Overall, I feel pretty fine illness-wise, just some mild fatigue, which could just as easily be attributed to already having anemia or general peptide use because they force your body to allocate more resources towards recovery. What has me a little paranoid is the joint pain getting worse coinciding with both the virus and I took 2 amoxicillin that my general doctor prescribed before the second one ordered some proper blood work.
I know for a fact that fluoroquinolone antibiotics can royally fuck you up to the point that I'm frankly shocked how
that kind of shit is still "FDA-approved," but scores of other treatments with next to no side effects are not, and fortunately amoxicillin is just a penicillin type. Like, I would rather just fucking
die than take the fluoroquinolone based on the side effects.
However, I'm not entirely confident that it's 100% safe for your joints when one of the conditions to go to your doctor is if you have muscle/joint pain. No other severe side effects associated with it, but there are way too many unknown side effects or relations to other conditions that they don't bother studying until - whoops - enough people crop up with issues.
It's pretty bad, though, when I have better luck plugging in my blood work to chatgpt because my entire general doctor's office went on a bender or something for the holidays. That said, at least going off my overall blood panels, the increase in rheumatoid factors could be attributed to the virus and/or amoxicillin and not autoimmune, so that's the biggest relief.
I still made an appointment with a new orthopedic for a second opinion on my knees since they feel slightly different than when I first injured them, but hopefully it's just patellofemoral pain like the first doc chalked it up to alongside some quadriceps tendinopathy that was already confirmed.
Stay hydrated, maybe add in some water with extra minerals/vitamins like Propel, and what helped me was adding in some immune supplements like this
one. Depending on your symptoms, the Traditional Medicinals tea brand is impressive, like if you have a sore throat, and for congestion I used the Mucinex nasal spray.
Keep well, man, being sick sucks for the new year.
For the injuries I'm dealing with, a smith machine was a must so I don't have to worry nearly sa much about the tendons getting tweaked the wrong way.
As big as they're all going to be, the additional functional trainer arms are what sold me on the Tornado model because I can do a lot more with those than even standard rack-attached cables. I'm not doing heavy rows or lat pulls because I can't put too much strain on my forearm muscles and stick with cobra grips, but it allows me to just focus on isolating the back muscles with less arm involvement. So, I'm kind of unsure if I made a mistake not ordering the lat pulldown seat, but what made me hold off is in a few of the videos it looked like they had a possibly unreleased seal row/lat pulldown seat hybrid, basically a Rep pegasus that isn't $400, and I'd buy that in a heartbeat if they do come out with it.
Plus, I have an old bodysolid lat pulldown/low row that has made due, but it will be nice having the aluminum pullies on the Get RXd.
In the meantime, the
Mark Bell Reactive Slingshot has been a lifesaver with dumbbells (Ironmaster) just so I can keep them as stable as possible without a bar while easing in tension on my triceps to help rehab those tendons.
I'm a bit mixed on lifting straps because they help ease the grip needed for things like pulling exercises, curls/extensions, and deltoid raises for lateral/medial epicondylitis, and even to an extrent with pressing. However, I find that regular lifting wrist wraps are better because I probably put too much strain on my medial tendons balancing the weights instead of just using my bare hands like I've always done.
Shit's getting weird.
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