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El Cajon nurse can’t shake COVID-19’s unrelenting grip: ‘I have lost relationships’

Nicole Baca, a 40-year-old registered nurse in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, talks with the Union-Tribune’s Paul Sisson about her struggle with Long Covid. Her symptoms closely resemble people close to me:

Today, she’s grateful if she can take a walk at Ocean Beach with her husband, an act that requires meticulous pre-planning to avoid the racing pulse that can make her dangerously dizzy.

“Once, I had an episode where I almost passed out in a neighbor’s driveway,” she said. “I bent down to pick something up that was on the ground, and everything started to turn white.”

…

This never-ending fight started in June of 2020 when she found herself becoming strangely confused during a shift in a COVID-19 unit at the San Diego hospital where she worked. These were the days when health care workers were isolating themselves from their families, often staying in hotel rooms when off duty.

“My last day at work, I caught myself forgetting what I was doing, and I felt like I was on cold medicine, but I wasn’t,” she said. “I developed shortness of breath, a fever, fatigue, extreme bone pain, cough, diarrhea and dizziness.

“I was stumbling into the walls of my hotel room. Weirdly enough, I never lost my sense of taste or smell like most people did at the time.”

Most see such symptoms gradually resolve. For Baca, they worsened, permanently causing her body to overreact to small changes in elevation. Just standing up sends her pulse racing, the heart monitor in her Apple Watch warning of a dangerously erratic heartbeat. Such cardiac overcorrection causes her blood pressure to drop, increasing the chances that she will faint.

I am embarking on my fourth business trip in the past year after a four year hiatus. I feel I have regained the art of rapid packing — but maybe I should wait on saying that until I get to the hotel and find out that I’ve only packed right shoes.

We watched another episode of “The Rockford Files” last night. I am continually amazed at how well that show holds up 50 years later.

I want Rockford’s car. Of course I do. But I also want all of his sports jackets.

When watching early 70s mysteries, part of the treat is seeing the lineup of guest stars who would become big stars later in the decade, as well as formerly big stars at the end of their careers. Last night’s episode featured Suzanne Somers as a wealthy expatriate. This was only a year after she played the blonde in the T-Bird in American Graffiti, and she still doesn’t have a speaking role here. Jill Clayburgh plays a bubbly hippie artist’s model.

Jamelle Bouie: The Founders Were Afraid for the Country, Too (NYT) — Bouie quotes Franklin, Hamilton, Washington and Madison on their fears of despotism and and hopes for the enduring freedom of their new country. He ends on a note of cautious optimism:

We have a would-be despot in the White House. But even with a rotting Constitution on the verge of crisis, this is still a Republic, and the people are still sovereign. The task, then, is to make this clear to those in power who would like to pretend otherwise.

Hamilton Nolan: Seeing Things For What They Are — The US political models that have been useful for the past 40 years have fundamentally changed. Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C., is hopelessly mired in the past.

Extreme things—things that sit completely outside of the mental framework that too many of our political leaders are still using to govern their decisions—are happening now. And they are going to happen more. And they are going to get more extreme. This does not mean that we are in a hopeless situation. It does, however, mean that we must adjust our interpretation of the world, or be left behind.

Not just political leaders. Every American needs to realize that the rules we operated under until 2024 are obsolete, and we need to reconcile with the new order.