2023 plan vs. reality
Looking back over my 2023 plan, the list strikes me as somewhere between glib and farce.
Covid struck in Mid-march. We were away at the beginning of the month for our anniversary, which we thoroughly enjoyed at a farm in Somerset where outbuildings have been converted into little airbnb’s and on the other side of the gate, a cafe and crossfit gym. Quiet - but with people, coffee food and exercise facilities within a minute’s access (as well as hot tub and sauna) - it suited both the introvert and extrovert in our family.
We missed the wave of our friends who were getting Covid early in the month and then, though we hadn’t knowingly been in contact with anyone with it, came down mid-month. Initially for me it was just a heavy cold and I was working from home without problem. Then about five days in the vertigo hit. I’d never experienced this before. I couldn’t sit up and work at the screen, couldn’t do much other than lay in bed hoping it would stop. Even turning over in bed made me feel like I was spinning uncontrollably.
The next development was a headache across the top of my head as if in between the front and back hemispheres, unlike any I’ve ever had before, so intense the throbbing woke me from sleep. Sounds were painfully loud. I was now testing covid negative so visited the doctor at our local hospital, expecting to be told I had an ear infection or something for which they could simply prescribe some medication or other. Instead he told me that since I had just had covid and considering a few other factors, I needed to go to the emergency facility (half an hour away) preferably immediately, so that they could rule out a blood clot. So this we did. Emergency discharged me relatively promptly to ambulatory care. Various tests throughout the day, various nurses and doctors, resulted in the decision to have an MRI to rule out a clot. But this would be another day. In the meantime they gave me some strong medication which when it kicked in really started to ease off the headache.
Back again for an MRI first thing Wednesday - but had to wait all day for the results, chasing up and down between the departments. Finally at day’s end, the results - clear, no clot. So home again, relieved. Still with vertigo. Still sensitive to sounds. John eating a bowl of cereal downstairs sounded like someone banging a spoon on a plate next to my ear.
I spent the next few months trying to work back up to a normal work schedule. While I was at home alternating laying in bed, sometimes sleeping, with bouts of work, I couldn’t bear the noise of John working in the house. No more work on floors or cabinets.
By June I was largely back at work and John started again on the cabinets, an incredibly complicated endeavour for reasons I won’t go into here. That meant no good computer setup. I do write by hand to journal but editing and writing to share with others needed typing. No good computer set up, no typing. No typing, no newsletters. Furthermore, my home computer which is quite old has stopped allowing the browser updates which are necessary to edit the website builder and the newsletter creator.
There were a lot of plans that went right out of the window due to Covid, including but not limited to: attending a friend’s wedding in April as it required a journey of several hours, visiting my family in Oregon in June, having the house finished by the end of summer, expanding my massage business. And newsletters have not been sent.
