Oh how much changes in 2 months.

Not for the better, mind you. Definitely not for the better.

Today's post is going to be a little insight into what we've learned through my physical therapy. There's a speech therapy component to it as well, but we'll get to that in a future post

What's changed from last time is that my physical stamina has continued to decline, and gotten to such a point that I've had to completely abandon any and all violin performance. That was the love of my life, my purpose, part of my identity, an outlet for self-expression, and...also the singular thing that my income was based on. Turns out that having all of that stripped away all at once with no clue whether I'll ever get it back or not leads to depression (moderately severe, according to my therapist )

Well, today, I learned why. We did some testing on what I was physically able to handle by testing my pulse and my perception of my own exertion and fatigue. My resting heart-rate was the usual 105ish bpm (long covid pushes resting heartrate up a bunch, evidently), 110ish after 2 minutes of walking at bodyweight (exertion: 6/10), and 125ish after 4 minutes (exertion: 7~8/10). One of the other symptoms we kept track of was the speech test, paying attention to whether I could speak while walking without taking big, gasping breaths due to exertion Oh, and one of the symptoms I noted was that my muscles through my thighs and butt started to shudder as if I was on the last rep or two of a weightlifting set, eeking out the very last of my capabilities.

The conclusion she came to was that, in my current condition, the best plan was to walk 1~2 minutes 3 times a week while paying attention to the symptoms (I need to get a pulse monitor, I guess). *If* my body can handle this without crashing or having post-exertion malaise (PEM), I could slowly increase this by a minute or two every week or two.

Did I mention using the transit system to get there and back required me to walk about 30 minutes with the added weight of my bag and water? (at the very least, the next two visits are going to be virtual, which will be nice)

Soooo with this info, I get to look back at every violin stream I did from Jan 2024~Feb 2025 and see that every stream I did in my attempt to make sure I could survive, I was injuring my stamina more and more, leading to my current condition, I guess

#Covid #Covid19 #LongCovid #Health #Disability @longcovid

My neighbor, a 34-year old young woman has it. I know her from the time before and I know, and see, every day, how much of a struggle this is for her. In her case, she's lucky that she has a healthy and loving partner, who has a well-paying job, because she herself had to give up everything.

It really is time we found something against long covid.