Physical
Ambient stress level has dropped significantly, leading to less tension in my neck, traps, shoulders, and lower back. Redness where the eczema has been, continues to fade. My skin is dry in patches and generally itchy down my spine, across my "saddle," below my collarbones, in the spot behind my left knee where the lesion was, and pretty much all over my hands, wrists, and lower arms. Several times today I have caught myself scratching, once to the point of tiny pinpricks of blood. I have scheduled a massage after work on Wednesday, which means that I will go to bed that night with happy skin and muscles.
The weird thing with my fingers on my left hand continues to pop up, generally when I'm in the parking lot at Braums, preparing to pick up milk, OJ, and buttermilk. Forefinger and thumb form a very tight "G" (in fingerspelling), with thumb occasionally sliding between forefinger and middle finger. Sometimes the contraction involves my whole hand. Sometimes it travels up my forearm, producing a deep ache rather than a stabbing pain. I can usually slip or wedge the four fingers of my right hand into any gap, sometimes one finger at a time, and begin to massage a semblance of reasonableness into my thumb, and from there, to the rest of the hand. The spasm is generally resolved within five minutes. I don't know if it's stress-related or has something to do with electrolytes. When I'm working to reopen my grip, I remind myself that there are people with severe arthritis whose hands are like this all the time.
Now that I'm back in the office most days, I'm starting to have to fight sleepiness again, even on days when I've had a decent amount of sleep. Today I had to log off at 11:45 and take an hour and a half of PTO, which I spent blissfully asleep. I was less drowsy in the afternoon but still far less productive than I would have liked. I was home today because of the massive rainstorms and regional flooding. I expect to be back in the office tomorrow. I don't know if this is long COVID or simply stress about trying to get as much done, on time, as possible before I'm out the door in two and a half weeks.
Mental
I'm easily distracted, and my focus on work tasks has been frequently and significantly interrupted by tasks related to my upcoming retirement. I needed information from my doctors' and dentist's offices regarding which Medicare Advantage plans they accept. Naturally, they have no providers in common. So when I talk to my HR people (from whom I've as yet heard no peep, but Wonderful Office Manager has until September 1 to turn in the paperwork which will get that rolling), I will go with a plan which will cover my doctors and rely on the payment plan available through my dentist to cover Middlest, Fourthborn, and me.
Note to self: follow the link the dental office sent me to get signed up for a second payment plan. The first one covers Fourthborn's second extraction, which happens Wednesday morning at a different facility.
As noted above, my ambient stress level feels significantly less than it's been. Middlest and Fourthborn might say otherwise.
Emotional
I think I'm doing reasonably well. Again, the bipolar bears might argue otherwise. Today I proactively scheduled two massages: a 90-minute one for the evening of my last day in the office, and a 60 minute one for this Wednesday, after Fourthborn's surgery and the end of my workday. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to get to the spa from home, as opposed to from the office. After the second massage, I intend to pause my membership for a month or two, until I get used to how the lower income shakes out.
I put massages here, because while they definitely include comforting and blessing my physical body, for me it's more about stress management and release of any emotions that bubble up.
Spiritual
My spirituality is off the rails at the moment. My testimony is still unshaken. But putting what I believe and know into action has a hole in it the size of that Sequoia in California which has a road going through it. I haven't studied Come, Follow Me all year. There was the bronchitis in January which exhausted me. I haven't gone to Sunday School in two and a half years. The Zoom versions have been pretty much inaudible, and on those Sundays when I'm well enough, and awake enough, to attend church in person, by the end of sacrament meeting I am DONE in all four of these buckets.
I have a year or more of unread copies of the Liahona, largely because of my tendency to fall asleep when I cease moving, no matter how interested I might be in what I'm reading or hearing. (I also have a year or more of unread copies of the Atlantic, for the same reason.) I can manage short articles from various media outlets which are connected with the Church. And I'm part of two vibrant groups on Facebook, in which we share thoughts, feelings, ideas, spiritual experiences. Most edifying, and I love reading others' perspectives.
I guess it would be fair to say that I'm currently experiencing spiritual anorexia. Sometime in the past few weeks, I got what I still think was inspiration, to switch my Book of Mormon app to French, and to follow along as I listened. I rapidly realized that 1.0 speed was warp-speed too fast for my present level of following along. So I geared it back to 0.7. which is still a little fast for comfort, but I mostly keep up. However, I could no longer listen to Le Livre de Mormon on my morning drive, because the narrator elides the words far more than I've done for the 20 or so years in which I've been reading it. (Basically, I discovered "you're doing it wrong, honey.") And then there's the matter of driving while reading, which is a huge NOPE. So today, I switched it back to English, and then I giggled when the narrator sounded like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, when he was dying. I fixed that.
And then I listened to chapters 6-10 of 1 Nephi while driving partway to work in a downpour. I called in to say I'd been late, and my coworker who was handling switchboard told me that a text had gone out telling us all to stay home because of the torrential rain and regional flooding. So now I will be checking my text messages before leaving the house, and after the retirement party I will be switching back to Le Livre de Mormon at 0.7 speed and reading along while sitting up in bed.
Later, gators.
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