explaining my health vagueposting #pastebinmonday

ive been posting kinda vague health related stuff lately and i guess i'll elaborate: around the beginning of november I started having difficulty breathing. this came in the form of sometimes being unable to take a deep breath, but most of the time being able to take a deep breath but not feeling any sense of satisfaction from it, and constantly needing to yawn repeatedly, like several times a minute. originally I didn't know any better word for this besides "shortness of breath", but because I am still sleeping perfectly fine and waking up feeling okay with my symptoms onsetting in 2-3 hours from the time i wake up, i figured that wasn't an accurate descriptor.

there is essentially zero chance that i have covid, because quite frankly, i've been doing exactly what i thought we were all supposed to do this entire year. i do not leave my apartment, period, except to 1) take the trash out to the chute on my floor and 2) check my mail in the mail room. both of these things i do at around 11:30 PM when there is basically no chance of any other people being in the hallways at my building. anything i need, i get via contactless delivery, and i do a -lot- of meal prep and don't cook very much that expires quickly/doesn't freeze well. i live completely alone. i can't really catch covid with no one to catch it from. this is a depressing way to live, but it's truly what i thought we were all supposed to do, and i've been abiding by the rules not only for my own health but for the sake of not having any risk of spreading the virus, although that latter goal seems to be the definition of "in vain" by now.

so since i have no one to catch any communicable illnesses from, this breathing issue has been exceptionally worrying. i do have a childhood history of asthma, and i experienced something similar to this in the summer that i treated by just spending most of the evening lying down watching simpsons reruns until it subsided after a week or so. this time is different, though, it's been a month. i called ontario telehealth and the first thing i was given was a ventolin prescription. it did help immensely the first couple days, but then i guess i developed a tolerance or something cause the symptoms came back. i called back after a week and got a flovent prescription, which also ended up helping a bit, but flovent is steroid-based and my body had a history of quickly developing a steroid tolerance (shoutouts to the 6 years i battled seronegative arthritis and cortisone shots would lose their effectiveness within hours, so i had to advance to some pretty extreme drug treatment), and within a few days i also developed laryngitis which i've had for a week now. i stopped taking my puffers on friday to see if the laryngitis would go away, but it hasn't.

this is honestly getting scary, so i called around to a few local clinics to try and book an appointment to go in for a physical examination, but because my issue is breathing related, most doctors around where i live can't see me because they also work in long-term care, which sucks but i completely understand. i didn't get a covid test for two reasons: 1) i had a sinus scope a few years ago which is far less invasive and far less abrasive than a covid swab and that brought me pretty damn close to having a panic attack, a process i wish to not repeat and 2) i don't have any contact method of catching covid in the first place, but that would certainly change if i had to wait in a facility around symptomatic people who -haven't- been living in complete isolation just to prove that i don't have an illness i had no way of contracting.

i eventually called my family doctor, who is kinda far away from me now because i registered back when i was living in north york and working in markham (i live in midtown now and work from home) and my only way to visit would be either via public transportation or uber (once again, not things I want to do b/c trying to minimize my transmission risk here), but the good news is that he is able to see me w/o me having to wait for a covid test first, so i have an appointment this upcoming thursday. he mentioned i'd need to get xrays done, which, honestly, thank god, i've been trying to get an xray requisition but no one would give me one without a physical examination first, which i couldn't get because no covid test.

i called again last friday to explain that i was feeling really anxious about my symptoms, and my doctor expedited an xray requisition to the lab in the same building as his office and the lab was able to take me within an hour of me calling. i sucked it up and took an uber over there, which has been my first contact with another person since i think canadian thanksgiving. the xray tech was really amicable and i was done in 5 minutes, and she let me see my scans before i left, and i mean i'm no doctor but looking at it myself gave me a bit of relief. from the moment the lab called me to confirm they could take me same day, i noticed that my breathing problems began to subside, and improved over the course of the weekend, with me going several hours until i realized "huh, i haven't had to take a deep breath in a while".

so i have no idea what's happening with me, and it'll likely be a while before i do, but probably anxiety has had a lot to do with it. i remembered that these symptoms started around the same time i was assigned to a very difficult task at work that required some serious independent learning (which is going well, but i'm my own worst critic), so that could have been at least a partial cause. (my work has been really accommodating about this stuff as well, so that's not an issue). i also have tourettes that manifests itself with repetitive physical actions, so repeated anxiety deep breathing is severely exacerbated by an impulsive need to keep doing it even when i know i'm not short on air.

then, the knowledge that i was taking care of this issue & getting somewhere with having my xray done was a lot of anxiety relief for me, and seeing the results at the end gave me some more peace of mind. i haven't heard back from my doctor regarding my results yet, so my best guess is that whatever was in my scans isn't urgent enough to require immediate action & i can afford to wait until thursday, which is also a big relief. this turn of events has significantly decreased my symptoms, but they're still there, so the anxiety could maybe just be comorbid. i don't know yet.

unfortunately my laryngitis isn't really improving much, despite me opting not to speak the last few days and just drink a lot of liquids, so idk what's going on there. i only just stopped using my puffers a few days ago so i'll give it a little longer. additionally i had splitting headaches all weekend that aleve worked for and advil didn't (advil usually does the trick for me) and dizziness when i sit up straight in my chair. i feel fine if lying down most of the time, but idk, it's strange. occasional sharp chest pains have been popping up too but nothing frequent or long lasting enough to be an immediate concern. i'll be mentioning all of this at my next appointment ofc. but yeah, really no clue what happened to me or why.

dez is a good friend of mine who recently battled cancer and won, and ive been talking to her to compare symptoms, and there were some similarities and some differences, but mostly i wanna thank dez and tin and waffle for talking me through all of this stuff and helping me feel more determined to solve it. you guys are the best. and i also wanna thank seancass for checking on me every day, talking me down from self-indulgent hypochondria anxiety, calling me on discord to spend time with me even when i can only type in response, and keeping me company basically every day since i started working from home in march, because of him i don't feel anywhere near as isolated as i am in reality. i love you sean.

so far things look promising for me, but it's still pretty scary, but im taking things one day at a time now that i'm reasonably confident that my health problem isn't an urgent matter of life or death and hopefully can be treated with non-invasive means. which also means the process of figuring out treatment will be slower, but it'll be worth it. thanks for reading gamers!