6th April

 Feeling a little better yesterday early afternoon, I decided to cook a vegetable stew.

10 minutes into cutting vegetables I started flagging.

Hazel reckoned I was in the kitchen for an hour cutting, cooking and prepping for the stew slammed in the oven.

After that I was utterly wiped out. Badly. My eyes darkened up. Mr right foot got cramp, then pins and needles. A deep internal pain starting on the left and going across, just below the shoulder blades. I felt ill. I went and had a nap.

After that I roused myself to make the dumplings, felt like utter garbage and puffed, panted and wobbled through the 20 minute task.

I went back to bed.

Hazel said I needed to do smaller things. You feel a bit better she said, and rather than cook something small, you're out there for an hour on your feet, cooking from scratch.

I said to her it was difficult to gauge. My body is not giving me the usual signs. I can feel kinda ok, then crash hard. It was difficult to know.

I am unsure what to do to be honest. Should I be doing things, or just stopping myself from pushing and crashing. I do feel a whole lot better when I am not pushing and have better following days. But it's frustrating being a useless lump. I could do with some healthcare advice. Ha. Chance would be a fine thing. Unless I go private again.

The nature of the fatigue et al also makes me worry slightly again that something nasty lurks in the shadows undetected. Perhaps it is just some viral hangover. But I find it peculiar it seems to correlate with bad circulation and an iffy cardio. Maybe that's just how it is however.

After that draining day full of aches and pains, I went to bed earlier ( for the third time that day ), popped 2 paracetamol and an anti histamine, and as a result slept a bit deeper than usual.

Doc hasn't got back to me yet after six days. I guess Easter Weekend of 4 days in there is to blame. If I hear nothing today, inline with their own advice on the automated reply I shall give them a kick. In contrast to this, yesterday, Easter Bank Holiday Monday, the NHS *called me*, asking me why I hadn't yet got my covid shot. Well, very proactive. A pity it's not been anywhere near as proactive about everything else. I explained the situation, low immune system, ill for 4 months, and that at the very least I wanted to run it past a professional set of eyes - my GP - as to whether getting a covid shot right now was sensible or stupid. The Covid person fully understood the situation. I can get you to speak to a clinician here if you like she offered. That's cool but, there's been such a history with this it would take forever for them to get up to speed. I'll go with the local GP who in theory knows the history.

So we wait. As usual. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Hello NHS. Where are you ? In hindsight I kinda wish I had taken out private healthcare a long while ago now. But eh, hindsight is perfect and it's only recently I have had the suspicions and poor experiences in the past really repeatedly confirmed to me in stark terms that shows the NHS does not have my back. Also the downside of no longer being a corporate soldier. No private healthcare. It's also clear why they do that - I suspect because they realise their employees will be back on their feet faster by not relying on the ponderous and dubious deliberations of the NHS.