Book read in May 2021

1. Golden in Death by J.D. Robb

2. Go Show the World: A Celebration of Indigenous Heroes by Wab Kinew

3. If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth

In which I do literally nothing for 4 weeks and then start doing stuff again

In April and May, I took 4 straight weeks off work, the longest vacation I've taken in my life.

I didn't accomplish a thing.

It was glorious!

I knew I could very easily fall into the trap of "Ooh, time off work! Time to get productive and catch up on stuff!" and then get stressed out because I didn't achieve enough. So I made a rule that there is no productivity obligation whatsoever for this time off. And I certainly lived up to that expectation!

I learned that, if left to my own devices, I sleep 9-10 hours every night and become extremely nocturnal.

I learned that, if left to my own devices, the amount of stuff I get done in a day is about equal to the amount of non-work stuff I get done on a work day.

I learned that it is literally impossible for me to keep up with all the Good Omens fanfiction being written, even if I do nothing else all day.

I learned that my system is in fact unsustainable - even if I weren't working, I would fall behind. I don't yet know what to do with that or how to change it.

 

I also learned that, in the absence of obligations or when I otherwise don't know what to do with myself, I default into following my system, so it would probably serve me better to come up with a replacement system than to just go systemless.

I learned that, emotionally and intellectually, I don't need to work. I didn't find myself missing employment or productivity or translation. I didn't end up translating random internet texts just to scratch that itch. I'm perfectly fine being completely unproductive and contributing nothing to society. (It would certainly have been interesting to do this experiment before my head injury and see if the results were the same! But I didn't know my head injury was coming - if I had known, I would have just stayed in bed to avoid fainting in the first place).

But, unfortunately, money is irritatingly finite and the most reliable way for me to make the money I need is with the job I currently have, so back to work I went.

I found that working is not particularly difficult, but it is irritatingly time-consuming. Every day there's some soupçon of frustration that it takes a non-zero amount of time to do my day's work. 

However, my experience with doing so little in a day when I was on vacation makes me less frustrated with how little non-work stuff I get done on a work day. Why on earth should I get more done on top of a full day's work than I do in the middle of a month off work in the middle of a pandemic when I have literally nothing else to do? I guess now I'm just . . . a person who doesn't get much done.

And maybe eventually I'll figure out how to work that into a new system.

My COVID vaccine experience

I signed up for the Rexall and Shopper's Drug Mart vaccine waiting lists in early April, then signed up for the waiting lists every other local pharmacy offering the vaccine on April 20, when the province extended availability to age 40 and up.

On April 24, I received an email from Rexall offering me an appointment for AstraZeneca at the Yonge Eglinton Centre location, which is right across the street from me. There were appointments available during the next two days, so I booked an appointment for April 25.

The store was not crowded at all and there were no other customers in the pharmacy area when I arrived. The pharmacist was right there at the counter when I arrived. He checked my health card, then took me into a small consultation room beside the pharmacy counter. The room was small enough that I'm not sure whether or not we were six feet apart. The room had a door that closed, but the pharmacist didn't close it and I didn't ask him to. We were both wearing masks. I didn't ask the pharmacist if he was vaccinated himself, but pharmacists I know socially who are administering vaccinations are vaccinated themselves.

I had a lot of questions (about the vaccine, about what happens next, about the statistically-low but highly-mediatized risk of blood clots) and the pharmacist very patiently answered them on my intellectual level, using his own professional knowledge and insight rather than simply parroting talking points. 

One of the screening questions was whether I was allergic to polyethylene glycol and I'd never knowingly encountered it, so we had some discussion about where I might have encountered it before. The pharmacist's research aligned with mine, concluding that I've almost certainly encountered it somewhere but it's difficult to pinpoint where exactly. I asked the pharmacist about what would happen if I did have an allergic reaction (it would happen during the 15 minutes that I was supposed to sit and wait in the pharmacy and he was equipped to take care of me if it happened), so I made the informed decision to get the vaccine despite not knowing for certain that I wasn't allergic. The pharmacist did not pressure me either way.

The needle itself was unremarkable. There was a bit more blood than usual on the bandaid when I removed it the next morning, but it wasn't disproportionate. 

I sat in the waiting chair for 15 minutes, during which the couple after me in line had their vaccinations. I could hear their conversations with the pharmacist from my seat, the content of which was a subset of the content of my own conversation with the pharmacist. No one involved made any effort to close the door or otherwise give them privacy from me. We then had a bit of a socially distanced "YAY, we're vaccinated!" squee at each other, and I left when my 15 minutes were up with a hard-copy vaccine receipt in hand.

Rexall didn't automatically schedule me for a second dose appointment (they said they'd only be guessing at scheduling and availability given the 16-week dose interval and would likely have to reschedule anyway), but they said they'd email me with information about my second appointment closer to the time in question.

I went to bed 7 hours after receiving my vaccination, but didn't fall asleep right away. One hour later (i.e. 8 hours after my vaccination) I started shivering violently, to the extent that my hands were shaking as I tried to retrieve an extra blanket and drink a glass of water.

My body then started alternating between fever and chills, as though I was in a whirlpool tub where every individual jet randomly switched between producing water that's too hot and water that's too cold. 

I tossed and turned all night, sleeping no more than 6 hours over a total of 11 hours spent in bed. Then I got out of bed and had a slow, unproductive day, treating myself as though I had a flu while alternating between fever and chills. My temperature ranged from 35.1 to 38.1, on an oral thermometer that normally gives me a reading of 36.2.

About 20 hours after the vaccine, I tentatively felt like I might be improving. I went to bed and slept 12 hours that night, then woke up feeling very close to normal. My neck lymph nodes were very active in the second day post-vaccine, and my armpit lymph nodes were very active in the third day post-vaccine.

As I'm writing this, I'm 26 days post-vaccine, and have no signs of blood clots.

 

***

Because so many people have reported menstrual effects after their vaccine, I'm going to describe my first menstrual cycle after the vaccine in some degree of detail. If you're not here for that, skip to the next row of three asterisks.

I'm 40 years old and take birth control pills. My periods are like clockwork on the pill, so any change, however minor, is normally medically significant. When I'm not on the pill, my periods are heavy, debilitating and unpredictable.

I didn't menstruate in the immediate aftermath of my vaccine, but I'd just finished my regularly scheduled period so my uterus would have been empty. I did feel moodier than usual in the approximately 2 weeks that followed the vaccine in a way that's comparable PMS, and it's possible that my bowel movements were like those I'd experience during my period. 

In the days that led up to my next period, I was more bloated than I've ever been in my life. Even when I was hungry and my stomach was grumbling, my belly was visibly protruding and I had a feeling of fullness unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

In the few days that led up to my period, my discharge had a reddish tinge. This wasn't the same as spotting; with spotting there are random bits of red or brown, whereas this was more like if a small amount of red had been evenly distributed in the white/clear discharge.

Also in the days leading up to my period, I experienced what might have been menstrual cramps in various places in my abdomen. It was difficult to tell whether the feeling was menstrual or digestive, but it's always been difficult for me to tell during unregulated periods whether what I'm feeling is menstrual or digestive. (This is exacerbated by the fact that I often do in fact have a bowel urgency during my period.)

On the Sunday of my period week (I'm on a Sunday start cycle) I started spotting. I started menstruating full-out on Monday. It was heavier, redder and chunkier than usual, although not so heavy I needed more pads. By the end of Monday, the bloating had mostly deflated. By Thursday, there was only a the tiniest bit of red on my pad and I could have even done without a pad. 

(Normally I start menstruating on Tuesday without any spotting in the days leading up, have steady flow on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, light flow in Friday, and only a few drops on Saturday).

This period was nowhere near as heavy and debilitating as my unregulated periods, but it was also the heaviest and most uncomfortable period I've ever had while being on the pill. 

I have no indication that I ovulated during this cycle, but I didn't learn about fertility awareness until well after I started on the pill, so I have no way of knowing if I can actually reliably detect ovulation.

***

After I got vaxxed, I removed myself from all the other vaccine waitlists except Shopper's, which didn't have the option. Shopper's sent me an email offering me an appointment on May 1, and then another on May 11. I didn't click through on either email so I can't tell you about their process, but the May 11 email contained a link to remove myself from the list, so I did.

On May 12, after the Ontario Minister of Health paused AstraZeneca, Rexall sent me an email telling me that I'm still on their list for a second dose, they're still looking at a 16-week dose interval, and they'd contact me with information about scheduling and about which vaccine I'll receive for my second dose once that information is available.