Boudoir, COVID, Flares, and other things

HAPPY NEW YEARS YOU BEAUTIFUL SOULS

Didn’t think I forgot about this space, did you? I think we can all agree that I was not meant to be a professional blogger due to my inconsistency, but it’s not for a lack of trying. I just have a lot on my plate (as always). Which if my doctor is reading this, I know, I know, I am supposed to be REDUCING my stress levels. But it’s really hard!

Anyways, since I’ve last written life has been busy! I got to travel for a wedding (just to a different province) with my best friend and her partner and it was such a lovely little getaway. My partner and I celebrated 6 years together and then I went to the mountains to see my best friend for her birthday.

In November, I did do my boudoir shoot and guys, do it. If you have been contemplating on doing it, DO IT. I am not a confident person and the idea of this shoot really scared me but I knew on some level I needed to do it for myself and prove to myself that I could do it. So gearing up to the day of the shoot my photographer sent me some tips, sent me some ways to prep for it, and of course my anxiety told me to research and look into everything to be as prepared as possible.

Now two days before my shoot my tummy started doing weird things and lone behold, I entered into a little flare. Panic. No one likes to see blood, no matter how little, in the toilet and my urgency was increasing. I thought, f*cking great, now I have to cancel it. But my photographer is a sweet little angel and I knew she would be understanding and give me breaks if I needed, and I thought to myself, wasn’t this the whole point? To try and appreciate and care better for my body, even when I’m sick? If I waited again until I was better, wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose. Especially because I wasn’t in pain or feeling ill. I was just bloated and had urgency.

So I kept my shoot and my bowels were little angels for that entire time. Not once did I need the bathroom AND while I was bloated in the photos, I actually still loved the photos and it made me appreciate my body in different ways. It’s such a unique and empowering experience. I felt like a little bad ass and was so damn proud of myself for getting through it all and doing the damn thing. And not to toot my own horn or anything, but I looked pretty good and couldn’t believe it was my body.

But after the high of the shoot came the reality that I was in a flare.

Now raise your hand with me if you have ever been personally gaslit by your body?

Because this flare felt like I was in a relationship where I was made to feel like a little liar. I had called my doctor to explain my symptoms, so of course the first step is always to do some blood work and a stool sample. I did my thing and my results came back NORMAL. I mean a little higher on the normal side, but still normal. Like did not match with how frequently I was bleeding. Inflammation markers and all that jazz was NORMAL. The only thing that my blood work showed that was not normal, was that I was in fact losing blood and also had lower iron as a result.

So my body had panicked and entered into a flare a little too early? Idk. But what I do know is I wound up back on prednisone for a little while as well as a steroid suppository. I only went back on for 20 mg, and am finally nearly done.

But before people come for me about why we go straight to prednisone I would like to remind you of a couple things:

• I am on a clinical trial, meaning my “rescue” drugs are literally only limited to a handful, most of which I have shown an intolerance or straight up allergy to and others just have not worked for me
• My body is picky and responds well to only a handful of drugs. I would like to thank my congenital ear problems that resulted in me having 3 surgeries and a lifetime of chronic ear infections for this, because as a result of my chronic ear infections I built up a strong drug tolerance and now a lot of medications just don’t work for me

Anyways the good news is I am now out of my flare up and down to 5 mg of prednisone, so by next week I shall be free for hopefully a little while.

Now my final and most recent update: your girl tested positive for COVID 5 days ago.

I had never tested positive and had pretty much managed to stay away from even close contact cases for nearly two years. I have been so cautious and have really set my boundaries during this pandemic. Also I just have amazing people in my life, who even when they have a sniffle, chose to stay away from me in order to avoid getting me sick. So when I got sick on the 29th, I really didn’t think it could be COVID.

Now it was a close contact case, but still.

So for all of my chronic illness friends who haven’t gotten it yet and are wondering what it’s like, I will share my experience so far. I would also like to point out that I am double vaxxed (couldn’t get my booster until I was done prednisone, because I have to stop taking my clinical trial meds for 5 days after getting my shot and being in a recent flare + stopping meds seemed like a bad idea).

On the 28th I felt pretty much as perfect as I can feel for most of the day. No sore throat or anything like that. Around 11 pm that night I did get a really bad head ache but I am prone to chronic migraines, so I didn’t think anything of it. I popped a tylenol and went to bed. By 5 am on the 29th I woke up feeling like utter garbage. My head ache was still there, but now so was this intense feeling of nausea, body aches, and chills. I spent my morning running to the bathroom trying to puke and only managing to puke up bile & water/tea. I couldn’t keep anything down until around 1 pm when the nausea finally started to simmer down. The head ache, body aches, and chills were terrible. Now body aches are something I am QUITE familiar with thanks to UC, so I think for a lot of people who don’t experience this, it’s intense, but for me it felt like a really really bad flare day. The headache and chills were more my area of discomfort. The headache just made it hard want to stay awake, so I slept most of the day and the chills. Man. I could not warm up. I had no fever, which was surprising to me because I wore fuzzy socks, fleece PJ pants, a PJ shirt, a fleece sweater, a blanket hoodie, AND still needed to have my heating pad on me the whole day to actually feel warm. It wasn’t until the next day that I finally got rid of that.

Now I did test myself the previous day with the rapid tests because we had found out we had been around someone who had tested positive, but my test came back negative. On the 29th when I woke up feeling like I did, I did book myself a PCR test.

On the 30th I woke up feeling fine. Just had a cough and was a bit stuffy, but all my other symptoms from the day before were gone. It honestly felt like a fever dream with how quickly those symptoms went away, so then I thought, maybe I got a 24 hour stomach bug or food poisoning? I mean I did eat an entire thing of cocktail shrimp to myself, maybe that was a bad choice? But alas, my test results came back positive for COVID and now here we are.

I am currently on day 5 and feeling okay! Still have a cough, but even that is already improving. Mostly just stuffy and have a runny nose. But I don’t even have a sore throat!

I do think I caught the omicron variant based on my symptoms, but I’m not 100% sure. What I am sure about is that I am damn grateful that I am vaccinated and that this didn’t end up being worse. My flu from 2 years ago thanks to working in a school lasted longer and felt worse, so these little antibodies are doing a damn good job. But I am stuck in quarantine for at least 14 days. I have to contact my doctors and based on my symptoms, health history, and risk level they will tell me whether I can get out earlier, stay with the 14 days, or go up to 20 days….. The perks of being immunocompromised.

But I wanted to share my experience because as someone who is immunocompromised, it’s a scary unknown for us. I have asthma and my medication can turn colds into pneumonia 4x more than the average person, so a lung virus was not exactly something I wanted to mess with. But science is cool and works wonders and if you are vaxxed, know that your body has now been given the things it needs to help it defend you from this. It knows what to look for and how to attack it. I would like to think that if anything, someone with a chronic illness, their body is going to do a pretty damn good job at attacking things because that’s all it likes to do….. BUT this doesn’t mean based on my experience to be all willy nilly and take less precautions. I think another reason my symptoms are mild are because I do take precautions and therefore my viral load isn’t as high. So wash your hands, stay 6 feet apart, and wear a mask in heavily crowded places (or if you live where I do, in all indoor spaces because it’s mandatory). I do genuinely believe these precautions work and save lives on top of the vaccine.

But I am always happy to answer any questions people may have, so know my inbox is always open.

Now I think this update is long enough, but now that I am in isolation for the next while, maybe I’ll write here more often.

I hope you all had a restful, safe, and wonderful holidays and welcome to 2022 baby!