Skip to main content

My COVID Test, UV Rays and Scope Creep

I wish I were one of those low carb/paleo people who never get colds, never get sunburns, never have a complaint. I've had a cold for two and a half weeks, sat in the sun yesterday, and got a sunburn.

Monday I read the news that Indiana was offering COVID testing in Greensburg, an hour from home. I drove down there, answered some questions from National Guard members, and got ready to have my finger pricked. In reality, that's the antibody test. This was the test where someone pushes a swab into your nose halfway to the back of your head. It's the closest I've ever come to a violation of the Geneva Convention. I could still feel it an hour later when I was home.

Two days later, I was going downhill. I emailed some coworkers that if I stopped answering emails and my phone to please call an ambulance. They asked if I'd like one of them to call me every hour to make sure I was OK, but about that time I got my test results back: negative for COVID.

I went to urgent care, which is where I usually go when I'm sick since I don't have a regular doctor. Their telehealth setup wasn't working, or I'd have used it. A young physician's assistant saw me, had me x-rayed for pneumonia (which was also negative) and said antibiotics probably wouldn't help. I said they helped the last time, so I got a prescription for them and started feeling better.

Since it might soon be required (or I might need to go out before I'm well), I sacrificed an old t-shirt to make some masks. I found a good no-sew method on Youtube, no elastic required, but I hand-sewed some seams to make them hold together better.

I'd been wanting to get some fresh air and sunshine, but it's been cold and rainy. Yesterday, though, was such a beautiful day that I put some TV trays on the front porch and moved my laptop and second monitor out there. I put on shorts and a bikini top and got to work. At lunch, I moved the setup to the back yard to stay in the sun. By 2, I was sunburned on my shoulders and in an odd pattern on one side. At least it isn't painful.

No doubt, some people will avoid going out in the sun just because Donald Trump said it might help. But being "opposite man" is silly and childish. Trump "referenced an 'emerging result' from research by the Department of Homeland Security that indicates exposure to sunlight, heat, and humidity seems to weaken the coronavirus." As to his comments on getting UV light inside the body, "Ultraviolet blood irradiation (UBI) was extensively used in the 1940s and 1950s to treat many diseases including septicemia, pneumonia, tuberculosis, arthritis, asthma and even poliomyelitis." And Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin. I don't know whether those were things Trump had in mind, but one is a real treatment and the other is a preventive for other illnesses and they might treat or prevent COVID. Pretending he suggested drinking bleach is disingenuous.

Unfortunately, many in the media are seeing the pandemic through political goggles and politicians are in a mode of scope creep. Scope creep is when the scope of a project expands--and the scope of not overwhelming hospitals has crept into waiting until any threat to anyone is completely gone. Well, any threat from the coronavirus. The thinking seems to be that we can wait out the virus and spend, borrow or print our way out of economic disaster.

Comments

So sorry to read you have been unwell - hope by now things are beginning to improve.

We've had some lovely sunny weather in the UK and I often think just seeing sunshine can lift the spirits.

Take care, my good wishes.

All the best Jan
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Jan. Stay well!

Popular posts from this blog

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here .  * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...