A lost month

I 'came down with a cold' on 13 January. The cold quickly turned into violent coughing. Three weeks in, I went to London for work. When I returned, I went to the doctor and he put me on an antibiotic (I'd already been through boxes and bottles of over the counter stuff). It didn't do any good and I saw a different doctor who put me on a stronger antibiotic and a steroid inhaler. A week of that and I wasn't any better. He sent me for a chest x-ray and put me on a stronger steroid. Last Thursday I went to see him again. X-ray was clear and I am coughing less.

I'm now seven weeks in and finally feel fully human again. For two weeks in January, I took a lot of naps. The first half of February, I remained listless. The second half of February, I felt better in small increments--but easily chilled, easily tired. But I've survived. I'm to stay on the steroid inhaler another week and then begin running again, very slowly.

The highlight of the past month was a visit by my niece Emma from 19-23 Feb. I took her to all my favourite haunts--Queen's, Ulster Museum, Cathedral Quarter, Castle Ward, Killyleagh Castle, Derry. She did a Game of Thrones bus tour, we went to an Ulster Rugby match. It was a busy five days. Here we are at the rugby:

And here we are in Derry.

Emma is doing an MFA at the University of Edinburgh and also playing on the first XV rugby team. So she enjoyed being at the Ulster match and watching England play Ireland in the Six Nations cup--this in Balloo House pub on the way back from Castle Ward, where she had a traditional pub meal. She is interested in history and museums and art, so she's fun to spend time with. Always up for an adventure.

She left on a Sunday night. Mon-Fri I have tried my best to catch up with work, which has not been easy. For instance I sent a newsletter to 700 people after working on four platforms (Sharepoint, Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, MailChimp) to manage images, mailing lists, templates, content. The newsletter had 10 items with 15 links, some of which involved compressing pdfs. Not my thing. This is on top of my day job of organising the steering committee, the strategic projects coordinating group, and participating in the redesign of the website. I think the stress of work has probably prolonged my illness. Who knows.

This weekend I'm trying to take it easy. Here's a photo from this morning's walk at Belvoir Forest with my best bud.

March 1