lucKY2b, we are still using Zoom despite one notable Zoombombing incident with a colleague’s class. And we, too, are struggling to develop meaningful “lab” experiences for courses that have to be taught remotely. Currently we’re focusing only on our small summer session and supposedly no decisions have been made about fall term, but I’ll be amazed if we’re back to business as usual for fall. My best hope is that we may at least be able to have small classes and labs on campus, while continuing to teach the large lectures remotely. And I really, really hope that we can get access to our research labs soon! Rtype, you tech-savvy guys are the salt of the earth right now. I’m rather amazed that the Internet mostly continues to work through all of this. I have not yet had a problem doing anything from home that I need to do, although I’m constantly in fear that my Wi-Fi will die and leave me helpless.
This week I finally concluded that the persistent and severe hip/back/neck/shoulder stiffness and pain I’ve been fighting for the past 3-4 weeks goes way beyond any reasonable muscle soreness from doing new exercises and must indicate some systemic disease. It sounds a lot like polymyalgia rheumatica, an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation of the muscles of the back, neck, hip, and shoulder. I’m well aware of the dangers of self-diagnosis via Google but the symptoms seem to fit perfectly. The usual treatment is prednisone. Prednisone has nasty side effects and is not something you want to mess around with, but I wanted to see if it would knock this down and we happened to have some at home. So I took 10 mg/day for four days. It didn’t solve the problem but it helped a lot, probably too much to be a placebo effect. I have a doctor’s appointment (previously scheduled as a routine physical) for Tuesday but I’m not sure whether they have resumed seeing patients for non-urgent care.
M, hip too sore to run, 15 miles on bike but that bothered my hip too.
T, still pretty sore, 6.4 mile jog plus 10 mile bike.
W, 9.1 mile run, quite ouchy. Started prednisone early pm.
R, felt a ton better, ran 10.0 miles.
F, still feeling better, 10.5 miles.
S, slept 8.5 hours and felt even better, 11.6 miles. Took last prednisone early pm.
U, 11.5 miles, still stiff in the hips but not too bad.
59 easy miles for the week. We’ll see how I feel when I go off the pred.
The number of COVID-19 cases in Merced County has increased modestly from 64 a week ago to 87 as of yesterday. About one-third of the cases are listed as “recovered”, and three deaths. Meanwhile, the county reopened golf courses and the green areas and bike/running paths of our local parks, keeping picnic areas off-limits. I have not had trouble accessing any path I’ve wanted to use, but I think opening parks in an area of low population density makes sense.
Stay safe and sane!