I'm here studying some of the ways the conditions around treatment might be creating greater coronavirus/covid-19 burden. So far, there is no cure for the disease, just handling the symptoms to hopefully keep patients alive. So let's keep patients alive.
Steps One, Two, Three:
Don't get the virus, or don't get very sick.
Follow the GREAT PUBLIC HEALTH MESSAGING to wash your hands with soap frequently like a psycho, and to observe social distancing as much as possible staying away from people who may be infected and staying away from people because of course you yourself may be infected and with covid-19 you're spreading the virus even before you develop the symptoms like fever and coughs. Read about viral shedding, I don't understand it but it is gross. :-) Now, the germs are out there, and if you encounter the virus you want to be in the majority that gets away with mild or moderate disease, so throughout this crazy pandemic period you should really take care of yourself, eat well, sleep and rest more than ever, enjoy that hot chicken soup or lemon honey tea, or even do the steam inhale things, stay hydrated, gargle salt, clean your nostrils with soap etc etc. Oh Lord, it's exhausting. Glad it's not forever.
It's not forever, in part because in some months or years there will hopefully be a vaccine. Also because there are experiments (known as trials) going on with existing medicines (the malarial ones, the one from ebola, etc etc) to understand their effect on this disease - no they are not very effective or you would have been informed by the health authorities to use them. Scientists are working...you are welcome to join the various efforts.
Steps Four, Five, Six:
But in the meantime, the coronavirus disease is a killer that has caused quick respiratory-related death for some people, just like that. And so there must be a medical response. But the people around all these sick people then get sick, and it seems they get it worse than other people too. Basically, doctors are at risk. Then you start to try to understand why doctors are at increased risk, and you also try to understand how these viruses are finding lungs to infect and all that...let's try to shorten the story by quoting:
from, a picture in The Washington Post, March 23, 2020: What the structure of the coronavirus can tell us. (I didn't include the copy-paste the actual picture because it's probably a copyright violation to do so.) Washing our hands is good advice. But it's not the only weapon we have...
In Lagos, we've had roughly these conditions, naturally, and one prays that we will therefore be spared a great coronavirus outbreak. Can we replicate this "weather" in the hospitals of New York and Barcelona? Yes, we must try.
(It just occured to me to say: please don't use the heater in your building to a very high level in an effort to dry yourself into a prune - you'll make yourself ill and lower your immunity. Please don't do stupid things. Natural heat with humidity and ventilation is a different thing than using your HVAC as a dryer.) Ask an air-conditioning professional, HVAC engineer, and facilities manager to help.
Please click on each of these to learn more.
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| Building managers, especially for hotels and hospitals, please click for technical information |
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| More great tips from facilityexecutive.com |
3. But also, we must find where we're actively multiplying infection rates and stop doing that or even start cleaning the air, a keyword I've seen is aerosolization, which causes more spread and more disease. WHO is looking into understanding this. Engineers can help.
This thing is highly infectious. Dealing with it may seem frustrating. Don't be frustrated. We'll figure it out.
4. Don't intubate. Now here I sort of don't know what I'm talking about. But it's invasive, with risks to the carer and the patient. Just as the system for giving supportive oxygen produces aerosols that make more patients.
That is why I'm suggesting a pause here to consider: Can we avoid getting to the point where we need a wild number of these extreme procedures? (Oh yeah, isn't that what everybody has been trying to do?)
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Also, there is no evidence that aerosol transmission occurs outside of aerosol-generating procedures in a hospital setting. Physical distancing is adequate protection for respiratory droplets.— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) March 28, 2020
One choir practice.— Trisha Greenhalgh (@trishgreenhalgh) March 30, 2020
60 well, asymptomatic people who did not shake hands.
45 now COVID positive.
2 dead.
Is singing an aerosol generating procedure? https://t.co/Mp12wYikIo
Here is the latest from @WHO on how #coronavirus is transmitted.— Dr. Dena Grayson (@DrDenaGrayson) March 30, 2020
“WHO continues to recommend airborne precautions for circumstances and settings in which aerosol generating procedures and support treatment are performed.”
SINGING may generate aerosols.https://t.co/kPZ9IsgrvY
This thing is highly infectious. Dealing with it may seem frustrating. Don't be frustrated. We'll figure it out.
4. Don't intubate. Now here I sort of don't know what I'm talking about. But it's invasive, with risks to the carer and the patient. Just as the system for giving supportive oxygen produces aerosols that make more patients.
That is why I'm suggesting a pause here to consider: Can we avoid getting to the point where we need a wild number of these extreme procedures? (Oh yeah, isn't that what everybody has been trying to do?)
Don't let the viruses live.
Don't let the virus find your face.
Don't let the virus get cosy inside you.
Don't let the virus end you.
Don't let the viruses spread.
Working together, we can achieve our aim.Advertisement: Read my books.
29 comments:
One of those viral WhatsApp messages of March 2020:
Finally, some sensible advice.
Good advice in, 'Queen's English', from a nurse..not from me!
“What I have seen a lot of are recommendations for how to try to avoid getting coronavirus in the first place -- good hand washing, personal hygiene and social distancing -- but what I have NOT seen a lot of is advice for what happens if you actually get it, which many of us will. So as your friendly neighborhood Nurse let me make some suggestions:
You basically just want to prepare as though you know you’re going to get a nasty respiratory bug, like bronchitis or pneumonia. You just have the foresight to know it might come your way!
Things you should actually buy ahead of time (not sure what the obsession with toilet paper is?):
Kleenex,
Paracetamol,
whatever your generic, mucus thinning cough medicine of choice is (check the label and make sure you're not doubling up on Paracetamol)
Honey and lemon can work just as well!
Vick vaporub for your chest is also a great suggestion.
If you don’t have a humidifier, that would be a good thing to buy and use in your room when you go to bed overnight. (You can also just turn the shower on hot and sit in the bathroom breathing in the steam).
If you have a history of asthma and you have a prescription inhaler, make sure the one you have isn’t expired and refill it/get a new one if necessary.
This is also a good time to meal prep: make a big batch of your favorite soup to freeze and have on hand.
Stock up on whatever your favorite clear fluids are to drink - though tap water is fine you may appreciate some variety!
For symptom management and a fever over 38°c, take Paracetamol rather than Ibuprofen.
Hydrate (drink!) hydrate, hydrate!
Rest lots. You should not be leaving your house! Even if you are feeling better you may will still be infectious for fourteen days and older people and those with existing health conditions should be avoided!
Ask friends and family to leave supplies outside to avoid contact.
You DO NOT NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL unless you are having trouble breathing or your fever is very high (over 39°C) and unmanaged with meds. 90% of healthy adult cases thus far have been managed at home with basic rest/hydration/over-the-counter meds.
If you are worried or in distress or feel your symptoms are getting worse, ring 111 and they will advise if you need to go to hospital. The hospital beds will be used for people who actively need oxygen/breathing treatments/IV fluids.
If you have a pre-existing lung condition (COPD, emphysema, lung cancer) or are on immunosuppressants, now is a great time to talk to your Doctor or specialist about what they would like you to do if you get sick.
One major relief to you parents is that kids do VERY well with coronavirus— they usually bounce back in a few days (but they will still be infectious), Just use pediatric dosing .
Be calm and prepare rationally and everything will be fine. Share this as it's great advice!"
- Anjum Anwar
via The Huffington Post, a latest summary of coronavirus modes of transmission. I'm hypothesizing that while they fight the large outbreaks of coronavirus disease, hospitals are inadvertently polluting cities with aerosol? Note (internet search) the aerosol form is more lethal; it travels straight to the lungs with less of an opportunity for the body to fight it like it fights using mucus in the nose. (Suspect this is linked to healthier/younger victims of the virus nowadays, as reported in the news - New York area and Italy. Probably, along with close contact, linked to high rate of death among healthcare workers who catch the virus.) Also note (internet search) that the intubate-extubate thing with the ventilators is not saving lives, the patients still die, maybe with extra days from the respiratory help. RIP.
The recommendation I have is to check the vents, test the air, disinfect and decontaminate especially these hotspots, save the doctors, also to protect regular citizens from hospital aerosol.
Infectious disease - go to Isolation units. Good.
Infectious disease - go to Hospital ER/OR. Risky.
Personal protective equipment for workers ... Good.
ICU care with breathing pumps or ventilators ... Risky. Not saving lives. Risking worker lives. But also adding to viral aerosol burden in the sorrounding area.
I'm not crazy, people are saying the same
April 2-4 I did my best to push this message, mostly HERE
:-)
:)
Two years later, it's not lungs we're hearing about, it's kidneys. It appears that there have been cases of rather-sudden-onset end-stage-kidney-disease. A few days ago I read this, about APOL1 gene and the genetic cause of kidney disease in Nigeria. The story is that in developing resistance to trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) that is endemic historically to our part of the world, many (percentage?) have mutations in that gene that ok are protective by giving the body a way to attack sleeping sickness but may lead to increased risk of the body attacking its own kidney someday under some conditions.
What I feel now is excitement, because, analogous to the case for covid-19 intubation when the lungs get overly distressed, I sense that there is a way to bypass the invasive treatment for the distressed kidneys that are failing possibly in response to covid (dialysis, kidney transplant)
Continued...
Part of how this discovery process works is that I am going through symptoms as doubtless many people are, maybe just not in the extreme that kills the patient. In the past couple of months it has been generalized inflammation - I'm in fact a little itchy tonight; a missing period (never happened before in almost 30 years) that I thought was menopause, until the next period did happen but at about 10% of volume, I felt a very strong repulsion for yoghurt usually one of my favourite things, instead a felt a need for a little oil - cod liver oil, a dot of palm oil, saw something in social media saying eat more meat (usually eating healthy and avoiding meat) but more meat helped it seemed my body was grateful and would grab it and sweat a little while almost no other foods lead me to sweat; had flu symptoms some days like the dry covid flu not mucusy, incredible headaches like if blood clots were stuck behind my eyes pushing through but this had happened before in post-covid-drama so I let it pass, a couple of fever or chest-sweaty nights thank God, strange things that felt like they might be diabetes-like as in my body wasn't handling things well, about zero appetite for a couple of days, what felt like tender feet or blood pooling in feet a few days, around the time of the missed period miscellaneous lower abdominal pain, bloating, urinary discomfort, peeing very frequently, drinking lots of water, drinking not a lot of water at all, the tell-tale head-sores or head-scabs on my scalp - the analogue of cold sores in this pandemic, I suppose, and many symptoms ... just the kinds of crazy crazy ups and downs that so many people have gotten used to in the past few years with this pandemic.
My uncle died suddenly last month after - healthy and active, age mid-50s, then in late 2020 collapsed and had to be taken to hospital, then over a few months it emerged that he had problems including renal/kidney, then mixed advice about changing his diet and monitoring his blood pressure, then by 2021 regular dialysis as treatment for kidney disease that went from two or three times weekly to once weekly, one or two crises in 2021 requiring longer hospital stays (one was diagnosed as a lung infection, I think he was given antibiotics, he was aided with supplemental oxygen, he was on a dialysis schedule and once received blood to help with frailty) and it seems that as much as possible he combined the scheduled dialysis with visiting his job although he could not drive or do strenuous things really.
Like I told you one time, my grandfather had died in his early 60s in what may have been a similar disease, there was swelling I was told and that may indicate kidneys - although back then it was not thought of that way.
I believe that very shortly, in hours, days, we'll think of something to do about the kidney failures. It's possible that they are scary but not the same as permanent end-stage-kidney-disease requiring dialysis, which, like intubation is very costly not just money-wise but health-wise, hard on the body, hard on the health, invasive, risky, could get infected, many hours a day a couple of times a week in a hospital bed it's serious stuff with big machines and chemicals wiping your blood and then you either die or seek a transplant to maybe live longer ... these treatments are life-savers, but again, let's review closely and find that we may not need them. I saw the words "glomerular nephritis" in the news about a Nigerian kidney patient this week. Again, hopeful that there is a way to tackle the ruined kidneys...is it anti-inflammatories maybe, is it antibiotics even, or a fast, or a flush with salt intake (don't laugh, don't scream, my body has been asking for weird things these days like salt when I feel just soo dried out), or something like that, till the kidney madness heals and the patient is free. I'll sleep now, study tomorrow. Good luck me, us, there is a way. RIP to dear Uncle Banji and to the dead...
With sharing information like in 2020, there is a way. I trust God. I'LL BE BACK.
On the topic of dying, my laptop is old and slowed-down and dying of old-age. It's more than 12 years old. The screen gets flustered sometimes (I'll have to try the advice to work on "screen refresh rate") and the screen goes dark sometimes and then you reboot (switch off then on) which on average takes maybe 10 minutes to get a working screen, and altogether it's slowed down in recent weeks...I'm sure it can do a few more months or years with this patient user and possibly a stint of repair and then it will have to be completely laid to rest.
One of the leads I'll have to look into: the other day I saw something about using stem cells to regenerate bad kidneys, ...something in Thailand...this is not medical advice, it's a note to myself to review this bit of information.
I am angry that a few years ago, an unknown biological danger approached and the response of these jokers was to laugh and play with it. It's profound to what extent short answers, safer answers, are rejected in favour of wild risk. A sane leadership say in the united states would have been more afraid of the incoming coronavirus threat and would have led to avoiding the dramatic experience of these pandemic years. I am angry that in my country (not usa) we seem determined to go from a truly lousy president (we survived almost eight years of this!) to an utterly worse president next year. Oh well.
Forgot what else I wanted to say...oh yes, practical matters, although I'm still hiding from this thing, washing my hands after touching almost anything or anyone, often forgetting to mask up but remaining nervous about sharing people's exhaled air, aware of when individual ppl have it - i can detect it not exactly a smell but it's like a nose thing - or when it's about, ... you can tell that individually and as a people our guards are down. And when we get a little sick we're not remembering to care as well as we were in 2020. In reality it's too much to remember - is it onions or soup, or garlic or sleep, or breathing exercises or exercise or rest or sunshine or vitamin which vitamin or iron or it's all so much to remember and so maybe we don't. Back to just treating malaria or treating cold/flu, like in the nineties.
This thing happened before, (a new coronavirus, a fancy sort of malaria-symptom thing that came with the weather change when it was rainy/cold and that you could sometimes chase away with a giant cup of hot chocolate) happened in the nineties, say 1995, or starting slightly before that; it's a hypothesis, but I feel very sure as I remember my experiences with illness then and also I think I found support for it in old literature online. So to put a positive spin on the failure of the horrid leaders that let in a sars-like biological invader, maybe these things have often happened but now that we are stupider and doing more to engage with the thing, we can shift from living with stealthy/silent killers, to potentially confronting and tackling the disease(s) that result(s).
Why don't I go to doctors more? Only got tested when I had to test to travel otherwise zero test, yo, many reasons. Not ever covid vaccinated, mostly because I was already ill and ill and ill again while the vaccines were always behind the strains of illness, and check these vaccines, covid is getting through anyway, although I'm willing to believe that they protect from infection with some percentage and protect from really bad, like dead person, outcome of infection with some good percentage too. I don't know. Even with recent vaccination it seems you would get it and spread it too. I'm obviously not anti-vaxx or anything political like that, just that from everything I was reading, the vaccine was more useful in some situations and just ok useful in some situations...like vaccines for long-ago strain when you've presumably suffered the new strain and all
PS another interesting medical question: is this thing like malaria that can lie latent in the body and flare up again like when immunity is lower or when changed weather makes it thrive better? Because supposedly malaria would hide in the liver so that a person can keep getting malaria even without a new external injection of malaria.
Quick reading summary/reading list:
1 - in treating very severe covid19 in hospitalized patients, note that remdesivir is hard on the kidneys: "Compared with the use of chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, dexamethasone, sarilumab, or tocilizumab, the use of remdesivir was associated with an increased reporting of kidney disorders" in Kidney disorders as serious adverse drug reactions of remdesivir in coronavirus disease 2019: a retrospective case–noncase study
2. taking chloroquine treatment for covid might not protect from covid lung, but (unclear evidence) it may protect from covid kidney. "Why Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine Don’t Block SARS-CoV-2 Infection of Human Lung Cells...In the green monkey kidney cells, both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine decrease the acidity, which then disables the cathepsin L enzyme, blocking the virus from infecting the monkey cells. In human lung cells, which have very low levels of cathepsin L enzyme, the virus uses the enzyme TMPRSS2 to enter the cell. But because that enzyme is not controlled by acidity, neither HCQ and CQ can block the SARS-CoV-2 from infecting the lungs or stop the virus from replicating....[in conclusion] HQC can block the coronavirus from infecting kidney cells from the African green monkey. But it does not inhibit the virus in human lung cells – the primary site of infection for the SARS-CoV-2 virus." in this tweet and this essay- why hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine don't block sars-cov2 infection of human lung cells
3. On Kidney Damage Caused By Covid-19 in hopkinsmedicine.org has about twenty key short paragraphs with all you need to know now about covid kidney
4. An Important Genetic Cause of Kidney Disease in Nigeria: APOL1 - Mediated Kidney Disease in kidney solutions blog has about twenty comprehensive paragraphs with charts and pictures showing all you need to know about the increased risk for kidney disease in Nigeria / parts of Africa. "is part of our defensive response to overcome African sleeping sickness transmitted by the Tsetse fly...over time Africans have evolved even more effective gene variants to kill trypanosomes...[on the map] you can see an overlap in the occurrence of African sleeping sickness caused by trypanosomiasis with the defense against the illness...Approximately 23-46% of Nigerians have 2 alleles with either G1 and/or G2 while approximately 60% of Nigerians have at least 1 of the 2 genetic variants of APOL1 that also confers resistance to the infection. However, this survival advantage for people with 2 genetic variants of the APOL1 gene has been found to be a 12 times higher risk for progressive kidney disease."
Ah, "the heterozygote advantage" in "autosomal recessive" genetics: this is a similar story to sickle cell for malaria and cystic fibrosis for (? thyphoid and cholera )
Amazing reading list, Continued:
5. "In recent years, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many clinical trials were underway to explore whether stem cells could be used to help treat the damaged lungs in people severely affected by the disease. “I think ‘potential’ is the perfect word to describe stem cells,” " in notes on stem cell therapy, at clevelandclinic.org
6. Just like reading item 3. above, here is a succint and excellent explanation of the link between covid-19 and kidney disease in just ten short paragraphs. Important: "Covid-19 from either a severe lung illness or the milder flulike illness can involve the kidney and cause new or worsening kidney disease that persists and is progressive even to the extent of causing kidney failure well after the Covid-19 infection has resolved." Also features an incredible diagram showing "some of the mechanisms by which the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) can cause kidney damage." - in Kidney Solutions blog.
7. You really want to know A WAY FORWARD, and for that, please review this July 2021 paper in PubMed / World Journal of Stem Cells Current advances of stem cell-based therapy for kidney diseases . You will find "Stem cells have the potential to be the next regenerative medicine to treat kidney diseases. There is mounting evidence suggesting that stem cell-based therapy has renoprotective effects to attenuate kidney damage while improving kidney function. This review summarises the current stem cell-based therapy approaches to treat kidney diseases in experimental models and the outcomes from human clinical trials reported to date." The most exciting part is the table summarizing the outcome from human clinical trials.
The author Chee-Yin Wong concludes: "Although stem cell therapies in kidney regeneration from in vitro and preclinical studies are promising, and an encouraging safety profile have been demonstrated in early-phased human clinical trials, these cell-based therapies are yet to be translated into more significant proof of clinical efficacy...Nevertheless, it appears that stem cell therapy will have a great future in the field of kidney regeneration."
8. The optimistic marketing message stresses Benefits of Stem Cell Therapy over Kidney Transplant. On the other hand, the conservative medical warning strongly urges caution: We understand that patients may be attracted to these therapies because they have severe, irreversible disease and are under great stress. Although we understand this motivation, we still advise against the use of these unproven and often expensive therapies. Because of the potential for harm, the lack of any proven benefit, and the high fees that many of these programs charge, we caution you not to participate in these or any other unauthorized or unapproved stem cell administrations, ...
That's all for now.
If in the desperate situation, look at these and other relevant clinical trials.
My activity (re: covid kidney) on twitter, for the record, a SUMMARY , announcing this page, and of course see the dozens of tweets, including retweets, from the last 1-2 days.
Feeling perfectly healthy for the past few days...no icky, no nothing, ...nose head back front fingers toes - everything good.
The word I forgot to include in describing miscellaneous symptoms I had in June, early July, was arthritis. Just a lot of general allergy-type itchy-twickies and cranky joints and sticky finger-joints especially. Like I've said, felt completely well for a few days and had to write to celebrate. Well, the funny bit is ... menstruation, got my period. In its first half, like it's first day, it's 1 1/2 to two times normal flow. But I'm not feeling a flu come on or anything, which would be a normal thing to experience after a huge event like that.
It's not the weirdest thing for me to have a 1 1/2 times my average flow experience. Maybe in the past four years of around 50 periods, that might have occurred five - ten times. It's also not the weirdest one. In corona, late 2020 or so, must have had weirder...when it was not just heavy but also all kinds of chunky, and then another period would be thin with the weirdest mineral smell in it. The thing I need now is an infusion of delightfully-spiced cup-a-noodles. Hahaha. But I'll have to feel well enough to go and get it. Also need to lie down and relax, which is what I'm doing.
Back to big ideas for corona-kidney... couldn't the stimulation of a massage do something? In how massage will build up pool of toxins that must be flushed and...ah, what am I saying, the patient is still dead, maybe dead faster, not sure what dialysis would do in response to a massage, yikes. What does Chinese Medicine say? Question. Time to ask Chinese Medicine.
Two days later...
That was 2.5 to three times the flow / volume of my average period. That was ridiculous - was, past tense, assuming it's done now. It wasn't a significantly longer period; it was maybe 20% or 25% longer in duration, it was just faster faster bleeding. Phew. That was a once in 50 periods experience. Or a one in a hundred periods even.
In other updates, I looked up the China situation with kidney failure and they're in the same boat, with dialysis and transplants, as the big-city people elsewhere, so where could that solution be? Hiding?
Summary: treat long-covid with full course of antiviral drug
Re: miscellaneous, like itching and low energy. All it took was a meal with excess excess onions (like one large onion for two people, in this case sliced in large chunks and sauteed/roasted crunchy not dissolved) and all was very calm the following day (although muscle pain - sore hamstring from no obvious source) and then after a full day mild itchiness has restarted. The itchiness and the "arthritis" are linked. It feels very good to know that I'm not really ill just basically virusy but not mouth/nose/throat location so it's not like i'm breathing out virus...
What this suggests is so-called long covid includes just residual virus and a medley of reactions to the residual virus and that ... analogous to the time I had the worst tummy, gut, oesophagus, miserable life for many months was it a year or more and was looking into all those remedies and leaky gut relief and all the million things to make life better and it only went away when I had full dose oral antibiotics for a different reason ... the thing to do to interrupt the suffering would be to properly treat the viral infection. Again, an analogy with sometimes how people get recurring malaria and ...
Anyway, I'll watch and see how the US president gets treated with his recent bout with coronavirus/covid-19. He got this Paxlovid antivirus medicine, tested negative, tested positive, ... his experience will help us get insight into slippery coronavirus.
Post-viral symptoms, mild, persistent, long-covid, and I understand it's known too pre-2019 that one can have this post-viral syndrome (a little irritating that women's symptoms kind of don't matter, must be in their little fuzzy heads lol) or even with a more serious-sounding name ME/CFS. It's likely that the suffering just lingers and lingers and has to be treated to go away. Not with hot tea or garlic or rest, but with one helluva drug to bomb the virus outta there.
Like I said, I feel better from knowing now what is going on, I mean, you start to hate life and to despair when your physical health is icky, I'm not dying, my kidney is not failing, along with my lungs and heart, etc, it will be fine, and I'll wait around for a little more confirmation that I need to go and get treated. Could be weeks or months to check out the pros and cons. (I'm sure the conservative treatment for this disease - I mean they always say like there's no antivirus medicine - is partly related to the resistance that the pathogen develops, like how antibiotics lead to antibiotic resistance.)
I study a lot of things and I wonder how this physiology of incompletely rejecting a hostile invader is related in individual people to their personalities. Like possibly some people get the violent fever and strenously say NO to the invader (maybe even hurt themselves in the process lol) and some people can't decide whether to hate it or friend it and the virus can't believe its luck lol. Ok Bye.
an hour later yes, a hot topic on medical-twitter in the last two days is #PaxlovidRebound. We'll see how it goes. They're saying people get treated with a 5-day course of the thing and ... hey, it could be propaganda for the drug, I mean, be aware these drug people are not above anything ... they're saying why not treat with a 10-day course so that rebound doesn't occur.
In those tweets, it's said that viral shedding is going on even when they don't feel symptoms, so be aware of that. Oh, also, remember from 2020 about viral shedding, it means in this case a very good thing because shedding fragments for example, junk virus pieces, counts as shedding, do you remember that? Maybe I should celebrate with some garlic (caution: it's a blood thinner, also antiviral, and for me it's like a superstrengthonion even overstrong but I could take a tiny dot of it if it would back up the previous onion, ya know?) Then again, person on twitter reported infecting another person while in that phase. So you can take shedding to mean infectious then. Out here we're just everybody infecting everybody all day, to be honest. But in situations where people really must not be infected, be aware of this.
Two quick notes:
One is that next period just happened, on time, but like last time a tiny bit longer than usual duration, and like last time a little unusual profile (like blank near the beginning instead of the break in the second half of the period) and like last time it was a lot more and a lot redder, purer bloodier, flow than average. It was a lot less than last time, so I'll say about 2x average, about halfway between average and the last time.
Second note is re: the paxlovid rebound or in my case onion itch return, yes, it returned with a vengeance like I said about a day after the onion shall I say worked on the virus, but then that lasted hours, less than one day, and then nothing, I was well. So I guess that's normal to expect...reaction to virus scribbles, to less-than-potent virus particles. One interesting thing is how in addition to long covid as a weird consequence of having had a searing scary viral infection, sensitive people like me may also get generally withdrawn, like we're on guard on the outside as well as on the inside; a person shares our space and we don't like what our nose is telling us - I can "hear" corona in my nose - but you can't say don't worry about it because not only is my nose picking this up, my immune system mechanism will worry about it too if it gets "in" and that would result in me "feeling" sick whether or not the virus was active. Does that make sense? (Similar for weather and catching colds all the time or for mosquito bites and feeling a little ill with submalaria all the time. One then learns to control one's environment to not get these illnesses, and really I should just wear a mask around people because I'm on edge otherwise - and per my argument here, I'm on edge for good reason.)
The following period was extra, as you've seen for a few months now, but - good news :-) - the next one, current period, seems normal, moderate, about my average type of period.
long, long story especially of my suffering during and around menstrual periods in the past four months or so, but I'll shorten it by linking to a medical journal article The Transitory Effects of COVID-19 on the Gynaecological System including, quote "Menstrual bleeding and the severity of (pre) menstrual symptoms are influenced by the complex interaction between hormones and the immune, vascular and coagulant systems which regulate the menstrual cycle" and it seems I got a corona flare-up I think near January-ish around my period - some crazy behind-the-eye headache/strain like I once had in deep-covid season, some twitches in the body that feel like a fever without the raised-temperature, if that makes sense,
but my observations about covid-symptoms were not the primary story...
it was how my period had changed and become this thing with a lot of post-period stress, I mean, like the uterus or something in there was stressing, like it wanted to get something out, or it was lacking a mineral, or it was just desperate for a solution to something...it was pulling and twisting, and at some point it was I could call it spasming, like rigorously trying to shake something loose.
I could write so much more but I want to write the few things that may be most important...
I suspect that in analogy with covid lung presenting these weird patches that are mistaken for something else, there is likely "covid fibroids" which may be not really fibroids but seem close enough to it in imaging/scans. Symptoms I've experienced include all the nasty PCOS/ ovarian cyst / fibroids type drama.
Eating better helps with the periods as always in life, however, the condition may tempt you to crave the wrong foods at the wrongest time.
I've been forced to use pain medicine to manage the days after the periods...
continued below
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continued here...
The whole thing may be getting better; it seems clear to me that there is junk stuck in my uterus that the body is trying to resolve. And if there is a cyst causing all this pain, it will not cause all the pain when all the excessive bleeding and craziness is no longer there i.e. when the uterus gets healthy again.
Do not be afraid to massage / touch the lower abdominal area, since knowing what is or isn't happening there may make you feel better, and in my case a massage (minor, relaxed, with my own fingers on my abdomen, midcycle not during period) seems to have shifted some material from where it was to another part of the uterus, and I noticed in this last period the lowest part of the uterus (cervix?) was most stressed and jutting forward quite hard probably filled with material that had travelled down to try to be let out (mucus and junk for all I know) , and then days later that was not the case and the bumpy part was back up in the uterus itself. Fortunate to have dropped a few blood clots in that time. Months before, I think it was in January, I also dropped a rather amazing red mass of tissue post-period, it was dark red and solid like a slice of raw liver...
So much more that is important to mention:
Elections were Feb 25 in Nigeria. I had a wound on my finger that day, came from me handwashing a single item of laundry, cotton, and just that work took skin off, shifted that skin and let it fill with fluid, maybe from the day before elections and lasted a few days obviously. Now I think before that, one of my fingernails had shifted on its own in real time, like on one side of the nail the thing (so hard to describe) it would sort of have a bit hanging which you had to trim off with the effect that the surface area of the nail reduced say like 5% or so in just one week. Couple this with the sort of hormone-hunting that my body was doing in that time pre-period I think, I was like, what is missing, something is missing, so confused, zinc? iron? keratin? I looked up keratin... something weird happened in my muscles too, along with my funny illness that felt like corona (covid) while also bothering my abdomen and maybe felt like something dropped a bit of an infection in my abdomen (like irritable bowel but lower), along with all that, felt one time that something was stealing from my buttocks lol, no really, like my body was for some minutes breaking down muscles in my bum-bum to get what it needed. I forgot to mention, for some minutes that covid-style fatigue too, like there's a little demon pushing your head down to sleeep sleeeep. Months later, I'm guessing it's something like this: "excessive deposition of extracellular matrix molecules such as fibronectin, collagen, and laminin in..." from a description of covid lung in this Frontiers in Microbiology reivew paper Long COVID or Post-acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC): An Overview of Biological Factors That May Contribute to Persistent Symptoms. collagen-y. mucous-y. possibly impacted/damaged endometrium. blah blah blah.
You could say this recent ordeal is like not a nose flu, not a stomach flu, but a womb flu. I need to sleep.
You really should check out the chart at the bottom of the COVID / Gynaecology paper, at the very very bottom of the page. Here is the chart as at mid-April 2023
See that jump in interest in the article at the end of February?
These mini-epidemics happening all the time, so tired :-(
Optimistic about how care will improve in response to the chaos anyhow. Or as the authors of the Long-COVID paper put it, at the end before the lists of references: "Overall, an individualized treatment approach to PASC could contribute to a growing era of personalized and predictive/preventative global medicine."
Take your vitamins, just a good general multivitamin, is what the doctor told me.
If you have these things, the NSAID (anti-inflammatory) pain medicine may be very helpful. Have funnn. PS Yes, I heard from other people with similar issues around that time, one a lady at the voting area who said how how menses were grinding violently, another a person whose wife was in medical distress and fear over I don't know something to do with her womb/former childbirth surgery site...
Was right about collagen being a part of fibroids. That's disgusting :-)
A big thing came out of this person, and by the way I don't have a big thing, I have tiny, tiny little little things by comparison. It helps to have perspective.
I once passed a big thing, like ten years ago, passed this big thing out of my ummm, ass, rectum, and it turned out to have been like pineapple-poisoning (excessive bromelain) leading to a magnificent reverse-constipation like a poopoo-abortion. Anyway, I think nowadays my body is trying and trying to do a womb-abortion of the nonsense bothering it, I wish my body luck, hope it all gets sorted out soon. I'll try to help by eating fruits and vegetables as the doctor said I should - thank God I can eat. Not happy about having an extra week of pain after the period you know, that's just annoying, that's like a good percentage of one's life spent dealing with lower abdomen stress. This too shall pass. Haha, I said pass. Lol. Go away :-)
8 tampons/pads and it hasn't been 24 hours yet (close to 24 hours, I think, certainly over 20hrs). That is wild. That is probably what I would use altogether in an average complete period of 2-3 days that I remember, like, 3 on the main day and less than that on other days.
Exhausting losing so much blood.
Was up early this morning, drank some milk with honey, drinking some herbal teas but with multiple teabags in a cup, so like a double dose of hibiscus tea for instance. Saw some fried eggs and phew-gone, and going to eat some meat, rice, and so on later. Fruits too, pawpaw, later. Was up a few times overnight too, obviously.
Things are looking good, in that maybe the bleeding is slowing down, maybe it will be a very short period, like record-time, I don't know. Also, maybe the pain won't be very complex this time. The last one, early this month, although I was done bleeding in a few days, there was an extra one-two weeks of abdominal pain I've kind of forgotten all about that now even though the pain-drama went through almost till this period started. For yesterday's-today's period, I immediately took Panadol like a good girl, I didn't want to go crazy trying to see how I would like it without painkillers. Was very bloated very low in my abdomen say yesterday or the day before, then the period started and the spot started to scream pain. For the last period, I took Panadol sometimes and Advil-PM sometimes. I underdose usually (one tablet instead of two at a time) because I'm a baby; I usually take no medicines at all, at all, it's hard on my body.
Anyway, owww, but it's been okay the past 24 hours, I mostly haven't felt what seems like normal period cramps, but quite a bit of what feels like spot pain in the lower abdomen from possible cyst location I don't know. Before this week, that pain was connecting to a nerve and lower back and that was a real mess of pain. Now it feels more familiar, like a raw wound and sometimes the same raw feeling in so-called pelvic floor. Pray my body gets all well soon. Pray this period is short-ish lol and low-drama.
Don't know if I described this before, but the real interesting thing in most of my periods since they started doing these strange things is how pure-blood the blood seems. It's not like crap-blood, mucus-y blood, it just feels like it's blood that hasn't gone through the trouble of being a uterine lining and shed along with whatever else lines the uterus or whatever. Very interesting, and what inspired me to compare it to a flu. As I get healthier, the uterus will figure out and rebuild good linings I guess... or maybe what I thought was normal is not normal and this is normal eeeew weird.
Update on the last period: from eight pads/tampons in the first 24 hours and then it was almost-done with sometimes zero, one time a return of major flow and sometimes a reminder like minor flow and indeed it was altogether maybe the equivalent of three pads/tampons (but actually maybe six mostly half-used pads or fully-used "pantyliners" or something like that) and that was done. It did not continue at that fast rate, thank God.
Update on new period: It came a few days early (was expecting it to start on the 15th, two days from today.) Anyway, this one used six pads in the first 24 hours. It has slowed down but not dramatically like the last period. It will likely end up being about the same total as the last period, 11 pads/tampons equivalent. Cramping and pain but not in the crazy, terrible, unfamiliar ways that happened this year. There was bloating, great bloating, great sensitivity before the period, as though my food was going to my uterus all the time, if that makes sense, like drinking/eating would affect not my tummy but all sorts of feelings in my lower-lower belly area, like it was soaking it all in.) Yesterday, part of the time I couldn't eat, but this morning I started to eat and eat and that makes me optimistic. Some of the pain is from simple gas/bloat and as medical people know, gas can almost kill you with pain, it gets trapped and you think it's this or it's that but no, keep sipping water or in my case eating good things (fresh raw garden egg a lot yesterday and today, I added a dot of olive oil to what I'm eating right now some pasta with meat, already ate garri with water hours ago followed by some sauteed veggies: cabbage + carrot + green pepper just an hour ago) and with the food going in I guess some of the bloat/gas and more of the blood too will find its way out and give you relief.
Praying for the bestest outcome altogether, the healing process takes time, months, could be longer; I have vitamins now some newer expensive old-people multivitamin+minerals thing that is supposed to be daily but I think it's enough to just use on days like yesterday when the need truly is there...and I have lots of nice and sweet Vitamin C that I lick all the time because it's fun but probably also good for healing. Happy that I have nothing else to do today than do my favourite things and rest/sleep/hydrate/eat when I need to. Not taking painkillers because they're not my favourite thing and I suppose it's not the worst pain. I'm happy to have improved so much.
Still on pain, the last period was also a great improvement on the one before it in terms of pain. I had been prepared for pain to go on till the end of May, about a week of extra pain and drama, post-period, which would have been half as long as the two-plus weeks of extra pain in the prior period, but nope the pain faded many days early. In this period I'm not really even thinking I'll feel any significant pain post-period even for one day.
1. I suspect that this drug works - you know I sort of don't touch medicine at all, but many years ago I found the thing that helped me feel better with bad colds. Sometimes that thing disappeared from (I suppose) the country, but anyway I have a few sachets of just-about-expired cold medicine here because you know how it is when you find your thing that works, you make sure to keep some around in case it disappears again.
2. I suspect that one of the ways to look at sorting out the nastiness around what I named womb flu is to treat a flu. So if you would take antibiotics, take antibiotics, and sometimes that is the answer. If it's some other compound that sorts out inflamed linings, kills viruses, calms nerves, whatever, there is some chance that what works FOR YOU in the ear-nose-throat-axis will work for you in the lower abdomen. This way, I've been improving and improving over the past few months...healing from this cyst/endometrioma/fibroids/bleedinglikeamuthafuckaduringperiods and all the associated pain and suffering. My last two or three periods, I've taken the equivalent of one fraction of a paracetamol tablet with the equivalent of a fraction of a single use of the cold medicine they're now saying doesn't work - phenylephrine hydrochloride - and that's it. No advil, which for me even at one tablet (half dose) just felt like too much hi-tech for the problems that brought me to it in the first place. Tons of Vitamin C all through the months though I've now finished the big bottle so bye-bye that. Lots of multiVitamins on hand, though now I only take about once a month because the Vitamins-with-Minerals (they were expensive) feel like again too much hi-tech for my body at a time and I'm not sure it'd be easy to break the tablet/capsule thing so I just take them when I feel the need to. The thing I saw online about magnesium (in bananas) seems to be true, sometimes that can really help during your period too. Back to the cold/flu - is your thing green tea? Honey? Garlic? Marijuana? Full-on hospital admission with blood-transfusion? An over-the-counter-medication? I don't know but I remembered that medicine travels in your body to the place where it's called-for-the-most, and when you have the whole inflammation/cold/need in some place far from your throat/tummy, it will find its way there, like to your enlarged heaving engorged uterus, for example. Hope I'm right. Hope this thing really goes away.
(Continued below )
(Continued from above)
The report for this month is - here I am five days after the start of my last period in as much well-health as maybe five days after the end of my period two months ago, i.e. feeling alright. Bled like mad one day (call it day 1 ish, or day 2 if you count the pre-actual-period-bleeding-basically-dark-brown-water as day 1) about 5-6 tampons/pads worth, and then the following days another 5-6 tampons/pads worth in total, so altogether almost two periods worth...after the one day of bleeding I was pretty weak, I guess your muscles lose tone too, that was when I took a vitamin...a lot of water-retention (is that how you say it) before the period, a bit of a tickly itchy thing possibly located at ovary place many days before period, a lot a lot of filling with gas and resolving gas in the last days of the period, I mean, you think the period has ended then it finds some new pocket of blood and dumps that out, it's weird but was much worse before. The bleeding, sometimes feels extremely sensitive to, like, you eat a bit of food and it finds its energy...because I think one of many things that happened near the beginning of the year was the muscles (uterine) got fatigued/wasted/don't work perfectly anymore to push out the blood, they got this foreign body in them, they tried their darnedest to get rid of it, they contorted and struggled and rolled and tormented and shifted and everything, and the crap/pearl/fibroid/junk is still there and now they've learned to not bother so much, but maybe food gets the other muscles going (peristalsis?) and then these guys wake up and do a little bit of work, funny thing is you massage and it doesn't help the same as food does.
3. I shouldn't write this, but, just how much monitoring is going on of every-thing we as much as think to write? I remember a person used to tell me about these worries she had about in her case it was Disney she said was grabbing her ideas lol and I didn't really know what to think of her evidence-base for such a claim. But here I am, learning that ohhh yeah a lot of listens and responses happen all day everyday like she said.
Re: listens and listeners, I'm not saying garlic cures cancer here. I'm saying relief of symptoms for a womb flu! is something you can help with this it's like a flu mindset. Those are the symptoms. The disease is another heap of rubbish, pretty complex, could be lethal...this whole experience made me see how childbirth was such a killer in history, I mean just the hemorrhaging alone, and why subconsciously/consciously, people want to be near an advanced and reliable healthcare system just for the simple event of giving birth.
These two comments from yesterday should have been posted in the chain of comments about the menstrual/gynaecological suffering I've had (see July 2022 - June 2023 above.) Here are some more corrections / additions to the two comments from yesterday.
- The Advil I'd taken was Advil PM - it contains a dot of Ibuprofen (pain reliever, NSAID) and a dash of Diphenhydramine citrate (sleep medicine). I was in so much suffering that I craved the help to sleep.
- The paracetamol + Phenylephrine hydrochloride preparation that I used was previously described by me here. Or you can buy like this. It's pain reliever + decongestant and what I read was that decongestants help by constricting the blood vessel blah blah and in that instant about 2 months ago I knew that I had a winner sitting right there in my little first-aid travel pouch. In the news today they're battling the makers of these specific decongestants to get off the market (I suppose there's a pricier alternative to sell now or ... what? Sorry if I don't trust these leaders sometimes. I'm not sure why the drama around this medicine is going on, I bet it will be resolved in a few days. Crazies. )
- Antibiotics should not be taken carelessly, of course, Re: antibiotic resistance, a global issue. This is very important to know. However, yes, sometimes you must take antibiotics. Nowadays the way you take them has changed (again, because of antibiotic resistance, they usually sell a mixture of antibiotics or prescribe a mixture, not just one type) and as always do not half-dose antibiotics, take the recommended amount and take it for the recommended number of times per day and the recommended number of days (if possible.) It is not recommended that you just pop one or two and stop because you may train the bacteria - what doesn't kill them may make them stronger. This is all the official stuff about antibiotics to the best of my knowledge.
More about my experiments with the cold/flu medicine phenylesomething - oh these names, how do they not get them confused or make mistakes all the time and kill people because you change three letters and it's something new entirely - there was a time this medicine did not help - or it helped and did not help was my assessment that time...I was in a very arid place, and felt my nasal passages and all that became overdried when I took the medicine - it was overdry before the infection but the thing I took made it feel dry dry. Also the illness I had got in that instance was probably an exotic covid thing that was not at all runny-nosey but instead dry+diseased anyway (I remember pouring out of my mouth incredible amounts of spit that time - not from medicine of course, from this so-called cold. Different symptoms from the person who likely gifted me with the infection at the time - I think they had fever and all that drama. What a mess these viruses can be.)
Anyway now that we know it's a blood-vessel constricting thing, we can see why maybe the action of this medicine was not right for those specific conditions.
Vomiting spit is a thing I remember from almost thirty years ago now, but this more recent one was really a weird lot of spit - slept with a bowl next to me, one or two nights I think it was. Viruses. I was always cold, always catching colds, and back then we were always thinking things were malaria, or if it wasn't it had to be thyphoid/via-bacteria-food-water-hygiene - was life in the mid-90s, but sometimes treating malaria was not the way then we moved on to thyphoid and it was possibly not those things at all.
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