Many memories abound of my love for a California life in August: the month of pools, air conditioning and summer heat, beach days, sunburns and bikini tan lines, Coppertone, coconuts, watermelon, laying out and staring up at the sky as clouds drift by, youthful daydreams of being in love. So many of these memories could by turned into novellas about a growing up in 1980s in California, when life was so definitive, and Cassette Futurism was nothing more than existence in the present.
Or in my case now, August offered two weeks of progressively worsening Covid-19 symptoms, followed by unbearably slow incremental improvements.
A variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, known as Nimbus (NB.1.8.1), emerged in early 2025 and is a sub-lineage of the Omicron variant. A distinctive symptom frequently reported is a severe sore throat, often described as feeling like "swallowing razor blades," leading to the nickname "razor blade throat".
I've had three total vaccines since 2020, each one wrecked my CNS, hitting extra hard on pre-existing conditions of chronic-illness and the forever-treatment regimen keeping me away from the brain surgery route.
How are things today?
Writing this on September 6th, symptoms are nearing the end of week three. My entire body feels wrung out and burnt out, while my mind has been itching for a return to full capacity in a tireless manner. The will is far more powerful than the body at this point.
Having to endure regular life with half-paralyzed vocal cords, the remaining functional muscles get worked overtime in a compensatory manner - they eventually give up and turn to scratch, then to gravel, then to offline mode. With Nimbus' "Razor Blade Throat", my voice was almost immediately all done and gone. Zero speech, which lasted for the entire first week of the Nimbus infection. Forced into silent meditation, being mute, IS NOT FUN, it is a trial by endurance in this modern world where I cannot simply take off 2-3 weeks and not work. Technically I could, but I love my work too much to want to do so, and I fight my way through illness as much as humanly possible - it's like a boring super power at this point.
Alternate Timelines for Viewing
On any given day my face, and hair, and likely attire, will go through the equivalent of micro–climate changes. Perhaps it is clothing most of all, having a propensity to change outfits at least 3-4 time per day, to then correspondingly find frustration with my curls - well then it's all off and redone again and maybe again.
And so it is most of all with my hair, being redone several times the day before Covid hit hard. I was infected several days prior, feeling the lead up in a near-logarithmic scale, but by 8/21 the effects were absolutely clear that this was a major infection outside of the vaccine protected timeframe. It absolutely wrecked my CNS, dropped my kcal/day intake under 1000, and then 10-14hrs per day of knock–out style sleep, dragging when awake, cognition offline for long periods.
What about the Pre-Existing Conditions?
Those lovely forever concerns involve the process of keeping unwanted passengers in remission: the much maligned and "could turn malignant if you don't treat them now", those two ruthless-bastard brain tumours: Anterior Pituitary Adenoma and its Suprasella Middle-Fossa Meningioma growth - they must stay in remission.
NB.1.8.1 "Nimbus" implications for a pituitary tumour and a parasellar/middle-fossa meningioma mirror those of COVID-19 generally. Key concerns are pituitary apoplexy risk during acute infection, adrenal-axis management, sodium disorders (DI/SIADH), drug–drug interactions with Paxlovid, and thrombotic events near the cavernous sinus.
| Condition | Compounded via COVID-19 | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Pituitary adenoma | Higher risk of pituitary apoplexy; urgent care for sudden severe headache, vision change, ophthalmoplegia | Prothrombotic and endothelial injury milieu during infection |
| Hypopituitarism + secondary adrenal insufficiency | Stress-dose glucocorticoids for intercurrent illness; carry emergency hydrocortisone | Illness stress with inadequate cortisol reserve |
| Dopamine-agonists (bromocriptine, cabergoline) + Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ritonavir) | Major interaction; multiple hospital DDI tables list do not use Paxlovid; prefer 3-day IV remdesivir if treatment indicated | Strong CYP3A4 inhibition by ritonavir → ↑ DA-agonist exposure |
| Parasellar/middle-fossa meningioma (often cavernous-sinus adjacency) | COVID-associated CVST/CST can mimic or compound cranial neuropathies; low threshold for imaging if diplopia, proptosis, painful ophthalmoplegia | Infection-associated hypercoagulability; septic CST |
| Meningioma hemorrhage | Intratumoral hemorrhage is rare (≈0.5–2.4%); routine anticoagulation decisions remain individualized | Tumor-vascular fragility; anticoagulation data mixed |
Well sure, and remission is relatively easy as long as the required medication is taken. Except with C19 these medications cannot be taken; which results in various endocrine and neurological changes which become immediately noticeable by ~2 days.
- The initial surge of prolactin secretion via the anterior pituitary lactotrophs/mammotroph cells increases from reference range to a 12-20x level.
- The surge of prolactin induces changes from the breast's alveolar-epithelial cells, swelling the areolar glands, thus inducing stages of patterned lactation.
- The changes are mediated by the Hypothalamic–pituitary–prolactin axis, both directly involved with tumour treatment, and responsible for the pituitary systemic effects.
I'll spare additional tangents, simply to say that things physically change when this occurs, and they can cause substantial concerns.
Any Potential Benefits, Perhaps?
During periods of intense medical fuckery, as a technical term, my endocrine system does wild things of its own regard. Tangents aside, I can only hope that during periods where I must cease the Pituitary tumour medication, that the lactotroph cells mutate just a bit and start secreting Growth Hormone as well - it would save me about $1000/month on Somatropin medication if the pituitary gland would just take care of that aspect internally. Having a growth-hormone deficiency disorder is very costly, so we must hope that modern treatments in CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology can induce this mutation as a process of treatment regimen.
Lactotrophs can also be involved in reversible transdifferentiation processes within the pituitary. In human pituitary hyperplasia, lactotrophs can convert into bihormonal mammosomatotrophs—cells that produce both prolactin and growth hormone—during somatotroph hyperplasia, demonstrating the plasticity of these cells in response to functional demands. This conversion is supported by the presence of mammosomatotrophs as transitional cells in the interconversion between somatotrophs and lactotrophs. However, this process is not unconditional,
Drained, Dejected, Enduring the Forever Rest
My years of insomnia took a pause, and surely that would be nice in regular times, getting so much knock-out sleep. Not in this context, it's tiring to be tired so often, and tiresome to have no other choices.
Well, that's enough of that. Go away Covid, no one likes you.
