Dude, who even knows.

9th April 2023

Post with 8 notes

Which means so far my record for dealing with Long Covid symptoms so far is

  1. Brain infection – caught a big chunk of damage with only and all of the parts of my brain I didn’t like, used the depersonalization to explore the concept of selfhood from outside and more precisely reshape the self in line with my life experience as it returned
  2. Aerobic energy generation – rendered me barely conscious to the point of hardly breathing, I immediately reasoned it out and converted it to miraculous weight loss that is finally giving me a body to match my idealized self
  3. Blood pressure drops – okay I passed out twice at the bar that actually trusted to serve me despite how the brain stuff made me unsteady and slurry, that kinda sucked, but it’d been a bit high before so okay?
  4. this or maybe
  5. I think was the testosterone, which was subtle enough I didn’t even notice at first, but on top of making me more sexually charismatic means my wounds heal faster and I gain more muscle from exercise – those are the effects steroids hack. Which is nice, because the #1 brain stuff switched me from being flatfooted to walking with raised arches, which apparently uses a completely different chain of muscles throughout the body I have to train up from scratch
  6. Iron deficiency – the fatigue had gotten worse and even more creatine didn’t help, my limbs felt weighed down, and then 3 days in I was in the supermarket and was like “wait, you know what this reminds me of reading about? anemia” and got some iron pills and yeah, that was it
  7. Used muscles fatigue more – this one’s receded some, I think it might have interfered with the breakdown of lactic acid, but as the muscles continue to build (with the help of testosterone, #5) even intense smashing just doesn’t push me to the limits and generate as much?

So basically as far as I’m concerned, I am the human that won this plague

Tagged: long covidpersonality change

26th March 2023

Question

Anonymous asked:

If you think covid induced diabetes in you, you should seek medical help. Doctors can't do much about nerve damage, but they do know something about diabetes. At the very least, get an A1c home test.

Well whatever it does it does go away on its own, with the initial case of that fatigue it took like a year and a half of stepping down creatine but I could eventually get by fine on aerobic generation without it (recall my concern is that similar fact patterns could be being mistaken for diabetes in others), subsequent Covid cases brought it back but just yesterday I stepped down from 6 scoops/day to 5.

Tagged: long covid

24th March 2023

Post with 2 notes

I kind of wonder how much my aerobic-energy-generation-from-blood-sugar issues ARE what’s being registered as Long Covid-induced diabetes.

Cause after taking creatine to replace with anaerobically-generated energy, the issues do eventually recede and clear up (they come back with new Covid cases, but those clear up too), I fear we might have people injecting insulin after it’s necessary.

Tagged: long covid

22nd March 2023

Post with 2 notes

Covid worriers on Twitter like “what, do they expect us to just catch this twice a year forever, even as it makes our Long Covid worse?”

Like… yeah, basically? I’ve been doing it since 2020 when it first went “long” in my brain, I believe I’m on my 7th case (none have been tested, but all so reliably feature the same particular symptoms I feel confident calling them), new stuff shows up each time but both it and the returning stuff is weaker each time.

Well, generally. Actual strength order was something like 1, 2, 6, 7, 3, 4, 5. And based on progressions, I expect from case 11 on it’d be nothing, maybe feel a little funk for a week.

  • 1st was brain and nerves, messed up my ability to conceive of motion, to implement it with my muscles, and to conceive of myself as a person, that lasted over 2 years though it was reinforced partway through by…
  • The 2nd was the first fatigue, that seems to be an issue with aerobic energy generation from blood sugar but I found I can compensate by boosting anaerobic generation from fat with creatine.
  • The 3rd case, in retrospect (the 2nd was the last one to announce itself with any initial “acute” respiratory symptoms), introduced blood pressure issues, I collapsed twice while standing
  • The 4th and 5th infections, I felt sudden simultaneous strengthening of all the other symptoms but noticed nothing new, but new effects might be something unnoticeable. I’m pretty sure my testosterone levels shot up somewhere between the first and fifth cases.
  • The 6th infection debuted the second major fatigue, which is an anemia-like iron deficiency controlled with supplements.
  • The 7th infection, the most recent about a month ago, added an effect that muscles pushed to their limits experience bonus fatigue and weariness, which makes it good that earlier yard work already expanded my limits so much.

Now, it bears pointing out that one factor behind my equanimity here is when the first case got into my brain it wiped out the part that handles anxiety and thus I am physically unable to worry about things, I imagine without this the entire experience (I was stuck delirious in a body I could hardly control for over a year!) would have been significantly more distressing

Tagged: long covid

16th March 2023

Question reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 31 notes

Anonymous asked:

how did you arrive at creatine as the solution, was it a craving or something like that

kontextmaschine:

It first struck all at once when I was in my bedroom at the end of the night, I struggled to bed, fell asleep, and was still so weak on waking my resting breath didn’t completely cycle the air in my lungs, so I manually took deep breaths.

That made me feel marginally better so I tried hyperventilating, that made me feel marginally better yet, enough to struggle to the kitchen.

I grabbed a few chunks of dried pineapple to eat and that made me even marginally better still, but I was still absolutely feeble.

I had a clever generalist’s understanding of things, though.

“Huh, more oxygen helps… more blood sugar helps… but even together they’re not enough. This sounds like an issue with aerobic energy generation.”

And I knew that creatine enables anaerobic energy generation from fat, which can be drawn on when energy demand exceeds aerobic capacity, and I had some on hand and I thought “may as well try”, so moving as if gravity was 3 times as strong I took a few scoops in a cup of water, shook it up, gulped down, a few minutes later I did in fact feel better so I did it again and I was back to normal.

And then I mad scientist laughed my ass off, I’m extremely proud of that one, made me feel like Batman reasoning his way out of the Riddler’s trap.

This was the new effect from my second case, which means my first hadn’t fully worn off and I had like 40% physical and 60% mental function max even before this.

The iron thing didn’t show up til my 6th case, at first I was just like “oh I underestimated the aerobic fatigue gotta take more creatine” but it got worse every day and felt different, specifically heavy in my blood, and I was like “uhh I guess this kinda reminds me of anemia? Let’s pick up some iron supplements” and THAT was it

Tagged: long covid

11th March 2023

Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 23 notes

kontextmaschine:

Okay to make some things clear:

  • I know damn well all this stuff happening to me is the result of a brain infection doing brain damage.
  • It is NOT getting worse with time, threatening to suck me into a vortex of destruction.
  • In fact, as it cyclically recurs in largely the exact same forms I’m used to, it’s milder each time, and I can see an intermediate horizon past which I barely notice it anymore.
  • Pretty much every Long Covid patient I’ve heard of under general, neurological, or other specialist medical supervision says that the doctors at best diagnose and analyze the body’s recovery as and to the degree it happens, if not actively chase unhelpful treatments
  • If there were something doctors could do, I would not be a priority candidate for it. I am in the “will recover fine on his own” triage tranch.
  • It would’ve been nice to be a medicoscientific source, but I’ve already progressed so far without observation I wouldn’t be too useful as a case study anyway, and this is not exactly a rare disease that will be scrounging for patients to investigate.
  • Instead I think I might be more useful as a more humanities-oriented example. All of you, when you hear of “someone with long covid”, you now have me as a reference example. (Compare Twitter, where the usual catastrophizing=engagement dynamic centers quite different examples)

Also cause ~brain damage~ has a mystique as permanent and additive, like “oh you just keep getting a little more eventually you’ll exhaust your reserves!”

Like I’m pretty sure we’re not looking at permanent cell death here in part because as it grows milder each case it’s ridiculous to imagine it as fresh brain learning anew every time, like for 2 hours every few months I get fuzzy on some sort of social subroutine then redevelop it from scratch, naw it’s just creating temporary noise in the line

Tagged: long covid

11th March 2023

Post with 23 notes

Okay to make some things clear:

  • I know damn well all this stuff happening to me is the result of a brain infection doing brain damage.
  • It is NOT getting worse with time, threatening to suck me into a vortex of destruction.
  • In fact, as it cyclically recurs in largely the exact same forms I’m used to, it’s milder each time, and I can see an intermediate horizon past which I barely notice it anymore.
  • Pretty much every Long Covid patient I’ve heard of under general, neurological, or other specialist medical supervision says that the doctors at best diagnose and analyze the body’s recovery as and to the degree it happens, if not actively chase unhelpful treatments
  • If there were something doctors could do, I would not be a priority candidate for it. I am in the “will recover fine on his own” triage tranch.
  • It would’ve been nice to be a medicoscientific source, but I’ve already progressed so far without observation I wouldn’t be too useful as a case study anyway, and this is not exactly a rare disease that will be scrounging for patients to investigate.
  • Instead I think I might be more useful as a more humanities-oriented example. All of you, when you hear of “someone with long covid”, you now have me as a reference example. (Compare Twitter, where the usual catastrophizing=engagement dynamic centers quite different examples)

Tagged: long covid

10th March 2023

Post with 5 notes

Was gonna mutter to myself “not a fan of how I just go out of my mind sometimes these days”, but honestly I am pretty fond of that

Tagged: long covid

10th March 2023

Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 1 note

kontextmaschine:

Ick, there’s some weird motion and social stuff springing off in my brain, but it’s not enough to totally break through, which makes it pretty uncomfortable to soldier through actually.

Yeah okay woah, I thought the mental stuff was through this echo already but apparently there were whole areas it hadn’t got to yet. Sorry, readers, I fear I’m gonna be a little off for a bit.

Tagged: long covid

10th March 2023

Post with 1 note

Ick, there’s some weird motion and social stuff springing off in my brain, but it’s not enough to totally break through, which makes it pretty uncomfortable to soldier through actually.

Tagged: long covid