fog

 1/1/22 

I woke up this morning to a thick, dark blanket of fog. I got my coffee's from 2 shops as they opened at 0600 in the morning and set off on my way to Fall River. 146 was so deeply entrenched in fog I could hardly see more than a few seconds ahead on the road, but I plunged onward, shaving a few minutes off my ETA as I went. The streetlights near the broad and fast part of the highway after the last light and before you reach Lincoln, Rhode Island looked like bright buttons in a quit of cloud. Suddenly I felt I was no longer racing down the highway on a cold damp new morning, but that I was gently  maneuvering under a dank blanket which covered the hills and the trees and the towns, my hot breath blowing back in my face as I shifted it's batting with my fast moving car. 

The day stayed so wet, though I spent most of it in the emergency room. It wasn't as exciting as Christmas or the day  the other week, in fact I spent the majority of day making calls to the many patients requesting COVID tests. It continues to dominate my thoughts, my life, my plans. I grow weary of it. I read about synovial fluid after I watched a partial reduction of a dislocated ankle – a young woman's souvenir of a New Year's spent in high heels. I learned that cracking your knuckles is actually causes by the rapid dissolution of gas from the synovial fluid filling the newly formed  space in the joint, something called cavitation. The rapid expansion of CO2 causes the high pitched crack you hear. I'm wary of my up coming weeks I have planned, the hours I've allotted for myself to work.  I picked up my other bike from Marina in Providence who still managed to not have caught it from Ben. I put it in the shed with the others, promising I would sell it soon.  I spent a while with  the cats when I got home, coaxing them each gently  to be friends. It went very well actually, my cat didn't hiss or growl, Nala did several times, but I had them both sitting in the same room for a while without me being near them for some time.  It was a win. Beeps did eventually charge  her in some terrifying cold eyed way that I never understand.  If it was anger,  or obvious play, maybe I could sympathize with his sudden tense lunge toward a new cat. At least it would be clear what his intention was. Instead he tends to leap suddenly and quietly toward them with a moon-eyed look half expecting to pass right through the other cat, as if he's trying to test not the adversaries behaviour but their corporealty itself. 

Yesterday I learned you need about 3.7 liters of water a day,  which is more like 14 cups or something not the 8 they've been peddling. I also learned that I probably have about 5 liters of blood, based on my age sex and height. I couldn't find out exactly though how much water I would have to replace my entire blood volume, probably the answer isn't particularly useful or easy to calculate (although it does make me wonder how we know how much blood any person has or if our guesses are just based on draining cadavers into graduated cylinders). I did stumble upon erythropoietin however, which it turns out is somewhat mysterious and interesting. Made in the kidney, binds to a membrane bound tyrosine kinase (which is important in say myeloid leukemia) and used as a performance enhancing drug, the little molecule that stimulates the production of new red blood  cells has a lot to say.  It did not in my cursory readings have much  to  say on what volume of water one must drink to completely replace their blood volume and at what pace.  A similar question I came closer to answering is how much water winds up staying in your body.  Urinary output is  between 0.5 to 1.5 ml per kig per hour, which  for me  at 175 lbs, about 80 kg, average output of 1 cc, winds up being  about 80 ml per hour If I drink 4 liters in a day, and 80 by 24 reaches a measly 1920 ml total output, meaning, I must assume,  that at least (if not more) than half of my 4 liters drank daily are remaining in my body.  Then again, there is insensible water loss and water respired out, so maybe 4 liters only increases your water by a little, or possibly is just enough to keep dehydration at bay.  Needless to say, I have more questions for my kidneys and for my nalgene, but I've made  great strides so far.