Below normal but okay

Health update: went to my orthopod’s office yesterday for my second of three injections in my knees. The practice is located in the local People’s Republic hospital, so you have to enter the actual hospital to get to their offices.

This has meant undergoing a “screening” at the entrance. The screening involves answering questions about travel to or contact with people who’ve traveled to places, and whether you have any symptoms of covid19.

This time, however, I arrived at the office on the third floor to discover it closed and patients directed to the fourth-floor office. Where a masked staffer asked the screening questions again, and took my temperature, which she wrote down on a yellow stickie, which had to be turned in to the reception desk. (It also went in with me to the exam room, where I assume it was added to my chart.)

BTW—my temperature was 96.7, two degrees below normal. And I haven’t taken any Tylenol or aspirin in a couple of weeks.

According to the PA who’s giving me the injections, they’ve cancelled a lot of surgeries, are restricting appointments and therefore consolidated the two offices. Tough times.

Otherwise, I’m okay. Except for tearing an interstitial rib muscle on my right side from all the coughing. (Fortunately, this happened once before, while I was in grad school, so I knew what it was. Otherwise I’d have been freaking out.) I’m at the stage now where it doesn’t so much feel like someone’s sticking an X-Acto knife between my ribs as a butter knife. But it turns out that everything you do involves your ribs, including sneezing, clearing your throat and shifting a manual transmission.

I cannot wait for this to be over. Then I can deal with whatever I have to.