Two steps forward, one step back

Wednesday and Thursday were I mostly felt were going well and I was starting to get a better handle on how to manage myself better. They were my only 3 hour work days (split over 4 or 5 sessions) in almost 3 weeks and on the Thursday I had a 5-10 minute walk picking up Kacey from school and then made some pasta and tomato sauce for tea that totalled 25-30 minutes of standing without breaks which again was the most in almost 3 weeks. Apparently that was too much.

I was completely wiped out on Thursday night and spent nearly all of Friday back in bed and feeling very ill. My blood pressure was high all day, I woke with mild conjunctivitis (which started to present on Thursday so I was expecting it), my fatigue and confusion was far worse than it's been since at least last weekend plus some odd bits like my left arm being week (I couldn't hold a phone to my ear for more than 1-2 minutes) and writing being difficult (slow and just not my hand witing). Plus the usual other stuff I've been struggling with.

I tried to get a GP appointment but couldn't manage to get in so had to ring NHS 111 and talk to another doctor over the phone. They basically weren't worried about anything and just wanted to give my some eyedrops to make sure the conjuctivitis doesn't get worse. So that's good news and quite reassuring but I am looking forward to a bit more time with my GP and having some more things explained. Even if it's nothing serious I would like to know why I'm getting quite a lot of small burst blood vessels, if my hands and feet are likely to stop sweating or my hear palpitations and pain are likely to decrease and if I can get rid of the tension headache I've had for 3 weeks and bits like that.

Understanding will help keep my anxiety under control. It's not too bad at the moment but it's also listed as a sytmptom of long covid so I'm a bit anxious about that! Depression is also listed but if anything I've had less depressive thoughts lately. Probably because I'm too tired and confused to think much.

Short term plans

I'm hoping to get to see or at least talk to my GP next week but appointments are hard to get so we'll see how that works out. I'll also be trying to manage myself a little better. Hopefully I've learnt some things that work and some things that don't this week and can improve moving forward. After resting up this weekend. Who knows I might wake up feeling fine one morning this week.

Longer plans

Not plans yet but definitely an oppurtunity to reset and try to improve some health and fitness things I had been thinking about to start 'one day' anyway. Looks like I'll be starting again from zero so will be a good chance to experiment a bit and hopefully come back stronger and healthier than ever. I'll also take a look at some financial stuff.

Finances

I always knew self employment has it's own risks but being ill for a sustained time has really highlighted that. Support is pretty minimal so I need to be a bit better prepared to support myself with a bit more savings (I had been concentrating on clearing old debts but realise I need a bit more of a balance to that for safety) and will also look in to some secondary sources of income that aren't totally reliant on my health/time.

I'm not really sure how much being ill has cost me as I can't concentrate well enough to calculate it accurately but it's at least £1,300 so far will only increase until I'm able to get back to working full-time which seems like a long way away at the moment.

Freedom day

I must admit I'm a bit worried about the upcoming freedom day and everything opening back up. Obviously it's all up to us as individuals but I've seen the government are expecting over 50,000 daily cases soon. I read 10% of adults get long covid. At the moment I'm not one of them as depending on different definitions you need to be ill for 4, 8 or 12 weeks so I'm just considered as having a long recovery from covid. As things stand what I'm going through isn't that unlikely for any aldut that gets covid and the older you are or more underlying health conditions you have the worse it could be. Deaths and hospitalisations may be down with vaccines but that doesn't mean you or your family won't suffer. Everyone's entitled to make their own choice but please think carefully about it before throwing away your masks in celebration.

As is usual for now. I had no plan writing this, just let things flowed and haven't gone back through to read things so not sure how well it comes out or how many mistakes there are. Hopefully it mostly makes sense though.