Skip to main content

Quarantined

I've joined the quarantined masses, having caught cold with a cough a few days ago. Is it the coronavirus? I don't know. Tests are being rationed and my request was denied.

The only thing I'm taking is Umcka cold care. Yesterday, pre-quarantine, I saw I needed more--and you have to start taking it immediately after the start of symptoms for it to work. I ordered a box online and picked it up at the store, where the cashier put it in my trunk while I stayed in my car. I even wore a scarf I could put over my face in case I had to leave my car.

After getting home, I tried to get a test. In Indiana, you need a doctor's order to get one, so I called the urgent care center I went to for my bronchitis last year. After completing a questionnaire online and talking to technical support, then straightening out confusion over time zones, I had a teleconference with a nurse practitioner. He said that whether I had the coronavirus or just a cold, his advice was the same: stay home and get well. I'm not supposed to leave the house until I've been without symptoms for three days. Since I'm still coughing, the earliest day that could be is Monday.

The earliest I can go back to work at the office is Wednesday--seven days after the start of being ill. Fortunately, I've been bringing my laptop home every night, so today, feeling better, I fired it up and got quite a bit of work done.

Hoosiers are on their honor to stay home if they're quarantined. Nobody from the county came by and put a Quarantine sign on my house or fitted me with an tracking bracelet. The police in Indiana aren't stopping people to verify they're on an essential errand. A few motorists have gotten citations for violating the emergency order after being stopped for other offenses, but I don't know if there's a list of people who aren't supposed to be out and about. In any case, I'm planning to stay home until my cough has been gone for three days. (That's the only symptom that's left.) Coronavirus is disastrous for some people, and if I have it, I don't want to give it to anyone.

I'm very happy I got my cortisol levels (mostly) fixed when I did. I'd have been a sitting duck with low cortisol, low thyroid, and bronchitis.

I'm also very happy I'm no longer riding the Denver bus every day shoehorned with passengers. About the time I moved, my employer was moving to another building where my commute would have been even longer (it already took almost an hour to get to work) and our offices would have been even smaller. But almost everyone thought I was nuts for leaving. Of course, I didn't move to be well-situated in case of a pandemic, but I live in a city that's a lot less crowded in a house that's paid for.  Who's the nutty one now?

So I will be housebound for Easter. The church across the street will be empty. I wonder if the bells will chime the songs they normally play on that day--or if they'll wait until the people can come out.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

We Hate the ADA; Why does the Perfect Health Diet Get a Pass?

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the  American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a ...
14 comments
Read more

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."
23 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

My Long-Term Experience Eating Safe (and Other) Starches

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually...
17 comments
Read more