So, it's a little over a month since my last post, and thought I'd fill people in on how I'm doing.

After my last post, the urinary retention continued along with losing thirst reflex. I simply couldn't tell when I was thirsty. And while I tried to drink more water, I couldn't drink much and felt done early.

The end result? I eventually ended up with nearly brown urine (what little did come out) and serious case of dehydration. I nearly fainted when I stood up, and ended up in the ER with chest pain. They tested me and gave me a lot of IV fluids. I was discharged and told to hydrate myself more, required 2 liters of water a day whether I felt thirsty or not.

I continued to feel weak and exhausted and not at all like myself. But eventually I began to get the thirst reflex back, and drink like a normal human being.

That was about 3 weeks ago.

About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that a number of my symptoms I reported here a few weeks after my third shot had improved... I'm no longer getting severe headaches at the base of my skull. I slowly began to eat more solid food and my digestive system came back online, and I'm able to eat a normally portioned meal - but I do digest food better if I eat smaller meals more often during the day. I began to have bowel movements again when I wasn't, between not being able to eat and incredibly slow gut motility.

In terms of nerve pain, I'm rarely getting intense muscle and nerve pain in my legs (especially the upper thighs). 3 weeks after my third (and last) shot, I was able to walk around the block near my home a couple days a week and it took 20 minutes; when I got home I was exhausted and in pain and had to lie down. Now it's been nearly two months since my last shot, and I can walk several blocks, stop to take photos with my phone, and walk home in about 40 minutes to an hour and I am fatigued but there is not much pain. If I walk longer than that, I will get hip and thigh pain that's pretty intense. But this to me is a major improvement.

Something is still wrong. I am getting episodic joint paint in my hands and arms and legs, and I never had this before the shots. I get what feels like tendon pain/tendonitis randomly, too. I don't know what to do about it and I have appointment with a neurologist in the near future to discuss this and orthostatic hypotension.

I also feel like something is not right in my brain/breathing centers ever since I had the weird sensation within days of the shot where my ability to breathe voluntarily was affected. Because rabies virus attacks the brainstem, I suspect the dead virus is also found there, and affected me somehow. (I'd really like someone who researches this to tell me more about what I may have experienced; it's been the most disconcerting aspect of this post-vaccine hell.)

About a week after my last post, my titer test came back. It is 3.0. So in theory it's protective, but we all know from the fine print about what a protective titer is that it's a relative statement. However, no one really wants me to get the 4th shot given I reacted so badly to the first 3. The case rate in my area is super low, and we think we have seen the cat that bit me. The doctors originally were not going to give me the shots at all, and despite underlying medical conditions let me get them because my anxiety was severe and intractable when I went to the ER.

I also want to eventually get a COVID vaccine. And am afraid that I'm going to react badly to that, or possibly trigger something worse in me after this series of 3 shots in one week. It's hard to navigate this decision given what I've been through, and it's not clear how having a mast cell activation disorder affects it.

This is pretty long-winded, but I wanted to give a thorough update in case anyone wondered how I'm doing and in case anyone else would benefit from the sharing of my experience.

What I have learned that has really helped me echoes something someone else wrote here many posts ago: The anxiety can be severe with this situation, and it amplifies and worsens symptoms. It's important to find a way to tone it down, and focus on something other than the worst case scenario. The anxiety can create a vicious cycle that makes symptoms worse, which makes the anxiety worse, and then the symptoms worse.

I had to repeatedly tell myself, "It will be okay, a symptom means the shots are working - not that you are experiencing the virus" and then eventually a shorter "A symptom is just the shot side effect. Chill." It took many repeats in my head of doing this and pushing myself a little physically to do things around the house and take a walk (even if it hurt) for this to slowly improve over the course of a month.

Okay, all for now. :-)