Rumination: The End of the Walking Year

The Following is For Reference Only.

Toasting the end of Season 11
with My First Beverage
in Absolutely Ages!

The acid test for getting myself a finale for 2022's walking year was always going to be factored by how well my body responded to a week of actual labour, and in the wake of a week of work, I think we can conclude that that this season is done, and has been ever since I rode the train from Dodworth station three weeks ago, feeling like all the energy had been drained from my body, as a push through five days of being almost completely desk-bound at the Medical Records Library at St James Hospital has left me feeling absolutely spent, as I knew it was going to be tough, but felt like it ought to be within my compass as a Nine Day Weekend of annual leave was scheduled directly after it. Returning to regular business proved harder than anticipated, even though there was no massive impetus to get into very early starts as per usual, as train strikes (or rather the aftermath the cancellations thereof) meant there were only bus rides to be taken on the mornings of my first two days, rocking me up a little later than normal, and being relieved of physical duties meant that a eight hour stretch at my desk was all I had to get on with, at a nicely moderated pace that nonetheless had me ready for a heavy refuel and an early night once my working day was done, sleeping like the dead as all my energy reserves had expended themselves. Come Wednesday, my body has already given up on me and I'm over-sleeping to the tune of over an hour, and having to force myself into work, clearly still in the grip of a bout of post-viral fatigue, which my senior colleagues warn me is something than I'm likely to be dealing with for a while, plausibly until Christmas, as a post-Covid recovery doesn't have those day by day incremental improvements that come in the wake of most viral infections, and a six-week restoration to normal wouldn't be at all unlikely, so it's mildly encouraging that a bit of a physical bounce returns on Thursday, perhaps because we're over the hump of my five day week and abbreviated return to work spell.

Rumination: Still Wrestling the Covid Beast

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Well, Ain't That a Relief?

It ought to come as no surprise to anyone that my Covid infection put me out of circulation for another seven days, what with me not being able to return to work until I've managed to return two negative tests, and with my seven day period of self certification ending, requiring me to contact my GP to obtain a sick-note, or a fit-note as they're calling them these days, which turned out to be a much less testing an experience than I had anticipated, getting a telephone consultation only five hours after I'd contacted my surgery on Monday, getting signed off for another week without much by way of questioning, aside from finding that getting said documents e-mailed to me is a surprising difficulty at their end. They even offered me a potentailly longer spell off, which is nice of them, but I felt it more appropriate to negotiate my return to work role with my employers rather than spending too much time out before I felt 'right' again, as despite returning my first negative result on Tuesday, I still felt like absolute garbage with most of the now familiar Covid symptoms having now settled on me, like the Covid Cough, which we've all gotten to know with its dry, rattling resonance that doesn't really shift anything, the deep muscular aches that remind you that Covid is really a neurological ailment rather than a respiratory one, and the utterly baffling loss of your sense of smell which frustrates when consuming food is one of the few joys you have left. The only symptom that I seem to have avoided is the high temperatures, which is fortunate  as sleeping off my illness gets more appealing, as the night time turn-ins get earlier and no day has me roused earlier than 8am, or rising before 9.30am, settling me into an under-active routine that feels a lot like being unemployed, only getting busy because I need to eat, as Covid plainly isn't a disease that you can starve like a fever, and my paranoid preparations of the last few years means there's plenty to pull out of my cupboards, while I prop myself up in the kitchen to bulk-prepare meals to freeze in order to see me through the dark Autumn, and otherwise keep myself entertained by sorting through the thousands of digital photographs that I accumulated for myself across 2012-15, allowing me to mentally travel while still being housebound.