Just before my summer trip to Amherst, I got a Covid booster—even though the new Covid shot was just about to come out—because I wanted to minimize the chance of catching Covid on a plane or at an airport, and bringing it to my mom or brother.
Since then, I’ve been waiting for four months to pass, so I could get the new shot, now that it’s available. (It turns out that now you only have to wait two months, but nobody told me that.) Anyway, the four months are up, so I got my Covid booster and a flu shot this morning.
Flu shot and Covid shot
My left arm is now moderately sore. In fact, it roughly matches my right arm, which has been sore for months now. (I think originally dog-walking injuries to my right elbow and right shoulder, exacerbated by sword fighting, and exercise. I’ve recently started walking the dog left-handed, cut my sword fighting practice to just once a week, and cut the weight way down on my kettlebell clean&press. Oh, and I have a modest bruise on the right bicep where yesterday I took thrust that just missed the protective plate on my fencing jacket. The jacket is also padded though, and the thrust wasn’t that hard, and the sword was nicely flexible to make it safe for sparring between friends.)
It’s almost as if our response to Covid wasn’t all Trump’s fault after all.
“Most American dairy farms are not regularly testing for H5N1… seeing the possible stigma of admitting they have H5N1-infected cows as a greater risk than the virus itself.”
If you live in Illinois, and care about vulnerable people, consider signing this petition for mask mandates in healthcare facilities: https://chng.it/WdnkRXGkXx
In histories of the period before modern medicine, people were often “sickly” in some fashion or another.
That’s been much less true the past hundred years or so. With a few exceptions (terrible accidents, horrific war injuries), if whatever you had didn’t kill you, you probably got entirely better.
Since I first heard of Long Covid, I’ve been expecting a return to the historical norm.
Looks like I was right:
A total of 17.6% of American adults have ever experienced long Covid symptoms, the survey found.
I started practicing tai chi in 2009 with a beginner course at OLLI (the OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute). I’d always been attracted to tai chi. I liked the way it looked—the slow, controlled movement. I was also interested in it as a martial art, and I liked the idea of “moving meditation.” Despite all that interest, I had not anticipated how transformative the practice would turn out to be.
Lazy about Tying Coat
Before I added the tai chi practice to my life, I was all about figuring out the “right” amount of exercise—and in particular, the minimum amount of running, lifting, walking, bicycling, stretching, etc. to become and remain fit enough to be healthy, comfortable, and capable of doing the things I wanted to be able to do.
Pretty quickly after I took up the practice, I found I was no longer worried about that. I found that my body actually knew what the right amount was, and that all I needed to do was move when I felt like moving—and make sure that my movement was diverse.
Because diversity was the key, I did a lot more than just tai chi. I continued running. I dabbled in parkour. I stepped up my lifting practice (and then shifted to mostly bodyweight training when the pandemic made gyms unavailable, and then continued with it because it seemed to work better). I went down a “natural movement” rabbit hole. I walked a lot.
In about 2012 or 2013 my tai chi instructor asked if anyone wanted to “assistant teach” the beginners class with him. I volunteered, and then did so. After six months or so he asked me to take over the evening class that he was teaching for people who couldn’t come to the early classes. I gradually started filling in for him on other classes as well.
In 2015 I formally took over as the tai chi instructor at the Savoy Rec Center. I really enjoyed teaching tai chi, although I found the constraints (having to show up at every class) a bit. . . constraining.
I did some tweaking around the edges (in particular, combining the Wednesday and Friday classes into a single Thursday class, so I could have a three-day weekend), which helped, but only so much.
Then a few weeks ago, the Rec Center wanted me to sign a new contract which would have required me to buy a new insurance policy, naming the Village of Savoy as an “additional insured.” I’m sure I could have done that—there are companies that sell insurance specifically for martial arts and fitness instructors. But as soon as I got set to research such policies, I realized that I really didn’t want to.
Instead, I wanted to retire.
I’d retired from my regular job years before, in 2007. And of course teaching tai chi four or five hours a week was in no way a career. The first few years I was teaching, I found the money I earned a nice supplement to our other retirement income. But with various improvements to our financial situation over the last few years, the money became pretty irrelevant, and the time constraints more. . . constraining. Especially with my parents facing various health challenges, I want to be able to go visit either one if that seems necessary, which has been difficult if I want to honor my obligation to my students.
So a few weeks ago I told the Rec Center and my students that I was retiring from teaching tai chi. My last classes were yesterday.
I’m sad not to be teaching my students any more, but delighted at losing the set of related constraints.
For years now, my students have been gathering in the park (Morrissey Park in Champaign, Illinois) during nice weather for informal group practice sessions, and I expect we’ll keep doing that. At any rate, I plan to be there, starting in the spring, practicing my tai chi. You are welcome to join us.
I was sick several days this past week or so. Or maybe it was just a delayed reaction to my booster shot. There’s no way to know.
I got my Covid booster on Thursday last week, and my initial reaction was pretty minor—the injection site was mildly sore for about three days.
On Monday this week I met with my Esperanto group as usual, and went with Jackie to her x-ray, post-surgical consult, and physical therapy appointments on Tuesday, also as usual. I’d felt fine in the morning, and we’d made a plan to go out to lunch, but by the end of the physical therapy appointment I was starting to feel crappy, and said I wasn’t up to lunch out.
That night I spiked a fever of 100.2℉, and had the usual body aches that go with a fever.
I didn’t start coughing, so I figured it probably wasn’t Covid, but out of courtesy to my fellow Esperanto group members, I sent email the next morning letting them know about my fever.
I felt some better most of the day on Wednesday, but then felt much worse Wednesday evening.
That night my fever spiked up to 102.9℉. Still no cough though. In fact, no other symptoms—no sore throat, no stuffy nose, no nausea. Just a fever.
With that high of a fever, I figured I should probably get a Covid test, so I did that Thursday morning, and otherwise just rested.
My Covid test came back negative, which was reassuring, but still left me wondering what the heck it was.
I woke up Friday morning feeling almost entirely well. My Oura ring reported that I still had a upward overnight temperature deviation, but my implied fever was just 99.8℉.
I’d planned a day trip with friends on Friday, but figured I had to cancel that. I spent another day just resting, although I basically felt fine.
Today I again feel fine. My overnight temperature is back down to baseline.
I have to say that I’m pretty pleased to have this temperature data from my Oura ring. It has been very handy. Looking back over three years of data, I can see one other temperature spike almost this large, from another day when I was sick, and smaller temperature spikes when I’ve had vaccines of one type or another (two shingles, three flu vaccines, and my two previous Covid shots).
As I say, I’m feeling fine today, but one other metric that I pay attention to is not yet back to baseline: My resting heart rate.
My resting heart rate has done a very good job of indicated whether I’m ready for vigorous activity, and the current level suggests that I’m really not.
So I’ll take it easy again today. Do my morning exercises. Maybe get in a little walk.
I’ve documented all this primarily as a record for myself, so I can look back and remember what happened on which days. I’m still in the dark about what was going on, though. Presumably not Covid, based on the negative test. Maybe the flu? (I got my flu shot in early October, but it’s not nearly as efficacious as the Covid shot, so catching the flu and feeling crappy for a few days is entirely possible.) Maybe some other virus?
Or maybe it’s just an unusually delayed reaction to my Covid booster.
I caught a cold while visiting my mom and brother last week, which gave me a bit of a cough for a couple days. Out of an abundance of caution I got a Covid-19 test before heading to visit my dad, which came back negative just in time for me to check in for my train.
I expect we’ll see more and more of this (because cheap tech) even as I’ve gotten less and less likely to do it myself (because more risk-averse as I get older):
“an open-source vaccine design, made for self-experimenters, dead simple to make with readily-available materials, well-explained reasoning about the design,”
