This story actually begins several weeks ago, when I had another bout of my magical no-seeming-cause lower back pain, this time turning into some fun sciatica. I ended up going to urgent care after it didn't go away on its own and they put me on a round of steroids (Prednisone). The steroids did, in fact, help with the back pain, which was nice, but it turns out, to no one's surprise, knocked out my immune system, setting me up for future fun. A week later, as we were heading to Provincetown, I started getting what looked and behaved a lot like poison ivy rash on my arm. Seemed possible enough -- there's lots of it on MV, and I had pet several dogs on our van-tour day. After a few days of the rash getting a lot worse, I did an online dermatology appt to see if there's any treatment options, and they agreed it looked like poison ivy and prescribed me a bigger dose of prednisone to stop the inflammation...

Fast forward to last week, as we were working from Scituate and then flying to our separate trips, and the arm kept getting worse. I flew out to Seattle, visiting friends and family in town before heading up to take the ferry to Whidbey Island for a weekend retreat with college friends. By the time I got up to Whidbey on Friday night, sleeping was almost impossible with the arm pain. I got another e-appointment, at which point they decided it's actually shingles, and switched me over to antivirals and had me taper off the steroids as fast as possible, but at this point I'm already super-immuno-suppressed, so everything is a mess.

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Meanwhile, I had a great time catching up with friends. We chatted a bunch, went to a country fair on Whidbey, wandered around Ft Casey (more obsolete military coastal forts), and generally chilled like old friends do. Having moved onto the boat, we have to make explicit efforts to stay in touch with friends, and it's always worth it -- just need to find the time and energy to do it.

As I flew back to Boston, I started getting a sore throat, too. When I arrived on the boat, I took a COVID test, which absolutely immediately showed a bright positive pink line, and by the end of the day I was knocked out pretty hard. I've spent most of the last 48 hours asleep recovering from that and I'm now on the mend, but Hannah's just now getting sick as well, so we're probably going to be leapfrogging at least through this weekend before we move onto any fun new adventures...