I was sick for three weeks (and took another six weeks to fully recover) when I caught West Nile fever a year ago.
Do not recommend.
Tag: west nile fever
2024-07-13 19:20
I was bitten by a mosquito this morning. My first thought:, “Well, I had West Nile Fever last year, so I probably won’t catch it this year.”
Now I see this:
“… at least one person in Central Illinois is reported to have dengue fever….
There is currently no antiviral medication to treat dengue, but most cases subside within a week or two. Severe cases … can result in death.
Source: WCIA
Finally back to doing workouts
I’ve had a draft post that was originally called my “fall workout plan,” and then called my “late fall workout plan,” but that I never posted because while I was sick I couldn’t work out at all, beyond walking the dog. I will post it. Perhaps not until it makes more sense to post a “winter workout plan.”
In the meantime though, I am, finally, back to doing workouts, and thought I might talk about what I’m doing, because my workout plan is to do workouts very similar to what I’ve been doing over the past week or so.
- Two weeks ago, Sunday November 11th was a HEMA practice session.
- Monday I did some kettlebell swings with my adjustable kettlebell adjusted to 40 lb. The previous week I’d done 10 x 10 swings emom (every minute on the minute), so I went ahead and did 10 x 11 swings emom. I’ll continue bumping that up until I hit 10 x 20, and then I’ll go up in weight and drop the reps back down to 10. (There’s a 45 lb kettlebell in the fitness room, and I own a 53 lb kettlebell, so I have a couple of options.)
- Tuesday I did a 1-handed club workout with my Adex adjustable club at 10 lbs, doing 9 x 5 L / 5 R outside circles, shield cast, and inside circle. That was pretty easy, so I did one more set with the club adjusted to 12.5 lbs. That worked okay, so I decided I could use that as my working weight for a while.
- Wednesday and Thursday were rest days.
- Friday I went back to 1-handed club swinging, doing 5 x 5 L / 5 R with the new, higher, weight of 12.5 lbs.
- Saturday was a rest day.
- Sunday was another HEMA practice session,
- Monday and Tuesday were rest days.
- Wednesday I did kettlebell clean and press, with the kettlebell adjusted to 20 lbs, doing 6 x 4L / 4R in a reverse ladder. (That is, I did 4 clean & press with the left hand, then 4 with the right hand, the 3 left and 3 right, then 2 left and 2 right, then 1 left and 1 right. Then I put the weight down and rested a couple of minutes. That was 1 set. I did 6 sets.) After that I bumped the weight up to 25 lbs and did one more set, which went okay. I think I can carry on with 25 lbs going forward.
- Thursday I did 10 x 12 kettlebell swings emom with the 40 lb kettlebell. Then I did some 1-handed club swinging, doing 5 x 5 L / 5 R. I’d have expected that I’d have done 6 sets, but 5 is what I wrote down in my notebook.
- Friday was a rest day
- Today, Saturday November 25th, I went to the fitness room and did a (mostly) bodyweight circuit. I did 3 rounds of 5 exercises, each for 30 seconds, then with 15 seconds to rest and move to the next exercise. I did jump rope, negative pull ups, goblet squats ( with 20 lb and 25 lb dumbbells), push ups, and hollowbody holds. That’s pretty close to what I was doing during the pandemic, except the fitness room was closed, so instead of dumbells for the goblet squats, I had to just do more reps without weights.
Finally recovered, I think
Back at the end of September I came down with West Nile Fever, which made me pretty sick for a long time. The only time in my life before I was that sick for that long was when I had Mononucleosis when I was a freshman in college. That time I was sick for most of the term, and it took several weeks of the Christmas vacation to fully recover.
With West Nile it took about three weeks to recover from the acute phase of the illness. That is, I had a fever constantly for three weeks. Then it took another three weeks to get my energy levels back. For that period I could walk the dog, fix breakfast, and then do one thing, after which I needed to go back to bed and take a nap.
As of a couple of days ago, I think I’m back to full health. I’ve been doing workouts—not as frequently as I’d like, but often enough that I’ve been able to start pushing the weights up again, although not up to what I doing before I was sick. I’ve been for a couple of runs, both of which were harder and slower than I’d like, but were okay—I didn’t feel like I was sick, just like I hadn’t been running enough the past few weeks.
On Sunday I got a Covid booster, so I felt slightly less energetic Monday, but that has already passed.
After too many weeks, I finally feel back to normal!
2023-11-06 15:37
Because I use wearables to capture as much information about myself as possible, I can go back and see how my illness affected my activity.
Between returning home from vacation in August, and getting sick in late September, I averaged between 6 and 8 miles a day, mostly walking the dog. (Separately I got in a run each week, pushing that day’s mileage up over 10.) In October (as you can see above) my distance fell to between 3 and 4 miles each day until just about the middle of the month, then gradually started increasing. I exceeded 6 miles on October 15th. I didn’t reach 8 miles until October 30th.
Now I’m right back to 6 to 8 miles a day, same as before I was sick. And today I went for my first run since September 26th. It was a pretty crappy run, but better than not running.
2023-10-30 15:45
Today I managed to get in a workout—my first since coming down with West Nile fever five and a half weeks ago. (I dropped the weight by 33%, and dropped the set count by almost 50%, but I did do the whole workout I’d planned.)
I was only really sick for about 3 weeks, but oof—it has sure taken a long time to go from “mostly better” to “well enough to exercise.” The past two and a half weeks just fixing breakfast and walking the dog left me so tired I had to take a nap.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to regular exercise now, and go back to sword fighting!
2023-10-24 07:17
As someone who just spent five weeks recovering from West Nile Fever, this article spoke to me:
climate change will result in the infectious disease dengue becoming endemic in parts of Europe and the United States,
Source: WHO chief scientist warns of endemic dengue in Europe, US – POLITICO
(Dengue and West Nile virus are both in the same family, along with Zika and Yellow Fever.)
Via Bruce Sterling.
Sick. Mostly better. Diagnosis!
About three weeks ago I developed a fever and moderate flu-like symptoms. It felt like a virus, so I mostly just treated it liked one—sleeping extra, drinking extra fluids—and waited to get better.
It was kind of frustrating, because it just went on and on. For a brief period there in the middle of week two, it got a bit more exciting: I starting having trouble finding words. (I sounded exactly like my dad when his dementia made it impossible for him to say stuff. Pretty scary.) At about the same time I started suffering from double vision.
At the prompting of my mom and brother, I went to the emergency room for the word difficulty. They did a whole workup for a possible stroke: CT scan, chest x-ray, and and MRI.
I was not having a stroke.
Once I was released from the emergency room I made a follow-up with my regular doctor, who was kind of groping for possibilities, and put in an order for a few tests. The blood was draw on Monday, and today I got the results: positive for West Nile virus.
The related illness, West Nile Fever, does sound exactly like what I had. (That’s actually kind of a scary link. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to have any of the longer-term consequences. I was just sick for three weeks.)
Anyway, I think I’m on the mend. I’m resuming normal activity as each thing seems okay. It’s taking a while feel up to swordfighting, but I think I can finally do everything else on my usual list.