Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Two cryogenic zaps, about thirty second each, on the right place this time. (There have now been several correct and one only partly on the wart.)

The doctor told me to go back to using the salicylic acid patches, but be careful with the bandage tape, so as not to irritate the skin on that finger which is still dry and feels a bit rough.

Follow-up in two weeks, with Pam again because Andrea doesn't have in-person availability and this needs to be in person.

The doctor's office is no longer requiring masks, and the receptionists weren't wearing masks. So I told the person who checked me in to ask Andrea to wear a mask, which she did, which makes it lower-risk than the transit to and from the appointment, or the quick stops to buy meat and bread. There may have been one other customer in the meat market, and the only person at When Pigs Fly was the cashier. There are advantages to shopping at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning, though I would have preferred to be able to sleep late.

We now have ground lamb, which is defrosting in the refrigerator, and a rosemary foccacia.

We just got a portable carbon dioxide monitor, to use as a vague proxy for ventilation and covid risk.

I calibrated it this afternoon, at which point the air right outside our building was at 404 ppm CO₂. We then put it on a bookshelf near the apartment door, hoping we'd notice it before heading out.

It turns out that baking chocolate chip cookies, and then having the oven door open long enough to remove two cookie trays, sent the air around the corner from the kitchen up to something like 1600 ppm. The device beeps once if it gets a reading above 1000 ppm, and beeps for a minute if it goes about 1500, unless you tell it to be quiet already. We're now trying a different shelf, further from the stove, but also easier to overlook on our way out.

Does anyone know of a Boston-area dentist whose staff are still masking consistently. I'm in Brighton, but willing to travel a bit, preferably by T.

I just called my dentist and asked about covid protocols, and the person said "covid protocols?" as if nobody had asked her that in ages. I explained I wanted to know what their rules about masking are, and was told "if you want to wear a mask you can." I said "thank you, I may need to reschedule" and hung up.

The receptionist called back (thinking we'd been cut off accidentally?), and said the doctors were masking, and the hygienist when I asked about that. However, the rest of the staff aren't, but "you can ask them to wear a mask" and "everyone is vaccinated."

The reception area/waiting room at that office is small, and by the time I asked anyone working there to put on a mask, they would have had several hours to spread any virus they happened to be carrying.

On the one hand, this is not good; on the other, would another medical practice be any better here?
My appointment is next Wednesday, so I have some time to brood think about this. I may call and ask to reschedule for the first appointment of the day (any day), to reduce possible exposure to other patients. Even if the staff are all vaccinated and boosted, it's unlikely that all the other patients are.

This was a somewhat odd visit. The three previous times I saw Dr. AbdelRazek, they had me arrive half an hour early, so an assistant could do some low-tech neurology tests before I saw the doctor.

This visit, they had me arrive half an hour early, and the assistant took my vital signs and asked what medications I'm currently taking, then took me back to the waiting room until the doctor was ready. I had to ask him for the low-tech neurology tests, but when I said yes, I wanted him to do them, he sent someone into the exam room when he was done talking to me.

The doctor had started by asking me a few general questions about mood and activity. I told him that I'm still staying home a lot, because of Covid. He said he was surprised that I'm still doing that, and doesn't think I need to be. This surprised me.

He seemed to have two reasons for giving that advice. One is that he has "30 or 40" other patients on Ocrevus, who have reduced their precautions significant, and none of them have become seriously ill. The other is that, and I quote, "you have to live your life." What he advised was to keep masking indoors if I'm not eating or drinking, but he thinks I should eat in restaurants (the first example I gave of something I'm still not doing), and if I go to a party, mask most of the time, but it would be fine to take the mask off to eat or drink.

I'm not sure how much of my doctor saying "you have to live your life" is that, like a lot of people who say that, he is tired of the pandemic, and how much is that he's balancing mental health and depression against infection. But if it is a mental health thing, he could have been a lot clearer.

I miss in-person socializing, and if the three of us agree it's safe, I would like to have some friends visit, or go see other people. But eating in restaurants doesn't feel like a good use of our (notional) risk points.

Another small oddity: they had me fill out a questionnaire in the waiting room. It was mostly about my moods over the past two weeks, but they also asked about falls any time in the previous year. I said that "yes," I have been injured by a fall in the past twelve months, and nobody asked me about that.

I just ordered a LOT of duckbill-style N95 masks from armbrustusa.com, taking advantage of a sale that someone mentioned on Ask a Manager a couple of weeks ago: Half off everything in November, with free shipping. ( cut by request, sorry I forgot until now. )

Today's lunch was a mushroom crepe, which I ate sitting at an outside table. I got to Mr. Crepe during a break in the rain, and it only rained for part of the time I was eating.

If not for the pandemic, I would have eaten indoors, and probably at a restaurant closer to my occupational therapist’s office. In 2022, I’m pleased to have safe, tasty options for lunch out.

Today is the equinox, and we're definitely getting into cooler weather, which will make outdoor dining less tempting, especially in damp clothes, but for now, I had a nice meal, at a place I like, with negligible covid risk (I was wearing an N95 mask when I went into the restaurant to order).

The OT session itself went pretty well: ultrasound and massage, and the therapist asked me how much exercise I'd been doing, what my pain levels have been, and how often I'm wearing the brace. She told me to increase the amount of time I'm not wearing the brace, and to try to increase the number of repetitions of the exercises I'm doing with weights.

I had a bivalent covid booster a couple of hours ago, plus a flu vaccine since I was going to be at the pharmacy being vaccinated anyhow. Right arm for both, because I sleep on my back or left side.

I had a longer wait that I expected; apparently the appointment timing was thrown off because the pharmacy had fewer people working there this morning than they expected. So far, I am feeling OK even though I climbed some stairs I wasn't expecting. I'd somehow thought that the only Green Line station that wasn't accessible was Boylston Street (which probably never will be); Hynes isn't accessible either, and the backs of my thighs were already sore.

However, I had a sweet potato pastry (so labeled, from the French bakery part of HMart) before being vaccinated, and onion soup, good tea, and a hot fudge sundae afterward. I'm feeling OK so far, a couple of hours after being jabbed.

I think the pastry was vegetarian; the soup definitely was. The server asked if I wanted the soup vegan, even though I had just asked for dairy milk for my tea. This was at Veggie Galaxy, which along with the entirely vegetarian menu has a nice patio, and is between the drugstore where I was being vaccinated and Toscanini's Ice Cream.

Between the pandemic and geography, I hadn't been back to the Central Square branch of Tosci's since it reopened; it looks very much like I remembered. I had raspberry-blackberry ice cream in my hot fudge sundae, since sweet cream wasn't on offer, and bought a pint of orange ice cream with chocolate chunks to take home.

Adrian got up early because the movers were arriving at her old apartment before 8 a.m., and cattitude got up a bit early so he could get to the new place before the movers (and before Adrian). I had lunch at home and then went to the new apartment, via the Copley Square farmers market: this meant I wasn't in either apartment at the same time as the movers.

The farmers market had strawberries. I bought a quart, which the three of us have eaten (after bread and pickled herring). There were three different vendors with strawberries. The berries at the place closest to the entrance were pale and I think had been picked to early. The second vendor's strawberries looked a lot better, and smelled nice. The bought a quart because that basket looked better than any of the pints.

We decided in the middle of the afternoon that we wanted to get an air purifier right away rather than waiting. Cattitude found one on Amazon for a reasonable price that was available for delivery between five and ten p.m. today, and ordered it. He and I stayed at the new place after dinner, until the package arrived. Cattitude brought it inside and carried it to Adrian's bedroom, and then we took a Lyft home.

Unfortunately, there were significantly more unmasked passengers on the subway (red and green lines) than on the bus, but I kept my N95 mask on except when I was at the farmers market, which is outdoors.

I had my twice-a-year Ocrevus infusion this morning. They took blood to run some tests my neurologist wanted: the MtAuburn labs and MyChart are efficient. They took the blood around 9:00, and the first results were available at 9:45. My Vitamin D levels are excellent! 71.1 ng/mL, with the "good" range being 30-100. My neurologist was aiming to get it up from about 35 to 50 because they think there's a connection between Vitamin D and MS. Note: a couple of years ago the "reference range" was being given as 20-100; if you were at the low end of normal by that standard, they may now consider you to be deficient in vitamin D even if the actual number hasn't changed.

Also, the Transit app is now asking: do you think the bus stop is accessible? how crowded is your bus? did the bus arrive when you expected, or significantly early or late? and whether the other passengers are masking. For my bus home, the answers were yes, accessible; somewhat crowded; about when I expected (for the revised arrival time, but there's no room to be that specific); almost everyone was masking. (I took a Lyft to the hospital, because an 8:30 appointment would have put me pn a rush hour bus, and with little slack if a bu trips was cancelled.) I wore my boat-style N95 mask for about several hours, removing and restoring it a few times to eat, and twice to take pills. I continue to be pleased with these masks.

I got a call from my neurologist's office this morning, following up on my question from a couple of weeks ago: they said the monoclonal antibodies took a week or two to reach maximum effectiveness, and were good for three to six months.

The first half of that answer would have been more useful two weeks ago, of course. For planning purposes, the relevant part now is that three to six months from when I got the antibodies puts me somewhere between the middle of June and the middle of September, and I guess we can see about getting me another dose in September.