Category: status

One up, one down. At least I’m alive.

The Up

Went for my first run since early May. Ran just 5K, but had to take 2 breaks to let the HR come down.

The good bit: Most of the external-focused running muscles worked fine. The ankle whose injury had stopped running felt completely normal. The achilees in the other foot tinged a bit occasionally, but nothing extraordinary. Will ice it tonight.

The ok bit: It’s been just a couple of hours, and my quads (?!) are giving an indication of DOMS already. Could it be because I was lifting my knees while trying to pick up the feet? Or is it just that they’ve not been worked at all since the last spinning class in early August?

The bad bit: HR was high. Way too high for such a short run in cool temperatures. It was a clear indication of how much aerobic fitness I’ve lost in these months. Lots of work to get it back before London.

The Down

When heading down for the run, I turned off the heater in the office. I’d kept it at low for Chewie – who seemed to be feeling a bit cold.

When I returned upstairs 2.5 hours later, the room was boiling. Instead of switching off the low button, I’d turned on the high button – so the electric heater was working at full power for 2.5 hours. The digital temperature gauge read 39ºC :/

My office room is small enough to become uncomfortably warm in 10 mins. After two hours at full power, it was boiling – worse than the worst of summer. The Macbook was so hot that it took nearly 2 mins to show the lock screen!

I’ve been sitting here with the window open for 20 mins, and the temperature still reads 31ºC.

There may be a good amount of damage to the electricity bill.
Photo by Brandon Bynum on Unsplash

I’m still alive

Early in the run, the HR reading said 232 bpm! My heart was working, but not that hard. It was just the usual ‘cold air meets HR strap’ f-up.

Later in the run, the reading said 187 bpm, and I could feel the heart struggling to keep pumping. That was when I took my first break.

That was nothing compared to how hard the heart beat when I came upstairs half-an-hour ago and realised what had happened. Glad I wasn’t wearing the HR monitor anymore, or it may have given a reading to give me a stroke!

Anyway, the heart didn’t stop, and I didn’t burn down the house. I’ll call this afternoon a win.

A flat(tening) week…

Hearing therapy session got cancelled – Jen called in sick :(
I really needed this session – we’d made good progress in the previous session, and I was still reeling from Sunday’s mess.

Weekly mean weights

Weight has been trending up dramatically, after three weeks of heading down. Sunday’s gorging at the party, Monday’s cake feast, and yesterday’s gallons of red wine – all contributed. Culprit was clearly a weak will.

chart

Clutter free is stagnating – growth burst is over, and user numbers have been up and down since the US Thanksgiving.

Not enough users are signing up for premium support subscribtions. If the trend continues, I’ll have to cull time allotment to, if not kill entirely, the extensions. 40,000 users aren’t worth anything if even 1% of them don’t think these are worth paying.

Not a good week, so far.

The upside: week’s not over.

— Ever the optimist :)

Noise notes

Yesterday was a bad day for noise exposure and I’m still feeling its impact today – in higher tinnitus and grinding of teeth. The silver lining is that the social event I was dreading went way better than expected, but I did suffer more than usual at the cafe later.

We had a party at friends’ house. 4 families, one sleepy dogs, and some young kids. It was noisy at times. However, I don’t remember being irritated or hurting from noise most of the time. Even when I was with the kids in their room, or when one of them was playing the piano (for me, and really well!), and another trying his hand on drums (badly). I was happy, and a bit drunk. I guess the alcohol dulled my senses, and happiness kept the anxiety levels low despite the noise.

Later I walked to town for my Sunday evening coffee and reading break. The cafe (Nero) had more people than a usual Sunday evening. I found a comfortable seat but with noisy tables around – chatty teenager girls, and louder-than-usual talkative couples. I tried using my earphones, without anything playing, to reduce the sound. It didn’t help. After a while, I was able to ignore the noise and continue with the reading. But I think the noise stress accumulated below the surface. I was stressed out for rest of the evening.

Finally, before sleeping, I was reading (and wildly nodding my head to) this article about noise in restaurants and cafes. The pain from the noise in the cafe, combined with recurring visual (and aural) memories of several such experiences came rushing back. I got a headache, and the ears started hurting again. I could feel, and not stop much, my teeth grinding and anxiety flooding in.

I had to take a paracetamol (for headache), and use a Calm sleep story (Shipping forecast) to help me sleep. They worked.

I have been awake for an hour, trying to work. The tinnitus is louder than usual. The room is awfully quiet too, as expected at 6:30 AM, so that may be a factor. I’m still occasionally grinding my teeth, and stopping myself when I notice myself doing it. Anxiety levels are a bit higher than usual, but better than last night.

Not calm. Calm.

Woke up 3 hours after I’d slept. Clothes, pillow cover, bed sheet – all were wet from sweat. Heavy breathing. Heart racing away. Head overflowing with anxiety. No cause, just anxiety.

I usually remember all my dreams. The good ones, the bad ones, and the weird, confusing ones. I didn’t remember anything. The memory was blank. Head was just … black.

Sat up. Took off the duvet. Waited a few minutes to let the heart rate recover. Tried reading something on the phone to distract the head. Nothing worked.

Got up, opened the window, and put my head out into the cool night air. It helped a bit.
Left the window open.

Opened the Calm app. Took a few deep breaths. Then started a sleep story – the Stephen Fry one. Kept the phone on the side table, and lay down on the dry side of the bed.

Heard some of the story – something about lavendar fields in Italy, IIRC. The light breeze from the open window was cooling the room. Slipped my feet inside the duvet.I could hear Stephen Fry softly talking in the distance. I didn’t gather much of what he was saying. I pulled the duvet over my legs and waist.

Next thing I remember is the alarm waking me up at 5:30.

Thank you, Calm. Thank you, cool wind.

 

The boy is back home..

… from the surgery.

Surgery went normally. He’s still under the effect of general anaesthetic, so feeling a bit groggy, and a bit pukey. We had to fast him for 12 hours before the surgery, and they gave him only a small meal afterwards. He’s starving. The GA effect means he’s unable to get up and force us to feed him. Instead, he’s just lying on the sofa softly crying… for food, for attention, for relief from the groggy feeling, and for his play time. But mainly for food.

Today has definitely not been a happy day. Not for him, and doubly not for me.

The only silver lining is that he’s back home, safe and sans-growth.

Hard of hearing…

That’s me now.

I’ve been noticing having trouble hearing in certain situations for a few months now. I just wasn’t sure if it was in my head, or was it real. An incident a couple of months ago – R clearly heard someone while I could barely make out that they were talking – prompted me to get the hearing officially checked.

Today was the day. I had a hearing test done at the hospital, followed by an appointment with a consultant to discuss the results. It’s official – I have moderate to severe hearing loss, on higher frequencies, in both my ears. The hearing on lower frequencies is completely normal. I may also have mild tinnitus.

All in all, bad news all around.

The equal hearing loss in both ears indicates that it could not be because of a growth or deformity in one ear, and is likely genealogical. Which also means there is no cure. The hearing will continue to worsen, hopefully very slowly. She’s prescribed hearing aids for me (at 38!). I also need to go for an MRI, just so they can rule out any other possible reasons.

I don’t want hearing aids1. And I don’t want hearing loss. I went in hoping they’ll say that I have grossly dirty ears and need to clean them regularly. Not that I’m losing hearing early and need to wear hearing aids, and could even go clinically deaf if the hearing loss speeds up.

I’m scared. I’m unhappy. And the only person who makes me happy at these times2 is himself under anaesthesia, getting a growth on his head surgically removed :(

I’m very, very unhappy.

  1. NHS only provides big, behind the ear hearing aids. They do provide them free though. Or I could go private and get those tiny, barely visible in-ear ones. My preference: None >>>>>>>>>>>>> In-ear ones >>>> NHS ones. Can I have none please? :( ↩
  2. He’s also probably half the cause of my hearing loss – with his loud, high-pitch whining, and super-loud barking at the cat across the street. ↩