- Mom’s been having a bit of a fever again, it started about a week after it looked like the COVID-19/whatever it was was over, and has been going on for several days now. Not much, not high fever or anything like that just a bit higher temperature than is normal. She doesn’t feel sick really, just tired. We’re not sure whether she should try and contact health care – the instruction is to stay home and contact if it feels like one can’t manage at home, breathing gets difficult etc. but on the other hand, also that those in high risk group, should be in contact readily? She’s in a high risk group because of her age. I don’t think there’s anything health care can actually do, considering she is not even feeling really sick and doesn’t have symptoms other than a mild fever that responds to paracetamol. And the public health care has been notoriously hard to get hold of for years now and she loathes calling them because of that. She usually goes to queue in the clinic when she has to order labs or has to make an appointment because that’s much more faster and efficient than waiting for them to call back for a day or more. But now she’s supposed to stay home so what to do. Varha finally managed to fix their portal’s private messaging service last week (after 5 months!) so I’m suggesting that to her… it’s for non-urgent things and getting replies can take up to 7 days the last I read in the instructions. But first we have to decide whether she should contact health care or not and she’s always reluctant to do so anyway unless the problem’s been going for a very long time (“maybe it’ll magically go away if I wait long enough”) and crosses some weird line of “enough nuisance” or is more of a life-and-death situation or a fall resulting in a broken hip or something. But really, we’re not sure if she’s even supposed to contact health care or not, no clear instructions anymore…
- we’ve been having a heat wave the last week or so! Again. In September. I’ve been feeling almost physically ill the whole time it’s been going on now, it just too much after a long hot summer. I was already completely in the phase of “summer’s over for this year and fall’s here and it’s nice again outside” when the heat wave started. Usually it’s around 16 degrees Celsius at this time of year, now it’s been 25-28 degrees Celsius the last week or so đ and even when it doesn’t reach heat wave levels, it’s been over 20 degrees so a lot warmer than it should be in September. Feels like I physically can’t deal with it. Although it’s good in shade unlike in the summer when even in shade it’s unbearable.
- I’ve been feeling extra tired again for a couple of months now đ The same way I felt before I got iron infusions last year and the year before. My ferritin levels are terribly low again (17 in the last labs; if it’s 30 or less it means serious iron deficiency) but because 99% of doctors won’t admit that low/empty ferritin is a problem, they are again waiting that my hemoglobin goes low enough to give me an iron infusion. Hopefully this time I won’t have to be hospitalized for a day while I’m given red blood cells because they waited too long! For some reason the docs always want to wait and see if the ferritin and hemoglbin drop too low even though they’ve been checking and following my labs for 20+ years and already know they always do! I guess they hope that this time, somehow, by some miracle, it won’t happen. In the meanwhile, my quality of life and ability to function suffers from exhaustion that sleeping won’t help and sleep itself gets difficult too just to mention two big things. I’ve also often wondered how much of my chronic daily headache is actually caused by low ferritin because as long as my ferritin’s been tracked, it’s never been anywhere near the recommended levels but always low or completely empty.
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