=(^+^)=
One mystery of the COVID-25 experience has been how I felt while breathing.
I checked my oxygen level with my pulse oximeter. Ninety-nine percent, yet it felt like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
Even with auxiliary oxygen, I was breathing in short, what seemed incomplete breaths. Oddly, the oxygen level in my blood suggested something else. I mentioned it to one of the dialysis nurses.
She checked my last monthly blood test results. My red blood cells count was 8.3 whatever measurement that is, and that is low, close to the 7.0 where I’d need a blood transfusion!
The pulse oximeter reading measured how high the oxygen saturation was in the diminished level of red blood cells, presenting me with the ironic situation of a desirable level of oxygen saturation in a blood cell concentration less able to take sufficient oxygen to my cells.
=(^+^)=
Though I got part way to the dialysis room before dialysis, I called in and asked for help with the last half of the distance, a slight “hill” that adds maybe five feet more elevation to the trip from the parking lot to the door.
At the end of dialysis, I didn’t fight a wheelchair trip back to my car.
=(^+^)=
Though this 2025 version of COVID isn’t as rough as that earlier one, it still wipes you out long after the infectious stage, which requires 11 days of isolation. I’ve heard a month after the isolation stage is typical!
=(^+^)=
I have two things in the air because if COVID-25: possibly the operation on my cancer – I will find out next week at the oncologist’s; the start of therapy to help restore my strength.