Dose Two
Dose two
Well; three weeks later, and we got our second COVID vaccine doses.
Although I wish this was not the case, I went from zero to full-on flashback in bout twenty minutes; and expect to remain in some variation of that mindset for the next few days.
I would like to stress for the new reader: this is not a side effect of the vaccine, and I strongly recommend that (where medically possible) everyone get it. This is purely my past history interacting with current events.
On the bright side, in a little over two weeks I will start treatment with a new EMDR therapist. I am very much hoping that goes a long way towards bringing these sorts of undesirable episodes under control.
More Posts from Pamprinninja and Others
Two more tests
For the duration of my tenure with my current employer, there has been an IT Guy. He is older than me, and has twice as much practical experience.
Unfortunately, he is prone to failures of common sense. I know him as someone that chooses his tools based on his own personal level of interest (as opposed to their suitability), and frequently over-complicates each and every task in front of him.
It is not possible for him to be removed from the company; therefore he has instead been moved to a position in which his ability to disrupt IT proceedings has been minimized: that of company compliance officer.
For the most part he has left IT alone, except for occasionally requiring that we demonstrate our systems have various redundancies and backups in place. (This was spurred, in part, to mitigate against the possibility of a production system resource group being inadvertently deleted... after he did just that.)
A few weeks ago I walked into the kitchen to find him wearing a mask (uncharacteristic) and blowing his nose loudly. “Don’t worry!” he said, “It’s not COVID”! (Truly, confidence-inspiring.)
Well, wouldn’t you know it but a few days later both I and a fellow IT employee get hit with The Cold From Hell. So... I had to go get another test done. (Thankfully, no insane pipe-cleaner swab this time.) Fortuitously, it was negative.
All the same, my long weekend was ruined by the misery of illness. I return to the office, and have a talk with my boss about how our compliance officer - the man chiefly responsible for ensuring business continuity (i.e. that everything keeps working in the event of a crisis) - brought a transmissible illness into our work environment during a pandemic.
A week, nearly two goes by; and I suddenly develop a sore throat (welp) as Omicron numbers soar. My spouse - who contracted the cold from me - is likewise experiencing chest symptoms. So off we go, again, to get tested.
The chief reason I keep returning to the same testing location is because they do not require appointments, they are quick, and turnaround on results is usually within the hour. Thus, imagine my surprise when I see that the parking lot is completely filled with cars, and learn that turnaround time is now closer to six hours.
This Omicron business is something else. Part of my would like to write in detail about how we’re (a) right back to square one in terms of required measures to prevent transmission (quarantine; mask mandates; public gathering limits) and how (b) absolutely none of these things are happening.
i will defer for present. I was so convinced this time around that COVID had caught up to us; because I have never experienced before a common cold that caused a sore throat weeks after initial sinus symptoms; and this revelation initiated a twenty hour-long panic attack. I am desperately trying to put such things out of mind at present.
Suffice to say: the tests were negative. I am in many respects glad; but also concerned (for the cold is doing a real number on my lungs, and I worry how that might compound an actual COVID infection). Such is life.
I’m not sure there’s any moral in this story; other than the general sense that we could have handled the pandemic far better, were it not for the widespread lack of common sense that my coworker typifies... And that I am very much fed up of having my bodily integrity violated with sample collection swabs.
…And again in the season one Babylon 5 episode, “Infection”:
“You and the rest, you forgot the first rule of the fanatic: when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy!”
That JMS repeated himself virtually verbatim goes to show that this is a message he felt very strongly about (and rightfully so)!
That video of Alex Hirsch reading S&P notes for Gravity Falls conveys a few things to me:
1) the U.S. entertainment industry (especially animation) is run by older conservative types who make up offensive terms and get really mad about them.
2) the people who run Disney would be the first to fall in line with a fascist regime.
3) most of the media we consume is tailor-made and watered-down to appeal to the tastes of older, deeply religious conservative audiences.
4) conservatism, not the left, is and always has been the biggest voice of censorship in American culture.
Fire drill: addendum #1
Did I say two days? I meant five days.
It is a known quantity that our customer database contains both structural flaws and a significant amount of bad data. We have another IT team working continuously on addressing these issues.
However, for a variety of reasons, it’s my team that tends to discover these problems. That’s exactly what happened this week; and it added another couple of days to the firefighting efforts.
I cannot express enough the tremendous frustration that comes with running into an obstacle of this nature. The are plenty of other industries in which a past decision can come back to haunt you; but the abstract nature of software development lends itself particularly well to ensuring these landmines are unnoticed until, of course, someone inevitably steps on one.
John Walker in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.
Unexpected HRT side-effect #16
So I had Nongshim Black ramen for lunch; I was snacking on original-flavor Takis; and thinking about making chicken for dinner and liberally heaping Lousiana hot sauce on top.
It occurred to me: when did I start eating so many spicy foodstuffs?
Not that I was ever spice-averse; but in my prior life, I certainly didn't seek the stuff out. Now, however, I cannot get enough heat (with the proviso that it's cut with lots and lots of acid; spiciness by itself isn't particularly fun).
I would attribute this particular zag to a routine change in taste; but the exact thing happened to my friend A also once she started her HRT regimen. So - what I lost in temperature tolerance, I apparently now make up for in love of heat!
Orikan: *Rewinds time*
Trazyn: "...A shred of truth within this tale of yours."
Orikan: "BASTARD!"
"Stop laughing Trazyn, I have a Gf, she's just from another dynasty"
Night surprise
Our three eldest cats have a simple routine: play, eat, sleep. For whatever reason, the youngest cat is the opposite: sleep, eat, play.
She is also very smart. She loves the laser pointer, and knows that it lives next to our bedside table; and will sit on the aforesaid table and sing to us when she wants to play.
This is all very cute except at nighttime, as we would like to sleep and she would like to play. This was the case last night, and unfortunately the cat would not listen to our polite requests to desist and so she was shut out of the room.
What then followed was a twenty-minute admixture of singing from the hallway and banging on the door. Eventually she grew bored, and decided to revisit another of her favorite pastimes (trying to pry the under-sink closet in the bathroom open; a process that involves more loud banging).
In the middle of the night, I visit the bathroom and as I’m sitting there in the dark, doing my thing, the youngest cat just casually strolls out of the closet like Samara crawling out of the television!
Unexpected HRT side-effect #4
I have no ability to regulate my temperature anymore. At least, not compared to how it used to be. Blazing sun? Sign me up! Below freezing? It’s all good! But... not anymore.
Now, that in and of itself wasn’t unexpected - pre-HRT, I read a comment from a trans girl to this exact effect (and indeed, that entire thread was the inspiration for this series of posts).
What really gets me is when and where my newfound lack of temperature tolerance likes to strike. Today, I was sweating bullets and getting flushed because I was eating soup. Soup!
Dose two: addendum
I feel like I might have spoken too soon on my COVID vaccine side effects dying down; I’m now four days post-hoc and it feels like I still have some issues (muscle aches and swollen glands on the injection side; feverishness if I overexert myself).
It’s physically irritating, mentally debilitating, and it only fuels my anger more towards the sum group of people inflamed this situation for their own selfish reasons.
(I will also add: a couple of years ago, the spouse and I caught a very strange, persistent cold virus; the lymph nodes in my upper torso and neck flared up like nobody’s business and remained that way for almost eight to ten weeks.
It scared the hell out of me, as that kind of persistent swelling is generally associated with far worse ailments; and I was still in my passive ideation phase at the time and was pretty convinced that This Was It. Thankfully it went away on its own; but in retrospect, I’m realizing that this episode might be another unprocessed issue I now have to unpack and deal with.)
