(no subject)

[brin_bellway]

[cw: illness, venting]

The worst part is knowing that it's my own damn fault. I tried too hard to avoid germs and fucked up my immune system by not giving it enough to do, and I suppose "can't go outside without a mask lest you constantly feel like you're about to come down with a cold" is a particularly *fitting* punishment for that.

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This post brought to you by a particularly prickly but slowly fading sore throat that seems to have been the result of going outside for a couple hours in *mid-June*, which suggests that I've added a *third* season to my list of allergenic pollens, and am probably now up to *seven* months of the year that I cannot safely breathe unfiltered air.

(tbh I don't know why my immune system is still upping its twitchiness level, despite my best efforts I've had like two colds over the past year, is that still not fucking enough for you)

(Mom told me she'd get me one of those fancy reusable masks like you see people in the Asian parts of town wear. I guess the valves would make it easier to keep my glasses from fogging up, and it sends a more accurate signal: "disposable face mask" suggests "contagious" and is likely to unnerve people, especially if they see me take it off and then go in and serve them fast food, whereas "reusable face mask" suggests "germophobe", which is both true and related, albeit indirectly.)

As recently as last year, I could breathe summer air. As recently as three or four years ago, I could breathe any damn time of year I wanted. But what the hell else am I supposed to do? Even if you ignore the inherent misery of a cold (but why should you?), these days I can't just put my life on hold until I'm not contagious anymore, not without consequences. Even if I did the evil thing and tried to continue going about my life while sick, often you *can't*. I have very little experience with remaining functional while depressed, and even people with lots of experience often fail at it.

Comments

[thedarlingone]

Dear lord, you're evolving into a quarian. ;-) I always thought the 300-year timeframe was a bit fast because the original exiles would have brought Rannoch's germs onto the flotilla with them, but depending on what measures were necessary to prevent pandemics from spreading through whole ships over the first few generations... hm. I guess I probably have an off-kilter estimate of the resilience of the normal immune system, in both directions. (I just... never got sick at all, barring chicken pox, until after the Remodel of Doom wrecked my space-orc tendencies, and this past winter I had the same hacking cough from about October to May. :P)

[brin_bellway]

>>Dear lord, you're evolving into a quarian.<<

I think that makes me the opposite of a quarian, right? Quarians have too *little* immune function for their (non-suit) environment and get knocked flat by anything even vaguely pathogenic, whereas I have too *much* immune function for my environment and it ends up spilling over onto other things. I guess it kind of wraps around, amounts to similar practical effects.

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>>would have brought Rannoch's germs onto the flotilla with them<<

I thought the lore went that Rannoch didn't *have* pathogens, so the quarians were always going to be screwed by coming into contact with planets that did regardless of whether they were exiled or not.

*researches*

Quarian immune systems have always been relatively weak, as pathogenic microbes were comparatively rare in their homeworld's biosphere. Furthermore, what few viruses and other microbes were native to their homeworld were often at least partly beneficial to them, giving them a symbiotic relationship with their environment. After living aboard the Migrant Fleet for generations, the quarians' immune systems have atrophied further still due to the years in the sterile environment of the Migrant Fleet.

Kind of in-between, then.

(You'd think the "symbiotic relationship with their environment" thing would mean they'd have trouble living somewhere sterile.)

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>>the resilience of the normal immune system<<

I'm not sure what a normal frequency would be, nor am I entirely sure what my own frequency is. While I might be able to piece together some of what times I've gotten sick from diary entries, it's not all in one place and I doubt it'd be complete. I know I got sick a lot during my first couple years here, adjusting to the new environment and all those exotic Canadian germs I suppose; I know that in my late teens/early twenties I managed to go nearly three years between colds, but that I was surprised by this; I know that the cold at the *beginning* of the 34-month span was while I was still dealing with lingering aftereffects of a ""48-hour"" stomach virus (I've had two of those, about seven years apart, and they knocked me flat for weeks long after the rest of the household had recovered; for the second one, while the brunt of it was over after ~only~ eleven days or so, it was *two months* before I could eat enough to fully maintain my weight).

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>>barring chicken pox<<

Oddly enough, I never got chicken pox despite being exposed multiple times. When I was 12 my parents had my antibodies tested to see if I'd had it asymptomatically, and when it turned out I hadn't they got me a vaccine.

At the time, the ultra-long-term efficacy of the chicken pox vaccine was unknown and the medical recommendation was to get boosters every 10 years for life, which was why my parents had been reluctant to do it: they didn't want me to be dependant on boosters to remain immune, in case their plans to move to Canada didn't pan out (though as it turns out they worked) and my financial situation worsened (this one *did* happen) and when it came time to get a booster I wouldn't be able to afford one. They didn't go so far as to take me to pox parties, but left it until the last minute to give me a chance to pick it up naturally.

22-year-old me, having heard this story, figured it was probably time for her government-covered booster, and went and looked up vaccine schedules on a government website aimed at doctors. I learned that the ultra-long-term studies had since come out well, and the recommendation is now to get two shots and then never again (and if you're getting them at age 12, the "booster" is given only one month later; usually it's...I think it was ages 18 months and 4 years). I called up my doctor and asked to be given a second dose.

(Not entirely sure why it'd never come up before, but I *think* it's partly being an immigrant (multiple doctors in multiple countries having to coordinate to know what shots I've had when, making it easier to fall through the cracks) and partly being homeschooled (I've heard some stuff about it often being the school's job to provide catch-up vaccines, which would mean that non-school doctors aren't used to having to think about that).)

(It was autumn, and when I got there one of the questions they asked was *when* I'd had my flu shot, not *if*. She may have simply misspoken, but I was amused by the possibility that she (correctly) figured that the sort of person who would actively research which childhood vaccines she was missing and seek them out would also have gotten a flu shot.)

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The good news is, on my way back from work today I saw *visible drifts* of pollen floating through the air, which I'm pretty sure was not a thing throughout most of last summer and therefore suggests that this is not a summer-long issue. Maybe I'll still get July and August.

[thedarlingone]

...ah, I see. I think I hadn't quite put together that "constantly feeling like you're about to come down with a cold" was the allergies rather than actually catching things.

I may have mentioned before, but I (reportedly) got chicken pox twice. Once when I was a tiny baby, but apparently it somehow didn't give me the antibodies, whether because it wasn't a strong enough case or because it was in fact something else altogether (although it wasn't measles because I did in fact get vaccinated), and then when I was seven.

[brin_bellway]

Yeah, my pollen allergies manifest as sore throats. They're generally fairly mild, but note that for me colds almost always start as a mild sore throat that gradually gets worse over the course of the day, and you gradually get more and more suspicious of it until eventually you're confident that you are in fact sick.

It does seem to be a less common allergy manifestation: mostly when you hear people talk about allergic responses to pollen it's in the nose or eyes. I guess having it in the throat is better than those alternatives overall: I'm still perfectly functional, I don't (mask notwithstanding) falsely appear contagious. Really, while the pain is a little annoying in its own right, the main problem is the psychological aspect of never being quite sure that I'm not sick: yeah, these days the vast majority of sore throats I get are false positives, but not *all* of them are.

[contrarianarchon]

Aww. Hope you feel better, I have little advice or common context.