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publiccollectors · 4 years

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QUARANZINE #14

QUARANZINE #14: Rachel Herman. Rachel was diagnosed as a presumptive positive for COVID-19 after a test for Influenza A and B turned up negative. She's been fighting the virus for just over two weeks. Yesterday she posted this long message on Facebook about her experience so far and I asked her about publishing it in QUARANZINE. She had been thinking about reaching out to me, so we were both on the same page. The text is very long for the format I adhere to so the type is quite small, unfortunately. Here it is in its entirety: Dear friends,

This is the week many of us will get sick. Social distancing is working, but most cities waited too long to declare shelter-in-place orders and many others have yet to. So, we will see spikes in confirmed cases within the next week or so. I want you all to be armed with pragmatic and useful information if this happens to you or someone you care about.

I am on Day 14 of what was diagnosed as a presumptive positive for COVID-19 after a test for Influenza A and B turned up negative. (I am still waiting for my COVID-19 results.) I’ve had a relatively mild case, and I’m on the mend. My congestion is clearing up, I can breathe deeply again, and going up and down the stairs doesn’t make me winded. My energy and appetite are coming back though I still have had a fever of 100+ for 14 straight days. Most of us will get a mild case. 40-70% of us will get it, but so much of the media frenzy right now is focused on things that were important last week and yesterday (every day feels a year these days, though, to be fair). I have seen shockingly few articles or helpful testimonials advising how best to treat ourselves at home, and, trust me, I’ve been looking. So much of the information we’re focused on now is preventing transmission, but there is woefully little on what to do IF and WHEN we get sick.

Being waylaid during the time that so many folks have been still frantically trying to avoid getting sick has offered me a strange bubble of calm and insight. I’m grateful for that because the fear out there is palpable. I would like for this to be an offering to assuage at least some panic. That is my hope anyway.

The CDC and the WHO have labored and lengthy instructions on how to prevent transmission to someone else in the household or orders to quarantine. This creates a new problem for us as caregivers. A potentially critically ill person separated from everyone else drastically reduces a caregiver’s ability to monitor, replenish fluids, and generally take care of the person who is sick. On top of that, these two trusted sources offer only the most basic (honestly, negligible) recommendations for treating symptoms: sleep, keep hydrated, and take Tylenol (or the generic acetaminophen). This kind of bare bones advice is, well, skeletal. We all want to know how best to take care of ourselves and each other so that we can avoid having to go to the hospital. We want to be able to recuperate at home because we want to prevent putting a strain on the system and, face it, the idea of going to the hospital in this scenario is downright daunting. The better we know how to nurse ourselves back to health, the better our odds are healing well in our own beds.

So, I wanted to share what I’ve learned.

Caveat emptors/disclaimers because I’m making this public and shareable: This is based on my own personal, lived experience. I am not a doctor, so this does not replace or supplant solid medical advice from a professional you trust. I have had relatively mild symptoms but still a longish case. I am one of the freakish 5% who has had never-ending nasal congestion that went into my upper respiratory tract, but I somehow avoided the dreaded cough. YMMV (your mileage may vary). I have no underlying health concerns, I’m 52, a non-smoker, and fortunate. I have a comfortable apartment to myself, and I was able to spend $500 to stock up on essentials before the lockdown and before I got sick. (For the love of all that is holy, I swear I did not stockpile anything, especially TP. Stocking up is simply incredibly expensive. I dwindled my account down to almost my last dollar, since I’m adjunct faculty at two local universities and don’t make a whole lot.) Still, that is more than so many of us are able to do, and I am grateful for all that I have. What follows goes a bit beyond common sense, because this virus is unlike anything I’ve experienced before, even though to be clear, this is certainly a far cry from the sickest I’ve ever been. I hope it can be a boon to friends and strangers alike.

Here are the things I did that helped:

WHILE YOU ARE WELL

1) Start taking your temperature in the morning and at night so that you have a baseline.

One of the first signs of the virus can be a low-grade fever, though this virus does present in different ways. Full disclosure: I was one of those people who had to go to 3 different drugstores on Wed Mar 11 looking for a thermometer amid decimated shelves.

2) Before you get sick, change your diet.

Stop eating and drinking things that will make it harder to fight off the virus. Mellow out on the processed foods, dairy, and sugar (alcohol and gluten are in this category too, sorry).

Increase your intake of immune-boosting foods like green vegetables, fish and other omega-threes, garlic, ginger, and citrus. You don’t have to give in to the whole elderberry craze (though it does taste pretty good). Replace coffee with chaga, a fungal immune booster that you can brew into a strong, soothing tea, for a few weeks.

If you think these dietary recommendations are extreme, consider that you are in a temporary but dire situation where everything else around us is collapsing. Change your eating habits this month, even if it’s just a little for a little while.

3) SLEEP at least 8 hours a night. (I know, I wake up at 4am in a blind panic too. But, still, try.)

4) Make a pot of soup NOW while you are healthy or at the first sign of any symptoms.

This is especially important if you are sheltering in place alone. When/if you get sick, trust me, you won’t have energy to cook. You will barely want to eat anything anyway. But you will force yourself to have two bowls of it every day, and it will help. The pot should be big enough so that you can eat from it for a week. Make your favorite broth-based recipe: chicken, vegetable, or bone. Bone is most healing, obviously. Avoid dairy and noodles because these ingredients increase congestion and inflammation. Freeze it if you don’t have any symptoms at this point, so you will be able to thaw it when you start to feel oogy.

WHEN YOU GET SICK

1) At the first sign of fatigue, a tickle in your throat, aches, or a fever, go to bed and stay there. SLEEP. Don’t try to keep working. Your body needs to heal, and it can do that most effectively when you are sleeping.

Early symptoms reportedly vary. Some have aches and fever, scratchy throat, and chest tightness with a dry cough. Headaches, sneezing + nasal congestion, shortness of breath, nausea, and diarrhea have all been reported. I woke up on Mar 14 with a headache, body aches, congestion, and a fever of 101. My fever spiked to 102.5 on Day 2, and I’ve had a fever of 100+ every day since along with body aches, nasal congestion (my nose opened up like an actual running faucet on day 5), chest tightness and upper respiratory congestion, exhaustion, lack of appetite, and some lower GI distress (though not full-on diarrhea, everything just felt labored and different and, sincere apologies for the vivid image I’m about to put in your head, my poop seemed to be covered in a gauzy cloud). The two aberrations from most commonly reported symptoms: I have only had a negligible cough, and I never had a sore throat. My baseline temp leading up to getting sick was 99, but I am usually a straight-up 98.6 kind of person.

I had a dinner party the Monday before I got sick, and a friend who helped me in the kitchen came down with the same thing at the same time. My friend has asthma and has had a much harder time of things. But we are both on the road to recovery, in large part because we have been sharing what we’ve learned, checking in with each other, and doing some intense jobs taking care of ourselves while in isolation. (No one else from the dinner party has gotten sick to date.)

2) DRINK WATER, every 15 minutes when you are awake. Every time you wake up or roll over, drink. It should be room temperature, not cold. Cold liquids exacerbate the illness.

3) Drink WARM liquids like herbal tea and broth. Hot liquids keep everything in your system moving. Make soothing, healing, and warming remedies out of whatever inexpensive supplies you already have available.

4) In the giant void of an antiviral treatment that works on COVID-19, I have turned/returned to plant medicine, and it has helped me a lot.

My cousin, who is taking a Chinese medicine course in Singapore right now, sent me directions on how to make a ginger and licorice root decoction that was used throughout China during the Hubei lockdown. It’s easy to make. You bake the licorice in molasses, and then you boil the licorice root and the ginger for an hour. The ginger licorice decoction has really helped my friend who also got sick at the same time I did.

Making tea from Chaga – an Alaskan mushroom – has been so incredibly helpful. I’ve made a large pot of it every day, reserving the chaga and re-steeping over and over again for the past two weeks. Was it the chaga or the fact that I was drinking a gallon of warm soothing liquid daily, ladling out a mugful every couple of hours, that helped me get better? I’ll go with a little of both.

Other natural antiviral immune boosters that might help include vitamin C, C60, and olive leaf extract, oregano oil, and Manuka honey. Since stores are closed and Amazon has stopped shipping, we have to make do with what we already have. Make a tea with citrus peels and cloves and sliced ginger, if that’s is in your fridge.

5) The word on the street is to manage fever with Tylenol or acetaminophen or paracetamol, which are supposed to be more suited to treating respiratory illness than other alternatives. Frankly, I have been taking acetaminophen as sparingly as possible to avoid putting strain on my other organs. Cool compresses work too.

Some people are saying NOT to take Advil and its generic ibuprofen, as they have anecdotally said to propel otherwise healthy people to hospitals for oxygen. There is a lot of noise and confusion in this debate, and I’m going to sidestep this thorny conversation for our purposes.

6) Zinc lozenges and elderberry syrup help with a scratchy throat and cough. A friend of mine prone to bronchitis recommended Myrtol, a German cough syrup made from natural ingredients, including elderberry. If you have a pharma protocol in place for managing a persistent, chronic cough, you are probably already on it.

7) The fatigue is real. It also becomes really hard to think clearly. That’s why it’s so important to have soup and tea and other supportive supplies ready ahead of time.8) When you think you are getting better the first three or four times, STAY IN BED.

The arc of this virus is really rollercoaster-y: up and down and up and down. After the initial alarm passes, (and it is alarming at first because you don’t know which way it’s going to go and that seizing up can make everything feel worse), I was able to focus on getting better, calmly. I made it through the first scary fever spikes, but right when I thought I was feeling better, I would get knocked down again. There were critical junctures around days 3, 5, and 7 where I was certain I’d turned a corner, and, well, yesterday.

I’d get up and do dishes, take out the trash, take my dog for a walk around the neighborhood (face covered), and try to get some work done (end of quarter grades were due at both my schools and my departments have been preparing like mad to take our classes online in the spring). Then I would feel hot and light-headed again, taking my temp only to see it had sprung back up to 101.5. You will feel better and want to get back up and do things only to get knocked right back down. The moment I ease up on drinking water and tea constantly, I start to feel horrible again.

Remember: YOU ARE ESSENTIALLY PREVENTING YOURSELF FROM DEVELOPING FULL-BLOWN VIRAL PNEUMONIA. I would say the new mantra needs to be SLEEP + DRINK WATER. Start now, to the extent that you can. Please resist the urge to get up and do things. Rest. Do your Zoom meetings from bed with a virtual office background, if you absolutely have to be on a call. But, truly, you shouldn’t because this is the time to sleep sleep sleep and binge watch The Good Place (my choice for existential dystopian laughs/insert whatever makes your socks go up and down). For the past few days, my temp has been normal in the morning only to spring back up to 100+ if I try to do too much (e.g. read: ANYTHING). When I let myself sleep, my temp goes back down.

9) A humidifier has helped. Some recommend running a hot shower and sitting in your own makeshift bathroom sauna. Steam eucalyptus or rosemary, if you have any, and inhale deeply. I just made a homemade vaporub with a base of coconut oil and a few drops each of clove, thyme, rosemary, and peppermint oil. It is wonderful.

10) My breathing never got dangerously shallow. But this virus can potentially fill your upper and lower respiratory tracts with mucous until you feel like you are drowning. A physical therapist wrote with life-saving advice about the importance of Postural Draining, a method of draining mucous from the lungs using gravity and percussion. It involves physically moving your body so that you tilt your lungs and bronchial tubes upside down and then firmly clap the back or chest. This allows the mucous to flow up out of the lungs along with deep, prolonged exhales. Then you can cough it the rest of the way out. You can do postural draining alone or have someone perform it on you. Google postural draining diagrams – there are different for positions for each of the five lobes of your lungs. Do these exercises for 3-5 minutes a day before you get too sick. You can get into position in a chair or laying over a yoga ball, bean bag, or pillows for support.

Failing steps 1-10, if you have difficulty breathing or your temperature spikes beyond what you and your doctor are comfortable with (I’ve heard different numbers), please go to the ER immediately. Some of you will develop dramatic and dangerous symptoms quickly. Please do not wait to seek care if your lungs are struggling beyond what you can manage at home. My advice is geared to keeping as many of us comfortable for as long as it takes to heal, but that obviously is only going to go so far for those who suffer from chronic conditions, are older, or are immunosuppressed. If you have a finger oximeter, and are able to monitor your oxygen levels numerically, then you will know when you have to go to the hospital. But very few of us have those, and they are way sold out.

THE OTHER SIDE

Healing from even a mild case (and mine IS mild) takes about two weeks to a month.

As my dad would day, take it easy. It is unclear how immunity works with COVID-19. Some have said that there was a patient in Japan who tested positive a second time. There is speculation that this, in fact, was a relapse and not re-infection. We need more time to learn about the virus. In the meantime, please give yourselves time to heal.

We don’t know how long immunity lasts, and we don’t know about immunity to slightly different mutated strains even if we have recovered from one of them. I do hope that we get to develop a fair amount of herd immunity in the next year, but, again, there is a lot to learn. We will obviously still need to protect our vulnerable populations, and our society will continue to bend and contort itself around the virus.

But I hope to be in a position to assist when others get sick. I will happily help you to the best of my abilities. Looking to a future I can hardly conceive at the moment, I anticipate learning more about plant medicine. Scientists will develop new antivirals, retrovirals, and vaccines. I look forward to donating plasma as part of a treatment for those who get sick in the future, whenever that near-distant moment may be.

And thank you, friends. I am good. I have everything I need. My inner circle is incredible (I love you, mom!). I have been quarantined since developing symptoms and went out for a half hour only to get tested (thank you, Howard Brown for your invaluable service). No one else I spent time with beforehand has gotten sick (except my one friend whose illness coincided with mine, and they are also struggling a bit today with the ups and downs. Please hold them in your thoughts).

May you and your loved ones stay healthy. Or, more to the point, may we all get well and stay well. Sending love to all corners.– Rachel Herman

#QUARANZINE #Rachel Herman #Public Collectors #Marc Fischer #Zines #RISO #Publications #covid-19 #coronavirus

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sjworldtour · 4 years

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21/11/19 Feeling the heat on Magnetic Island

On Tuesday morning we set off early and caught the 7am bus up to Townsville. Travelling another 5 hours north has put us in an even hotter, drier landscape, and we continue to be flabbergasted by the sheer scale and endlessness of Australia.

Arriving in Townsville, Sam went to forage for food (including our fave white choc and cranberry cookies) while joey babysat the bags. Despite joey tring her best to lose a ticket, we caught the ferry over to Magnetic Island. So called because when Cook first discovered it it appeared that compass needles would always point to the island, but that is in fact not true. We had a short but bimbly bus ride to our hostel, which spreads along Nelly Bay, chalet-like dorm rooms following a dry creek bed in a long arc. The rooms are fine and the pool is great but the kitchen is hopeless. We're starting to feel like we could design a really great hostel. Within minutes we splished into the pool to cool off, finally understanding why anyone would build a pool right next to the ocean - it's for when the ocean is full if things that want to kill you.

Early evening we walked along the 4wd track up towards West point, popping in to Cockle Bay which was beautiful and quiet although sadly we didn't see any crocodiles or koalas. Sam spotted a huge hunting bird though, possibly an eagle, and of course white cockatoos where everywhere being noisy.

We walked back to picnic bay and lay in the dusty sand for a few minutes, not quite getting up the energy to swim even though there's a stinger net. It's another pretty beach, with a picturesque painted white pier stretching out across the quiet water. Once the sun started dipping low over the mountains we hiked up a rocky trail to Hawkings point to watch the sunset. On the way we passed a kookaburra sat on someone's mailbox, so still that at first joey thought it was fake. It was a pleasant climb up the hill, obviously hot (everything is always hot) but with shady patches. The vegetation here is pretty scorched it almost looks autumnal, and there were loads of likely snake hiding places among the rocks and dusty yellow leaves. We luckily didn't see any, and emerged at the lookout to great views across Nelly Bay to the east and picnic bay, mainland Australia, and the rapidly setting sun to the west. There was a group of twenty-somethings loudly discussing their hostelling experiences (including judging our byron bay hostel for not being real (??)) And an entertaining family taking zillions of photos while squeaking at each other.

After the sun had gone we set off, turning down a side track we hoped would take us in the direction of home but ended up dwindling to almost nothing, and once Sam got a face full of spiders web we got a little bit freaked out. Luckily we made it down to a residential street without being eaten and made our way home safely from there. We chilled at the hostel in the evening and wandered down the beach to look at the stars before bed, Sam seeing a good shooting star.

Woke up early and caught a bus up to the Northern side of the island to get some walking in before it gets too insanely hot. Hiked up to an old WW2 fort with beautiful 300deg sea views and interesting signs about the fort's history. They talked about all the women gossiping after evening with attentive men, a man who stole and stockpiled grog, and the evening the Americans stole aussie women, Aussies stole American grog, and everything got nasty.

Wanting to head towards the bays to the north, we found a track down other side of the hill. It was signposted no people but we did it anyway naughty. Had to watch our steps carefully so as not to get a face full of spiders. The floor was ashy from fires (bush fires are rubbish for humans but weirdly essential for the ecosystem) and teeming with lizards, scrub fowl and the occasional wallaby. The trees were full of sticky sap ants nests and weird fat kapok fruits. Eventually we reached the main path and walked along a shady lane to Radical Bay. Very pretty beach fringed with frangipani trees but obvs can't swim because of death jellies so climbed on rocks. Very happy to have cold water in our bottles. From there we climbed up a giant hill, by now past 10am and the sun was punishing. Joey's face turned beetroot. Nearly died.

Eventually reached Horseshoe bay which had a shop selling cold water, some shade, and a stinger net hurray!! Got in the hot sea to try to cool down a bit then sat in shade to dry off. Brunch at artsy cafe with tasty milkshake. Wandered up the lane across a bridge promising crocodiles nearby (but didn't see any), then walked through a lush bananaey woodland swarming with butterflies. Spotted two enormous kookaburra, a rainbow lorikeet, hundreds of giant flying foxes (bats) sleeping in the gum trees, and a silk web spider.

We caught a bus back south towards Arcadia and Geoffrey bay, hired snorkels and stinger suits and had a wonderful hour and a half snorkelling on the reef. More corals and fish including two giant grumpy looking stripey fish, two sting rays, and six giant clams. There was a snorkel trail following bright yellow buoys, and the blue buoy at the end indicated a shipwreck, but the water was too deep and murky out there today so we couldn't find it. Sam gave joey a lesson in diving with snorkel stuff. A tiny bright yellow fish made friends with joey and followed her the whole way back from the main bit of the reef to the boat ramp at the side. We clambered out of our snorkel gear, careful not to burn our feet on the scorching concrete, then wandered around the bouldery headland which turns out to be the home of rock wallabies. It was far too hot for the wallabies to be out and about but we found a few sheltering in shady cracks, and one hopped enthusiastically over to sam by the car park, in the hope that he had something tasty on him.

We headed back to the hostel and chilled out for the afternoon, then joined in the hostel's trivia quiz, teaming up with two girls Phoebe and Hannah who, like us, were feeling all a bit too old and sober for the sillier of the games. Quiz was fun but infuriating as we never found out the answers to the questions, or how badly we did.

On Thursday morning we strolled back over the hill to Picnic Bay, keeping our eyes peeled for koalas, and went for a pleasant early morning dip in the stinger net. There was a kookaburra posing on the beach. We had breakfast in a slightly fancier café than we would have chosen ideally, but it was great food. Trudged back to the hostel in the rapidly rising heat, checked out and chilled out until our bus to the ferry terminal. The bus was crazily full of faffing backpackers, and takes a very circuitous route, so Sam was fretting watching his fitbit as the ferry departure time drew closer. Luckily it actually left at 13:35 not 13:30 (which was why Joey wasn't panicking) so all was fine. We caught the ferry, caught our Greyhound (with a very weird checking in procedure, the driver calling each person on by name which took forever) and drove away through Townsville. The large novelty spiders on lampposts and the sides of buildings seemed to be pretty much the highlight of Townsville, and we didn't feel like we were missing out by not staying there.

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