I won’t go so far as to say that this year has been a terrible, awful, horrible year, because it has had its wonderful moments. But turning the page on this chapter won’t be difficult. I’m happy to move on.
Before too long, I’ll be saying goodbye to my sixties. I can truthfully say that I’ve never felt old, until this year.
I’m not a fan of bugs. They didn’t used to offend me so much. I never gave a bug a funeral, but I didn’t kill them willy-nilly either.
I throw stinkbugs outside. I’ve been known to let a bug or two live, indoors and I never kill them in their own territory, outdoors.
I happen to enjoy the outdoors, the natural habitat of bugs. I don’t love gnats and other pesky bugs buzzing around my face when I’m trying to hike in the summer. Nor do I treasure walking into a sticky spider web along the trail.
But this year, my bug tolerance was piqued, and I’ve about had it. In late spring or early summer, I noticed a growing red spot on the back of my knee. Upon further examination, it wasn’t just a bug bite of which I’ve had zillions. In this case the whole back of my knee was a massive, bright red patch.
Several of my acquaintances warned me that spider bites can be serious, so I thought perhaps I should call the doctor. However, as often happens to me when I need my doctor, it’s late evening, a weekend, holiday, or the doctor has gone on vacation.
In consultation with my health insurance company, I was hooked up with a doctor in my system via telemedicine. I guess my telephone camera was sharp enough, that after seeing the back of my knee, the doctor said she could see the fang marks of a spider bite. In addition, this one had turned into cellulitis, a potentially deleterious and serious reaction to the bite.
Okay, great. The upside was that she called into my pharmacy a prescription for an antibiotic that I was able to pick up immediately and start pumping into my compromised bloodstream.
It worked. So off to the races I went toward the thick of summertime, with a bit more caution in my step when outdoors, walking my walk.
However, just as I began to exhale, another bug must have attacked me, covertly. Just like that nasty spider, a stealthy tick must have bitten me unnoticed.
After some routine lab tests to monitor the arthritis which kicks up its heels from time to time, particularly in my hands, knees, hips, and lower back – some of the major parts which are intended to keep me moving about this planet – Lyme Disease was detected. What?
That was surprising since I’ve checked for ticks after every walk in or near the woods, or even jaunts through our sort of vast yard. And I didn’t find any attached to any part of my body.
Well, it must have been there because Lyme Disease is no joke and it had been present apparently long enough to make itself known in the form of Lyme Arthritis, an extension of the Osteoarthritis which reminds me that I’m growing older. Thanks for that, tick.
I’ve already said that I’m not a fan of bugs, but it bears repeating. It’s been a heck of a year, and that bugs me.
Then I got Covid. Everybody’s experience of Rona is different, but it’s always a bugger.
For me, along with the gift of Covid came brain fog, substantial fatigue, and previously unknown to me, a little thing called Post Covid Hypertension. That was unexpected.
The mind-numbing and body deflating fatigue which can accompany Covid, did accompany it and lingered. Having celebrated the minor symptoms of the actual bug, it was in hindsight probably premature. Long COVID or the lingering effects of the bug are no picnic.
One of my favorite Christmas hymns that Bing Crosby made into a hit in 1963, is “Do you hear what I hear… do you see what I see…” do you smell what I smell. That last part is my own Covid era addition to the song.
Post Covid, some people experience a partial or complete loss of smell. Not me. I get to smell something that isn’t there. It’s called phantosmia, as the word implies, it’s phantom smells, a disorder in your nose. I smell cooked meat, mostly at night. The Covid bug seems to love gaslighting people, making us feel like we’re crazy.
It’s been a real riot around here, coping with Covid, that bug of all bugs, a second time this fall, early winter. I’m literally sick and tired of bugs. But as I usually do, I still walk my walk.
You’ve heard the word, “hangry” which is a new word which combines two other words, in this case, hungry plus angry. Hangry is nothing compared to “tiremotional,” which is my made-up word combining the two words, tired and emotional. And there’s “tireanky,” which is tired plus cranky.
I have plans to keep dragging my tiremotional, tireanky self into 2025, expecting to conquer whatever bugs turn up. Perhaps 2025 can be the year of the bug-buster.