapeutic to start the day, if I can, with a digression. I have clearly grown the unpaid audience size back to where it was when I left NewAPPS a decade ago and started D&I. (It’s really awe-inspiring that I have more than 250,000 viewers/visitors a year.) Thank you! I am immensely grateful to all the loyal readers who return daily to my impressions, and a special shout out to those who provide me feedback of some sort on them (not the least those who alert me to the inevitable typos in the drafts I publish). And, remember, if you purchase a founder’s subscription, you get to commission a blog post from me on a topic of your choice!
It’s been about five weeks since my last covid update. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here.) The bad news is that I have clearly regressed since early April.
In fact, I went through a period where I had multiple episodes of cognitive fatigue — basically the start of my migraine — a week. And I had to accept that the Botox shots I had gotten were failing to have a fruitful impact anymore. Luckily, most of the time I could handle these episodes by withdrawing and resting, but I noticed I was taking more Naproxen/anti-inflammatories again to get through the day.
As an aside, among medical professionals there is a general awareness that overuse of Naproxen will cause ulcers or stomach bleeding of some sort. I have been repeatedly warned against this by many physicians and nurses. But nobody seems to be able to tell me anything about what the increased probabilities are and, more usefully, a sense of what those probabilities are for patients with my overall medical profile. I am not looking for exact numbers, of course, — I would probably distrust those — but it would be nice to have a rough sense of the magnitudes involved. So, I can’t really hope to make an informed decision that allows me to weigh my options. We’re still far from individualized medicine.
Anyway, earlier in the month I discussed my options with my GP. And I have been prescribed beta blockers to see if they will work in reducing the incidence of migraine. They had, in fact, been suggested as one of my treatment options by the NHS long covid clinic to me almost two years ago. After checking my blood pressure, which was totally fine, the GP thought it was a no-brainer and prescribed them unhesitatingly.
What finally convinced me to go for them is that even moderate exercise is reliably causing migraine. This was not the case before I had covid at all. So, this made me wonder if the migraine is caused by increased blood pressure, or increased adrenaline. (No surprise that I also get the migraine from stress or bad sleep, and any form of cognitive multitasking.) Since I have also a bunch of weird minor neurological symptoms (a tremor, a dystonia) that may be limited with the betablockers, it’s worth a try even if these symptoms don’t impact my life (and seem unrelated to any serious underlying cause—unless they are a side effect of my long covid).
I picked up the pills a week ago. And I had planned to start taking them this Monday at dinner, but because my wife and I went on a date, I completely forgot about it! Of course, since this whole week I have had almost no serious cognitive fatigue!
I have to admit I don’t like the idea of taking more medicine. And I probably should do more introspection on the sources of my unease over this, especially because I am very eager to get the next round of vaccines sooner rather than later.
Anyway, tomorrow we go on a family holiday to the South of Spain. I officially started my holiday yesterday by ritually turning on my ‘away on holiday’ automatic reply and ostentatiously starting to read a sci-fi novel. I bring a whole pile of these on holiday. (I have decided to start taking the new meds on Sunday evening.)
When I look back at the year, it’s been a mixed bag. I had a rocky start to the academic year, where I clearly couldn’t handle the diverse range and intensity of new responsibilities being thrown at me. Like others with chronic disease and invisible handicaps, I also had to put too much effort into boundary policing within the workplace and getting care and appropriate accommodation. Even if you are a (male) full. prof., you are too often treated as ‘the problem’ when you do so.
Then there was an amazing period between end of October through March where I seemed nearly back to ‘normal.’ During this period, my teaching went really well (stellar), I gave many invited talks, traveled a lot (including an amazing family trip to Patagonia), and produced publications on a satisfying range of topics. Most importantly, I still love learning from my students and collaborators. Meanwhile, I have started to develop an ambitious (ERC) grant proposal that I will turn to completing when I return from holiday.
I should wrap up. I hereby declare my annual summer blogging break. I expect to start up again the end of Jul or early August. Meanwhile, I hope you prosper. Ciao.