If There Was Ever a Week..

 ....that I felt like leaving the internet it was this week and very very little of it had a damn thing to do with the internet.

Driftwood washed up on Brasilita Beach. I felt about as useful as this piece of dead wood. I feel like throwing hands at life right now, like that tree is throwing hands.

Last Christmas night I developed a sore throat and fever, spent the better part of this week dealing with it. At the same time we were having big work done on our car, the dash pulled out to have a broken coolant line replaced, and now some adjustments to the transmission, filter changed, fluids changed. Meaning that as I got sicker and sicker and started freaking out (yet again!) sure I had Covid I couldn't get to the doctor without a long cab ride. I'd been exposed several times last week, through my husband's idiot fellow church members.  Negative Covid test on the Tuesday before the border run, and now symptoms.

 Since the Pandemic I've been playing "Covid or Asthma/Lung Crud?" Not my favorite game. Yes, I've been just a touch paranoid about contracting the 'Rona. Which is why I'm living like a semi hermit.

Tuesday evening I was able to pick up the car from the air conditioning people and we headed out to the clinic immediately. I was grumbling over the hundred dollar cost of a second PCR test in a week on the way there. We get there, and the second they take my vitals and hear my sad tale of fatigue, sore throat and fever I get sent outside to wait in my car before being examined in the back room behind the xray hut by someone wearing what was in the Army MOP Level 4 gear. The whole haz mat suit.

I was dismayed to see it wasn't Dr O, who I had spoken to on my way in. It was a young female doctor I'd not seen before. She refused to test me for Covid, after looking at my throat, swollen up face, hearing my voice was gone, and listening to my lungs she said I needed a lung xray and bloodwork, but the technicians were gone for the day. 

Expected the x ray and bloodwork. As a life long asthmatic that's where they start  every single time. That's where they should start every time. I was expecting it, wanting it.

She heard all the crazy crackling at the bottom of my lungs, sent me on my way with a bottle of cough syrup and two more boxes of Combivent after telling me to use one vial of Combivent every 12 hours. I laughed right in her face because Dr O and Dr A know I sometimes need as many as three vials within an hour to turn off the worst attacks and the most I've ever waited between dosing is six hours.

Young doctor doing it By. The. Book. Without bothering to read my file. I was most annoyed and had to take a taxi back the next morning for the xray, bloodword and rapid Covid test along with a test for strep. Both tests negative, no need to run the PCR. I have no clue why I'm so crazy tired from this. Medications switched about. Yes, I had fluid down in my lungs. Crazy. 

Just felt weary and beat up, like disappearing completely from everywhere and everything. Dealing with having a chronic illness is one of the most frustrating and exhausting things on the planet. 

I'm shuffling around trying to clean some, do a deep clean, scrub then rest. Today I got all the bedrooms and my sewing room scrubbed hard. Curtains washed and ironed, all the bedding washed and furniture polished. Tomorrow it's the bathrooms and laundry room. Saturday it's the living room and deck. Why? Jim's friend Thomas is visiting. I've already told Jim do not be surprised if I don't retire to my bedroom a lot. I can only take Thomas in very small doses. He talks constantly. I don't do well with that. I know my limits. But reading the flight cancellations and delays because of Covid, including to the Liberia airport, I'm not entirely sure Thomas will even make it here.

As it is we're being constantly inundated with emails and direct messages from Thomas asking ten thousand questions. I've taken to only opening the email box once a week as a result and his constant messaging is hiding the messages of others, I'm missing them. If I've missed your email or direct message on Facebook I'm sorry. It's Thomas. I'm cursing the day I went online now.

To add insult to the grievous injury of the goat rodeo that is life right now the silly lady down the street messaged us this afternoon, begging us to feed her animals up on her house a few blocks from here. Get this -  her roaming soon to be ex husband and the maid were supposed to work out the dog-cat-chicken-goat feeding schedule between them. But now her daughter has Covid, and they're stuck in the States for at least another week it looks like.

Friend has whined and complained to her that driving over the Brasilita bridge down from his new place is just too much of a trial. Hello? He's mere minutes again, and one lane bridges are the standard here. None of this is any huge imposition on him. But he claims it is.

Around six or seven weeks ago we went to the Liberia Airport to fetch his rear end. He was nice, he was charming, but since then he's not contacted Jim once. I know Jim is very hurt over all of this. Until about 19 months ago he and this guy did things together just about every day. In those last 19 months he's heard from this guy twice, to take him to the airport and now to pick him up. I'm pretty mad at him for how he's treated Jim...

Tomorrow he's supposed to stop by with the keys to the house so we can feed the animals for the next week. I pray I can curb my tongue, and not go off on him. 

Yes, I did copiously complain about silly neighbor leaning on Jim and I a great deal, but lately I've been able to see that being raised as a preacher's daughter in a fundamentalist household with strict gender roles has left her at a huge disadvantage. I'm going to continue to try and see if we can help her learn to do more things on her own. She's started and I know how hard that can been when you're not used to being independent. 

I have the opposite problem. I was thinking about that yesterday as I was hanging the new drapes I made in the guesthouse. Up a rickety  step ladder without balance. Need my head examined.

Listening to oldies tonight on YT while writing this. I think this should be Jim's ringtone/theme song when his friend calls.