Probably my favorite day as I didn’t have to work at all and had no plan to follow. After breakfast with hubby (girls finish early and go back to room first), we moved the lazy mode to the bedroom. By 11am I finally felt needing to move a bit so I went to the gym. Hubby joined me a bit later as it was room cleaning. Leisurely I spent 2 hours at the gym.
I mentioned that after some jogging the other day, I had some symptoms and few minutes of panic. Funny the next day I listened to a podcast on long COVID about someone to who was scared of relapse when going back to physical activity. It took her months to figure out that it was the fear, stress and anxiety that triggered body stress response to shut down energy source, thus resulting the fatigue and symptoms. At first, this sounds so woo woo and not real. But then the more she shared about her experiencing of talking her self out of the vicious cycle, breaking the mental barrier, the better she felt. I know that not all long haulers are caused by mental state but I think in some cases it could be. I reflect on myself. There were two scary instances that could be considered trauma. First was I went out for 20 min jogging after my 2 weeks quarantine and felt breathless. I rushed to ER and returned back after I calmed down. That triggered me to believe somehow that whenever I attempt to jog, I’ll become sick again. The second time it also started with physical activity, more than my usual load, which resulted in me fearing that symptoms would be back, which they did. I went to the ER thinking I was having a heart attack, but all results came back normal and I felt okay few hours later. Then I learned about breathing exercise, how it helps to calm down the stressed mind. I started to do it whenever I feel a bit anxious. 90% of the time it calmed me down and my heart rate goes down 10-20 beats in a matter of 10 min.
Then to my last scare, this week when I jogged a bit. I felt anxious again, and almost asked where is the closest ER in case my symptoms worsened. Then I remind myself that maybe I just need to calm down and rest a bit. We went to the beach, I felt better. I did get a bit warm (98.8) but it went away by the evening. Usually after an episode of physical exertion, it would take me 3 days or more of rest to feel normal again. This time, I felt better in one day. So I think this is the start of a real recovery process. As I realized that not all physical exertion post symptom is related to the activity, but rather physical response to my mental stress and fear, now I could try to break the cycle. At least next time that it happens, I’ll try to break it.
After I pick up the girls from entertainment zone we went to the beach. Girls did snorkeling and I watched them. Beach life. 🙂
when the sun went down a bit we went to the water park. They loved up and down from the big slide
Dinner was the same corn soup with cheese sandwich that we’ve been ordering since day one, plus French fries. Vacation eating style 🙂
Our New Journey 