Author: That Asian-Looking Chick

Open Letter from an Autoimmune Patient to Those Concerned About Her Vegan Diet.

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment
Yours Truly on 07/17/2025. Hi.

Dear all who are concerned:

I have Sjögren’s Syndrome, a systemic autoimmune disease, and it’s with gratitude that I hear your doubts and qualms about the food that I eat. You’re worried about me. You’re worried that I’m possibly making myself sick, keeping myself sick, or making myself worse with my plant-based manner of fueling my body. I’m writing this letter in the hopes that it will ease your minds.

Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with me, focus on what’s right with me.

First, though, to review:

Between Sjögren’s Syndrome, itself, and the complications I’ve developed, I’m uncomfortable and in pain all of the time. I have a lung that’s structurally damaged and getting worse, and a stomach that’s 60% paralyzed. Sjögren’s arthritis and tendonitis leave my fingers, hands, and wrists painful and stiff; I currently can’t drive, hold a pen to write, or use my hands to push open a door.

First thing in the morning, because of my severe dry eye, I squint through one eye at a time as I feel around for the eye drops. Getting the drops into my eyes is difficult because it’s uncomfortable to keep my eyes open long enough to deposit the drops. (I often miss, re-squeeze the bottle, and end up with drops running down my face.) At the same time, my mouth, throat, and tongue are so dry, it’s an ordeal to swallow and to speak coherently. My finger joints are the worst when I wake up. I can’t close my hands into fists.

I push myself through my morning chore routine and declare victory when I can get the bed made before noon. Morning going-out plans require a self psych-out and a ride on a choppy wave of adrenaline. It helps if I’m excited about where I’m going. When I arrive, no one can tell that I battled to get there, and I relax onto the warm sands of another win.

A lot goes into the execution of an average day as I listen to my body and respect her limits. I know I’m going to be working out, and that I’ll need to show up for myself.

All of this said, I can’t feel too badly about my everyday trials and tribulations when I think of some of the things that I’m able to do, despite my chronic illness.

Examples:

–I can pull myself up in bed and swing my legs around using just my abdominal muscles. With my core strength, I can easily get up from a seated or lying down position without using my hands or other assistance. (Important because I can’t use my hands; they don’t flex backward, my wrists are weak, and the pain is a problem.)

–I can hold a 4+ minute plank on my knuckles. (Important for the same reason as parenthesized above.)

–I can walk five miles, up and down inclines at varying speeds, wearing a 12-lb weighted vest.

–I can work out nonstop for an hour doing LM Body Combat and Body Step classes, which incorporate HIIT cardio.

–I can run up and down stairs.

–I can lift weights. Using modifications where necessary to accommodate the disability in my wrists, I strength-train with weights at home, or on machines at Planet Fitness.

Amazing, isn’t it? Why focus on what’s wrong with me when I can yet do all of these things? Clearly, I’m doing something right.

I work out through the pain, and I get it done. These days, I work out six days a week. Regular exercise is highly encouraged by my doctors; it’s practically prescribed.

Imagine! I’m chronically ill with pain, discomfort, and a slew of medical challenges, yet I feel good in my body, and I’m fitter than many women my age (56) who aren’t sick. How can this be?

Food is medicine, and food is fuel. The food that I eat energizes my body even when I’m sleepy and tired. The energy in my body permits me to exercise consistently. What is this miracle food that allows me to maintain my fitness and a healthy weight in the face of my autoimmune encumbrances as a middle-aged woman in menopause with hypothyroidism and osteoporosis, to boot?

Plants.

I get my macronutrients (carbs, fats, and proteins, nutrients that we need in large quantities to ensure that our bodies function properly) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, trace minerals) from plants and plant-based foods. I’ve never been anemic or deficient in any vitamin or mineral.

Autoimmune disease is an inflammatory disease, and an anti-inflammatory diet is largely whole food, plant-based.

Rather than making me sick, plant-based eating makes it possible for me to enjoy a solid level of fitness despite my chronic illness, because I wouldn’t be able to do it if I didn’t feel this vitality in my veins. Rest assured that I am not making myself worse with my plant-based diet.

I’ve taken brief steps away from veganism over the years, for various reasons, so I know how much worse I feel when I do eat mammals, birds, fish, and dairy. It never went well. I experienced level 11 pain when Sjögren’s arthritis attacked both of my ankles in a bad flare. I couldn’t walk for two weeks. I was 25 years old.

Arthritis, rashes, bodily fatigue, and gastroparesis flares were just some of the additional issues I experienced. Every time, I returned to my plant-based diet, and I felt better. Even with my current problems, I feel better now than when I wasn’t vegan, because I have this awesome energy in my body. I always felt sluggish when I ate meat and animal products. For me, personally, there is no comparison.

It’s important to note that one autoimmune disease can lead to other AI diseases, and complications are always a lurking threat. Experts don’t know what causes autoimmunity in the first place; theories include genetics and environmental factors, but at this point, no one knows for sure.

What is known is that there are triggers that can interfere with the management of autoimmune conditions. For instance, stress can trigger flares, so minimizing stress as much as possible is always a goal. Foods that promote inflammation in the body should be avoided, while anti-inflammatory foods should be favored. Anti-inflammatory foods are plant foods such as fruit; veggies; whole grains; nuts; seeds; legumes (i.e. beans, lentils, and peanuts); and healthy fats found in certain plants and fish (i.e. olive and avocado oils, along with the omega-3 fatty acids found in flax seeds and fatty fish such as salmon, tuna, and sardines).

For research-based findings and information regarding the correlation between autoimmune diseases and whole food, plant-based diets (WFPB), I’m asking you to take the time to read this article published by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine: The Benefits of Plant-Based Nutrition: Treatment and Prevention of Autoimmune Disease. I’m providing the link here. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine is “A society of medical professionals united to reverse chronic disease,” and they provide a wellspring of information with research- and evidence-based educational pieces on this and various, related topics.

The Benefits of Plant-Based Nutrition: Treatment and Prevention of Autoimmune Disease

Though I do take pharmaceutical treatments for my disease, I consider my whole food, plant-based diet to be just as essential. I’m blessed to have the health that I have, but I also take some credit for my wellness. I’ll hang onto my vegan lifestyle, but thank you for your concern. I know that it comes from love.

I love you, too.

I’m your very certified, extremely serious anti-aging expert.

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Last week, a nurse at the V.A. had to double-verify that I was the correct patient for my vitals check because she didn’t believe that I could be the one born in 1968.
This type of thing is a common enough occurrence that I thought I’d address it here, as well as because I’m frequently asked how I take care of my skin.

I’m 56, and the usual assertions still apply: I haven’t had anything done, I don’t wear granny panties, and I don’t listen to A.M. radio stations.

In the car, not listening to an A.M. radio station.

I once got a facial that was included in a spa package that someone gifted me for my birthday. I hated it and never got one again.
Another time, I tried to wear one of those LED red-light face mask things, and I had a panic attack and had to rip it off. I packaged it back up and gave it to a friend.
I used to do facial masks. Eventually, I got lazy and dropped them from my routine.

According to skin care gurus, I do everything wrong.

You’re supposed to get 7-8 hours of sleep in order to have good skin. I get 4-5 hours, if I’m lucky.
You’re supposed to avoid showering in water that’s “too hot.” I shower in water that’s as hot as I can stand it.
Social media influencer skin care trends include buying water filter attachment things that you install on your shower and sink faucets so you don’t assault your skin with tap water. No.
They also say that you should dry your face between layers of skin-care products. No.
Cleanse your skin morning and night. No.
Use toner. No.
Get facial peels, Botox, and fillers. Burn the skin off my face? Inject my face with botulism toxin? Pump foreign materials into my face to change its shape? No, No, and NO.

About that last point: I’m not judging anyone who does these things. Neither am I saying that I’ll never have a change of heart and go for one or all of them, as terrifying as they sound, because that scenario does fall into the realm of possibility. If this ever happens, I’ll come back and let you know my thoughts!

What do I do, then? I’ll start with skin care.
Morning: I don’t cleanse my face in the morning. I drench a washcloth in very warm, almost hot water and press it onto my face just like that, dripping wet, over the sink. I hold it there for a minute or two. This compress soothes my Sjögren’s Syndrome eyes. Then I pat my skin dry and apply serum, eye cream, a mist of water from a small travel-section spray bottle, moisturizer, and sunscreen. Note: I mist water onto my face before applying moisturizer because moisturizers work by locking in moisture that’s on your skin. This is the opposite of what influencers do, with their fanning their faces or blowing their skin dry with little hand-held fans.
Night: Cleanse in the shower with gel cleanser, alternating nights with exfoliating cleanser. I avoid foaming cleansers. Then it’s the serum, eye cream, mist of water, and night cream. Sometimes I use an oil instead of a cream. I’m going to finish my open jar of night cream and then just use oil, I think. I give myself a little facial massage when I put on oil, and it feels like luxury.

The most important product in my routine is sunscreen. I use an SPF 50 mineral facial sunscreen with 24.1% zinc oxide, and I slather it on generously every morning.

Products:
I have a ride-or-die brand of skin care products, and I know where to go to get good deals on it! It’s a brand that’s sold in supermarkets and drug stores, so I never have to set foot in Ulta or Sephora. The brand has at least five lines of products, and I have favorites among them, but I ultimately get whatever’s on sale. I only use cruelty-free, vegan skin care products.

What else?

I have a few other habits that I think are helpful, starting with drinking a full glass of room-temperature water first thing in the morning (because of Sjögren’s, but I think it’s good for the skin, too). I have a daily glass of this delicious sparkling pink lemonade collagen drink. I used to take an anti-oxidant supplement daily, but now I just drink tea – black, green, or matcha.

Collagen support and delicious antioxidants.

As for what I eat, I’m 100% plant-based, and I like to eat mostly nutritionally-dense foods. I read labels and look for whole food ingredients. Organic is always good. With few exceptions, I avoid refined carbohydrates, meaning refined sugars and white rice, white potatoes, white pasta, and white breads (except for sourdough, which doesn’t behave like a refined carb). Avoiding sugar means avoiding alcohol; I don’t drink.

Let’s see… I don’t smoke. I work out regularly. I avoid the sun, even though I wear gobs of sunscreen. I guess this covers it, but I have a feeling that I’m forgetting something!

As far as I can think for now, that’s it, friends. I basically just try to live a healthy life. I have a severe, systemic autoimmune disease, so it’s important to me to try to optimize my habits and routines to this end. With the exception of sleep duration, I think I do pretty okay.

May this find you enjoying a marvelous day or night!

Spring 2025 and Charlotte the Lung.

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Hello, friends. This evening I’m writing to you from my office cozy with its string lights and Hershey’s cushions and blankets all over the floor, cocooned and insulated from the shivering depths of our desert valley. We’ve been having a spring cold spell with temps in the 60’s all week. Today the high was a teeth-chattering 66 degrees F, and yesterday the high was 64, which to me is a crazy Arctic blast.

I didn’t mean to be delinquent here last week! I wanted to post, but I found that I couldn’t make a decision, so I ended up walking away from my laptop.

I’ve been going back and forth trying to decide whether to keep you apprised of medical updates and such. I figure you’ve been along with me for the ride so you may want to know what’s going on, but I wasn’t sure how much I wanted this blog to be about my health – there’s been a lot of that lately. However, I did go to the pulmonologist last week, so I have updates. I finally decided to go ahead and share these and future updates with you. I promise there’ll be more to this blog than medical stuff, though!

First, a quick look at the current situation of my swelling in the aftermath of gum-graft surgery. It’s coming along! That area of my jaw is still tender to the touch on both sides, but the swelling is gradually going down, just as I was told it would. “Gradual” is right.

Evening drive – dusk – sunset. [3/29/2025]

About Charlotte the Lung, then.

Charlotte’s latest CT scan (two weeks ago) looks worse than last year’s. My partial lung collapse (atelectasis) hasn’t changed, but “mild bronchiectasis” (April 2024) is now “traction bronchiectasis” likely due to fibrosis (scarring). The scan also shows “multifocal areas of endobronchial debris or mucous plugging,” which seems to be a product of Sjögren’s Syndrome. My pulmonologist believes that Sjögren’s is complicating matters for Charlotte.

My updated pulmonary function test shows changes for the worse in a couple of areas, as well.

Because of these results, I’m now on a different medication, and we’re going to repeat the CT scan and recheck my pulmonary function in six months. Doctor said that depending on those results, he might want to perform a second bronchoscopy, and also treat my lung infection. We’ve been taking a “wait and watch” approach to the infection, since it’s low-grade and the treatment is aggressive.

Despite these disappointing test results, I’m still incredibly grateful to have lungs that work, structural abnormalities aside. I can’t hike, swim, or sing the way I used to, but I can breathe. I don’t need oxygen!

Week after next I have an appointment with my neurologist, so that week’s post will include Agatha the Brain updates.

May this post find you doing well with your health and well-being, friends. Thank you so much for reading, for still being here. It means a lot.

Until next time!

Hooked up for a 72-hr EEG (ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAM brainwave study)

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2025 was supposed to start with a refreshed fitness plan for the new year, but it’s the middle of March and I’m only now on the threshold of starting that. I’m looking at this coming Monday as 2025 Fitness Day 1. There have been several good workouts this year, and that’s great – certainly better than nothing! – but sporadic workouts don’t a fitness routine make.

Today, I finally got my gum-graft stitches removed, along with approval to start working out again. Tomorrow, I’ll have the wires on my head removed, and that will be the last thing that has to happen before the fitness routine for the year can truly begin.

Yes, there are wires on my head! I’ve had them on since Tuesday. The reason? Agatha. I named my brain after Agatha Christie, the Queen of Mystery, because mysterious behavior deserves a name of mystery. Now Charlotte the Lung has a friend. This is what happens if you’re a vital organ of mine and you get up to shenanigans. You get a name.

My first electroencephalogram (EEG), the regular one I had done in the hospital, showed: “There was a single instance of left temporal slowing lasting about 1 second.” The analysis ended with “IMPRESSION: This was an abnormal video-EEG during wakefulness, drowsiness, and sleep, due to the presence of a single instance of brief left temporal slowing.
CLINICAL CORRELATION: The finding of brief left temporal slowing is suggestive
of underlying focal subcortical dysfunction.”

Because of this result, my neurologist needs more information from Agatha, hence the 72-hr EEG, aka “ambulatory EEG.” Walking around with the wires connected to my head for three days might produce answers.

The technician attached 23 EEG electrodes to my head, plus two EKG ones to my chest in order to monitor my heart. The wires coming out of the electrodes are gathered into a long, multi-colored wire ponytail and trail down to where they’re connected to a box. The box fits into the cross-body bag that I have to wear for three days. At the end of the study, I’ll hand over the box that holds the data (my brainwave activity over the 72-hr period), and the data will be analyzed.
After that, I’ll go straight into the MRI tube for fasting brain scans.

Now, I’ve got pics for anyone curious about the procedure! You also might find these to be helpful if you’re going to be getting a 72-hr EEG.

72-hr EEG – Attaching the electrodes: the technician separated my hair over the targeted locations on my head and scrubbed at my scalp with some kind of cleansing solution, then placed dollops of glue (for lack of a better word). The electrodes would be pressed into the glue.
72-hr EEG – The process took about 45 minutes.
72-hr EEG – 23 wires from 23 electrodes, all plugged into the white box.
72-hr EEG – All hooked up!
72-hr EEG – The white box goes into this black cross-body situation that you wear for the duration of the 72-hr study.
72-hr EEG – The technician wrapped everything up well with multiple layers of gauze. The electrodes aren’t going anywhere.
72-hr EEG – When I go out, I cover the gauze with this thin black satin-lined sleep cap thing. In my mind, it makes the whole contraption invisible.
72-hr EEG – Here’s the box in the bag with the wires hanging out.

“Just don’t go into any federal buildings,” advised the technician. “Or airports,” I replied. We laughed. There’s nothing funny about suicide bombers, but I was amused at the idea of going around with a black bag strapped to my body with a bunch of wires sticking out.

My 72 hours will be up at 2pm tomorrow. I’ll go back to the hospital for the unwiring, and tomorrow night I’ll be able to shower for the first time in three days!! The week is ending on a good note, having both my gum-graft stitches and the brain wires removed. Tonight, I ate actual food for the first time in five weeks, and tomorrow, I get to take a shower.

I hope you’re all feeling fine out there, too. Until next time, friends.

Interview with a stray cat.

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Q: Please state your name for the record.
A: Hershey.

Q: Hershey as in the chocolate?
A: Yes. When I bump my Mom’s nose with my nose, she says that Hershey’s kisses are the sweetest!

Bonding.
Staring contest, otherwise known as bonding.

Q: And you’re a girl?
A: Yes, and the vet guesses that I’m five-almost-six. I’m a senior and I need dental work in the next few months, whatever that means.

At the vet’s.
Do I look like a senior?

Q: You’re a recent outdoorsian ex-pat. How do you feel about living indoors now?
A: Never going back!

Mom threw one of her bathrobes on the floor with the other blankets and now it’s mine.

Q: Now that you’ve been brought indoors, what do you miss the most about the outside world?
A: Stalking birds, I guess.

Q: You’re learning about housecat toys now. Which are your favorites so far?
A: My plastic spring and my wand toy with furry string, fleece ball, and feathers. And I love snuggling with the sloth that my Auntie Jessica gave me without knowing that it was for me. I also love the sushi.

Sloth snuggles.
MY sloth.
Sushi!

Q: What is one of your biggest challenges in transitioning from outdoor to indoor cat?
A: There are two other cats in this house, and once I’m cleared to leave my room (Mom let me take over her office), I’m supposed to meet them and be friends with them. I’ve never been friends with other cats. Mom says that these ones are my sisters.

A Roary.
A Sabrina.

Q: What color is your coat, and what do you think is your best feature?
A: My fur is white and I have a tabby patch in the shape of a bear rug on my back. I think my eyes are my best feature. I have black eyeliner around my green amber-flecked eyes.

Bear rug tabby patch.
Cleopatra eyeliner.

Q: You’re eating canned food for the first time. What is your favorite so far?
A: Grilled chicken and rice with gravy!

Q: One last question, Hershey. You said that you’re five years old. After five years, how did you finally make your way to your new home?
A: An angel named Nenette guided me to my forever home. She said that there’s a cat mom who needs me as much as I need her. I traveled for five years to find my parents!

Dad took this because he liked it when I put my paws on Mom’s mouth.

Mom was Nenette’s mom, too, and she said that Nenette is my angel sister.

Angel Nenette.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
A: No. Not at the moment.

Good night!

Thank you for your time, Miss Hershey. We hope to hear more from you in the future!

The End.

Gum-graft post-op recovery progress, week 3.

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Hello! Thought I’d check in with another update following gum-graft surgery.

Recovery is going well. The swelling is gradually going down, and I believe that my gums are looking less white, which means that the new (cadaver) tissue is vascularizing. By the time my next post-op appointment comes around on March 20, everything should be knit together with a nice little network of tiny blood vessels, and the stitches can come out. I’ll be able to brush my bottom teeth again. I’ll be able to eat more things, and I should walk out of that appointment with an all-clear for working out! I’ll be counting on that. Inactivity has me jumping out of my skin.

This, from two days ago:

Post gum-graft surgery, week 3

You can see the improvement of the swelling beneath the corners of my mouth. Getting there!

That’s it for now, friends. Things have been busy here with the addition of a new family member. More on that next week! I’ll provide details and pics! HINT: He’s white with tabby patches.

Stay healthy and safe, all.

And my mom says I should do YouTube videos.

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Today I filmed myself explaining the current situation with my gum-graft surgery recovery thinking it would be easier than writing about it, and it quickly turned into this:

This is 56.

I decided not to publish the video, but I did get something out of it: the photo I’d choose if I had to pick just one to sum up my homebody self. I was wearing a pale shirt because I’d just come in from outside where I’d been cuddling with a dirty white stray cat. Wet spots where I’d spilled water on myself. No make-up. Octopus. You know.

It seems I spent more time in the video talking about this octopus than I did about my recovery progress. Clearly, when the question is gum-graft surgery, the answer is octopus.

HEY IT’S AN OCTOPUS
I named him Abraham. He has tentacles and everything.
Don’t remember what I was looking for in IKEA that day, but I found octopus.

That aside, I did manage to end up with enough of a video that I could grab a couple of relevant screenshots.

Swelling, greatly improved. It’ll be months before it goes down completely.
Bruise on the left side pretty late in the process. The right-side bruise was huge and purple, but it progressed to the yellow stage and faded out after about 10 days.

Yesterday was my two-week post-op appointment. Most people at this point would be healed enough to have their stitches removed. I left the appointment with my stitches still in.

–The doctor had reminded me that I’d taken longer to heal the last time I had a cadaver tissue graft, and it was because autoimmunity tends to complicate things when the body is trying to accept foreign material. Sure enough, this is the case again. The stitches will need to remain for another two weeks so the graft can take.

–This means that I’m still very limited in what I can eat. Mainstays of my current diet include thick plant-based yogurt and fruit smoothies (I make them so thick they’re more like froyo), protein shakes, applesauce, velvety soups, and No Sugar Added ice cream. I also try to make spinach smoothies so I can drink fresh greens. We have these scrumptious sugar-free plant-based dark chocolate peanut butter cups that are amazing, so I have one of those every day, as well.

–No working out or lifting or doing anything physical for the next two weeks. I can take short, slow walks, but nothing more than that. The doctor explained that the tiny blood vessels that are trying to form and bind the cadaver tissue to my own tissue are very delicate, so even slight elevation of my heart-rate and blood pressure can burst the vessels and drag out the healing process even longer.

I’m trying not to feel super dismayed; the doctor did say that I’m about 80% of the way there. I just have to sit and rest and do mostly nothing for a little while longer.

My nutrition is solid, but I miss the biting-into and chewing part of eating.

All things considered, I have no reason to complain. Autoimmunity is what it is, and it could all be so much worse! I have it good! It’s nothing less than a privilege to be able to have these surgeries, at all. I’m endlessly grateful for having what I have.

That’s it for updates on the surgery, friends. Things are going well on the healing front, just slower than what my impatient Aries-moon ass would like.

May this post find you all doing well! See you next week.

Also, OCTOPUS.

the end

Well, I’m back. Hello, new blog year!

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Hello, friends.
Just… looked to see when I last posted here, and I can’t believe it was December 6, 2024. It’s been 11 weeks!! Every Friday morning I wake up and think, I missed my blog again. I had no idea that I’d done that 11 times. Yikes. Apologies, all. I guess a (good as any) way to dip my toe back into the bloggy water is to attempt a broad catch-up, for those of you still around and interested.

Here goes!

Holidays
With the holidays came visiting relatives and lots of quality time with family, and those were the best times! There is nothing like family. We are blessed, especially so in that everyone’s doing well.

Health
Sjögren’s Syndrome (autoimmune): Same as always. Nothing new.
Lung: Charlotte the Lung persists in her totally manageable holding pattern of structural abnormality (partial collapse) and low-grade infection (fungal). No changes, no new issues, all is well. I have another pulmonary function test and CT scan scheduled for next month, just to confirm.
Breasts: My mammogram revealed an area of concern, so I had to have a biopsy. That took place on the day after Christmas, and the result came back benign. We like a normal biopsy, yes, we do.
Brain: My brain has joined Charlotte the Lung in earning herself a name due to shenanigans. I call her “Agatha” after the Queen of Mystery, the wonderful Dame Agatha Christie. Agatha the Brain is being mysterious, but my neurologist is on the case! More on this to come.
Gums: I got to enjoy my fourth gum-graft surgery on Wednesday last week.
Years of monitoring and four surgeries later, my periodontist and dentist agreed that my gum recession is a case of unfortunate genetics. There is likely a fifth surgery in my future. I had my top front done twice, the bottom front, and now the bottom sides. The top sides will be next, whenever it gets to that point.
I’m healing well, I think, and today I was able to eat oatmeal, the most solid food I’ve had since the surgery. It was delicious.
Mental health: After over a decade, my medication’s been switched from Buproprion (Wellbutrin) to Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq) in the SNRI class. We had pharmacogenetic testing done to make sure that the new medication will work with my DNA, and it does… wonderfully, might I add! I’m very happy (pun not intended) with this new anti-depressant.
Other: I had a cold and a bout of food poisoning. They were neither here nor there. The cold did not develop into pneumonia. The food poisoning did not last longer than three days. Best-case scenarios!

Fitness: We’ve been sadly inconsistent with our workouts since November. It’s been fits and starts. Things keep happening… houseguests, holidays, illnesses, and occasional other circumstances. We’ve only worked out three times this month, and then I had surgery last week and it’s No Exercise For Two Weeks as I recover. Once cleared, I’ll get back to trying to get back, and then boom, a three-day brain test in March during which I won’t be allowed to work out. [::shakes fist at Agatha the Brain::] See what I mean? Fits and starts.
It will happen in time, though not soon enough!

Home
My office went through a major re-vamp, and you know – if you’ve been here from the beginning – that I’m going to come to you with an “Updated Office Tour” picture post. This time, though, there’s been a bigger change than décor theme! For the first time in ten years, there are no plants in my office. I’ve moved them all into the bedroom so that I can keep my office door open. The cats don’t go into the bedroom, so the plants are safe behind that closed door. (The cats are safe, too. Many of my plants are toxic to cats.)

Speaking of the cats…

Kids
Feline kids (Roary and Sabrina) are great, and
Reptile kid (Geronimo) vacillates on the line between hibernating and not-hibernating. A desert tortoise will do this; it’s just challenging when you have him artificially hibernating in a Sterilite box in the tool shed. It was 76F today, so I took him out – with great ceremony, mind you – and placed him in the sun to bask.

Geronimo’s first day out in 2025! (Kind of.)

I went back into the house and came back a while later to check on Geronimo. He’d moved a few feet over. Next time I came out to check on him, I found him hunkered down at the corner of the tool shed, sound asleep, so I opened the door and put him back in his box. This time. The high temps into the next week, starting tomorrow, are projected to be 79, 78, 81, 85, 86, and, finally it’ll be 90F on Wednesday the 26th. If it’s actually 79 tomorrow, I’m not putting him back in the shed. Rise and shine, kid! I miss you.

On that note, it’s late, so I’ll close here. I didn’t expect this overview to go on this long, anyway!

I hope you’re well.

Always.

I’m still here! December is here, too.

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Hello, friends. It’s been a couple of weeks, and November is somehow… over.

In November I was busy being sick with a cold, enjoying time with visiting relatives, and bounding merrily along to various medical appointments of systemic nature. Hosted a game night, watched From and Arcane and Silo and Only Murders in the Building, and tucked Geronimo away for hibernation. Workouts became the collateral damage of my 10-day headcold and were further neglected as holiday-related events rolled around, but we’re hauling ourselves back onto the ol’ track.

What else? I’ve been adjusting to a couple of new medications and their side effects, and that’s going well. We’ve been mightily entertained by the post-election shit-show spawned by the outcome, sitting back to watch it with our popcorn and our squeaky-clean consciences. When all else fails, resort to amusement with a touch of schadenfreude, I always say.

November’s crown jewel was holiday family-time. More of that coming up!

One thing I won’t be busy with this month is decorating for Christmas, as it won’t be possible. If it was, I’d do up our abode with Krampus and spooky Gothic angels, my ideal Christmas décor theme. Perhaps next year. It would double as birthday décor, as my birthday falls a couple of days after Christmas.

This is how I’d sum up my mood: I’m happy to be in my birthday month while planning which cookies I’m going to bake for Christmas this year. My Capricorn ass has never minded that the two events take place within days of each other.

And so, with all of this, I suggest unto you, go forth into December with authenticity and joy, the joy of being yourselves and being with loved ones, whether they be two- or four-legged. What better way to end the year?

Until next time, my friends.

Walk with me. (October Favorites!)

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Hello, friends. I’ve intended to do more “Favorite Things” posts since the beginning of the year, and well, we can see how that’s been going! Tonight, however? I got you.

1). Chilly weather.

Only in the last two weeks have we gotten cold water from the tap. That’s how you know the season has changed here in Phoenix Metro. With cold tap water comes temps chilly enough to warrant a light jacket, a cozy robe in the morning, and use of the electric fireplace in the bedroom… which I’m sitting before right now, as a matter of fact.

Last night:

Keeping cozy. [11/06/24]

Here’s the electric fireplace, in context:

Remote-controlled fireplace.

2). The serenity of the bedroom, in general.

My side of the bed.

Nenette is with me in this room, contained in a little wooden box. This room was her sanctuary in the month leading up to her death. The two (living) cats do not have admittance. We love our kitties, but this room is our human-only retreat.

3). Glass amber spray bottles.

I love using these glass amber spray bottles for my cleaning solutions.

4). Baking.

Pumpkin muffins, plant-based and sweetened with monk fruit.

Baking is a favorite hobby of mine, and it’s one I’ve been doing a lot of lately. I’ve been using mostly monk fruit – sometimes maple syrup – for the sweetener.

5). Reading.

I’ve been enjoying the works of Andy Greenberg, a brilliant investigative journalist and writer. He writes about cybersecurity, hacking, cryptocurrency, and the like.

Books by Andy Greenberg

Currently reading:
This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers

Finished reading:
—Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers
–Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurreny

6). T.V. show: From (MGM+ on Prime)

This show is brilliant. It’s scarier than most horror movies I’ve seen, and that’s saying a lot. From’s story is well-written, and the gore is spectacular. It’s going to be missed!

Happy new week to you, friends. Stay warm! I’m assuming that if it’s chilly here, than it’s colder where you are.

Our spooky stay in Jerome, Part III – The Toothbrush Cap. (+Happy Halloween!)

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Only this week I realized my merely vague awareness of the thinning of the veil between worlds as we approached this day, October 31st. It was uncharacteristic of me, and shocking, and I was nonplussed. Somehow, not only had I back-burnered getting my house and front yard decorated for Halloween, but I’d failed to do it, at all.

Last year, Halloween completely fell through due to emergency. The Halloween candy went untouched. We still had it, the large black cauldron overflowing with treats, and it was still good. Might as well set it out and drag the skeleton from storage to hang on the front door, I thought. Maybe scatter some jack-o-lanterns around, too. 2023’s Halloween candy can make its way into the bags of 2024’s trick-or-treaters. So it shall be.

Yesterday evening’s temperature of 71F brought in the year’s long-awaited first instance of chilly weather. It was magnificent to have to put on a light jacket outside. It’s been hot-hot all month, with four days of temps over 110F. Unheard of! Maybe that’s why I barely took notice that it was October.

I did manage to engage in some kitchen witchery this morning, though, to make soul cakes in celebration of Samhain.

Sabrina oversaw the baking proceedings from her perch on the kitchen window.

Sabrina of the Long Tail, candle-gazing.

I used dried cherries for the fruit.

Plant-based soul cakes for sacred ancestors on Samhain, my favorite holiday in the wheel of the year.

Now, then!

In this final post about our extended weekend getaway in Jerome, a tiny and old haunted mining town in the mountains of Northern Arizona, I’ve got one last story to share. I believe I referenced it in my last post. It was the toothbrush cap situation.

My routines on autopilot help to offset my absentminded moments, and this can be a blessing at times. I never have to look around for my electric toothbrush’s cap, because I always set it down someplace nearby when I remove it. In our room in the Jerome Grand Hotel, that place was on the coffee table before the loveseat that sat near the bathroom door. The bathroom’s pedestal sink offered no space for setting things, so we used the coffee table as a bathroom counter.

On the final night of our stay, I couldn’t find my toothbrush cap when I finished brushing my teeth.

Mind you, the cap is easy to miss and easy to lose. It’s small and clear, just a slight thing to cover the toothbrush bristles. We searched the table, the loveseat, and the floor under and around the furniture, near the bathroom and even in the bathroom, and we came up with nothing. We looked for it again before checking out the next morning, to no avail.

It wasn’t a big deal. We had more of those caps at home. It wasn’t a critical thing, or a thing of monetary value. My bafflement was mild, because small, light things do get shuffled around and inexplicably lost.

Back in Phoenix a week later, I deposited the contents of my handbag onto the bed. The whole bag needed a purging, including a clean-out of the two pouches in which I keep the smaller items. The largest of the pouches lies flat at the bottom of the bag, buried beneath everything else, because it’s the pouch that I don’t need to access often.

When I unzipped the pouch and turned it upside-down, its contents dropped onto the bed: packets of Advil and Tylenol, hand wipes and alcohol pads, band-aids and eyeglass cleaning wipes. A small bottle of glasses-lens cleaning solution fell out, along with a small cleaning cloth. The last item that dropped onto the bed was my missing toothbrush cap.

I thought back to the sequence of events the night of its disappearance.

F.P. was sitting with me on the loveseat when I removed the cap to brush my teeth in that haunted hotel room. He did not see me get up; take the toothbrush cap to the bed; dig through to the depths of my handbag to get to the large pouch that was underneath everything; slip the cap into the pouch; return the pouch to the bottom of the bag; repack all of the other handbag contents on top of it; come back to the coffee table at the loveseat, and then brush my teeth. Nor did he see me doing all of that after brushing my teeth (before coming back to look for the thing that I’d just stashed in the pouch at the bottom of my bag).

In other words, we’re 100% certain that I didn’t put the toothbrush cap into the pouch that was buried at the bottom of my bag, which was sitting on the bed across the room when I was getting ready to brush my teeth. My routine on autopilot: remove the cap, set it down, brush my teeth, and put the cap back on. That’s it. At no point would I say to myself, Self, here’s an idea! Go across the room to your bag and hide the cap in the pouch at the bottom.

Here’s the pouch, toothbrush cap on top:

Always at the bottom of my bag.

Earlier, the maid had divulged that there’d been “a lot of activity” at our end of that hallway, and in our room in particular. Guests had mentioned drawers opening in the middle of the night, things disappearing and re-appearing and such. (Have other recent guests in or near our room encountered two antique-doll-like girls?)

If spirits can open drawers and move objects around, then I guess I can apply that speculation to this business with my toothbrush cap. There is, after all, no other explanation.

Now, there’s something else I wanted to show you, just as an aside.

We went to check out the town’s abandoned high school while on our ghost tour the first night we were there. Inside, the darkness could only be illuminated with red light, we were told.

Inside Jerome’s abandoned high school. I believe this is in the gymnasium/auditorium.

Okay, this next photo is the one that I wanted to show you.

We were standing on the stage in the gym (and/or auditorium) when I looked up and noticed this rectangle cut-out high up, near the ceiling. It looked like an interior window, but it was probably an oddly small and isolated window to the outside. I found it to be interesting, so I snapped a photo.

A lone window… of sorts?

Later, when I zoomed in to look at the cut-out more closely, I saw something.

Is that…

I kept zooming in.

Yes, that is.

I can’t be the only one who sees this, right? Do you see this?

(Wonder who she is… was…?)

My friends, I hope you enjoyed these story-tellings! I brought back memories of two other (possible) paranormal occurrences; perhaps I’ll regale you of those at a later time.

We’ll be back, Jerome, to stay at your haunted grand hotel again. We’ll return to the same room, the valley-side corner garden room on the 3rd floor. It was charming.

The garden room off of our main room: Lounge chairs, windows and French doors on the two exterior walls, and a late-September cross breeze with the mountains below on one side, and the valley below on the other.

Just splendid. And here in Phoenix metro, we’re in light jackets now, finally, and that’s splendid, too.

Happy Halloween, friends.

Our spooky stay in Jerome, Part II – The Phone.

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Now here’s the thing – one of the other things – that I wanted to tell you. There was more to it than those girls, see. Those girls (or whatever they were) who came walking toward us from our end of the hallway? The ones dressed as a pair of antique porcelain dolls? There were a few other unexplainable occurrences.

Such as that of the phone in our room.

A curly cord phone sitting on a side table near a window in a haunted hotel room has no problem casting itself in a narrative of visual intrigue. You go in expecting paranormal evidence all around, and this phone looked the part. It was an unglamorous rotary phone of yore, plain and black, as if it’d once taken part in a life of office drudgery.

If I had a photo featuring the phone, I would insert it here. I should have one, yet I don’t… despite the fact that I included it in the hundreds of shots I took as I moved around the room pointing my camera at every quaint oddity I saw, which was practically everything in the picturesque interior of our quarters. It was our first day in the hotel. Our families wanted pics of the room, and so I was taking them, methodically, as I do.

Maybe a good way to sum it up was that the phone was interesting to me, but I wasn’t interesting to it. Because all of the photos I took of it vanished. Every last one.

I checked my trash folder, thinking that maybe I’d accidentally deleted them. I remember the faintest cold prickle on my skin as I realized that the photos weren’t there, either. They were simply nowhere. Feeling ridiculous, I quickly brushed away the notion of re-taking the pics. Clearly, as I’d said, the phone didn’t want to be photographed.

On our third and last day, we were packing and preparing to check out when I found myself drawn back to the phone. It was nearly noon – we’d asked for a one-hour checkout extension – and the late-morning sun shone through the window next to the side table on which the phone sat, looking spread out with its wide base, like a squatting frog. Somehow, I felt compelled to touch it.

Now, an object warm to the touch would be an uneventful circumstance if the object is black and sitting in the path of a sunbeam. Black absorbs heat from the sun. But the object in question – the phone – wasn’t warm to the touch. It was actually hot. I placed my hand on the window and drew it away, further mystified. We desert valley denizens were enjoying a brisk, early fall morning in the mountains. The room felt comfortable. The window felt cool. Why, then, did the phone feel hot?

I picked up the heavy receiver and put it to my ear. The inside of the earpiece felt even hotter. It felt unnaturally, unreasonably hot.

I set the receiver down in its cradle and regarded the phone. It was a rotary phone, but it was missing its rotary dial. There was a blank white circle, either a sticker or a piece of cardboard, in the center of the phone where the rotary dial would be. With no rotary dial and no dial tone, the phone seemed to serve as décor.

“This phone,” I said to my Favorite Person (henceforth known as “F.P.”), “is hot. Isn’t it?” He came over and touched the phone, agreeing that it was. “It’s in the sun,” he reasoned. But the window, I pointed out, is cool. The table that the phone is on is cool. And the phone is… hotter than warm.

There was no explanation.

At home a few mornings later, I sat at my kitchen counter and observed a sunbeam on the counter below the window. The sunbeam fell on the black ceramic mug that I keep out as a container for tinctures. I went over and placed my hand on the mug, the counter, the window. The sun was bright, but the mug, counter, and window felt cool. Over the next hour, I sat in my spot at that peninsula counter and made sure to haul my ass up to move the mug when the sunbeam shifted. I wanted to make sure that it stayed in the transient sunbeam. Throughout my experiment, the black mug never got so much as warm. The same should have been the case with the phone in the hotel room.

Interestingly, the phone does appear in this shot of our room from the doorway.

There is a phone in this photo.

Now, there’s something else I wanted to show you, something that might be of interest if you’re the sort to believe.

Our spooky stay in Jerome, Part I – The Girls in the Haunted Hotel.

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Hello, friends. Once again, I come to you from the latest of hours. There’s more I wanted to share about our anniversary getaway in the ghost town of Jerome here in Arizona, but I realized, as I started writing, that this one incident is lengthy enough for a sitting. I’ll come back next week with Part II.

We stayed at the Jerome Grand Hotel, whose famous haunting goes back to the building’s early days as copper miners’ quarters, even before it became a hospital. (If you know me, you know that I was there for the haunting.)

It was the second night of our stay. We were driving back up the hill to the hotel at the top – the sun nearly at its setting point – when we noticed two girls on foot, making their way up along the same graveled road.

We passed them carefully. I studied them. At first, I couldn’t say what was unusual about them. Then I realized that it was their manner of dress. I guess I’ll start with that.

Both girls wore babydoll dresses that hung down to just above their knees. (The word that came to mind was “old-fashioned,” but I could be kinder and say “vintage.”) As for the color of the fabric, you could describe the dresses as “ivory” as easily as “antique white,” in any case an off-white with a yellowish undertone. Their styles were different, yet similar, both of them with an ivory lace top layer floating over the filmy dress beneath.

Mind you, the girls were not small children. They could either have been teenagers or young adults. They did not look like twins, though they might have been sisters. Maybe just friends. The shorter of the two had dark, bobbed hair. The taller one’s hair was a medium-brown color, and it was just as straight, but slightly longer.

I remember that the shorter girl, the one with the bobbed hair, wore over her left shoulder a small pink purse with a long, thin strap.

The sight of the unusually outfitted pair had me perplexed. Why were they dressed as if attending their own ninth birthday party in the 1800’s when they weren’t nine, and it wasn’t the 1800’s?

We rounded the curve of the steepest part of the road, which delivered us to the bosom of the hotel waiting at the top. The hotel’s restaurant, Asylum, occupied the ground floor of the building on the side facing the road, so it was the first thing that we encountered. Ah! I thought. Maybe the girls are going there to dine. Still an offbeat choice of attire for dinner (unless you’re indeed a child in the 1800’s), but the restaurant is called “Asylum,” after all. I guess I can see it.

We parked and entered the hotel, heading for the carpeted staircase. Mid-way up, we heard loud male voices echoing down from the 3rd-floor hallway, which was sealed inside the building’s inner cavity with a door that only guests could unlock. The voices grew louder as we approached that door. Surely, I thought, we would find two, maybe three guys hanging around in the hallway, yell-conversing.

But we didn’t. The voices stopped abruptly when we turned our key in the lock. We entered the corridor into silence. There was no sight nor sound of a door closing. There were no guys with loud voices. No guys at all.

Instead, there were the two girls, walking side-by-side toward us from the end of the hall – from our end of the hall, in fact. We were staying in the corner room at the far end. Room 39A.

Surprise and a chill filled my marrow at the sight of the girls. How did they get up here? Why are they coming from the direction of our room?

They moved toward us in silence, gliding along in their ivory frocks that looked even more yellowed with age in the dim hallway. I could see that the girl closest to me – the one with dark, bobbed hair – wore makeup such that you’d find on a porcelain doll, right down to the points of black eyeliner dotted beneath her eyes to the pink circles of blush on her cheeks. Around her neck, she wore a wide, black velvet choker, and a necklace with a pendent that looked like a cameo.

The girls slipped past without looking at us, or at each other, nearly inanimately. They moved in unison, as if one person rather than two. There was no hint in their eyes that they saw us, even as we nearly brushed shoulders with them in the narrow hallway.

Normally there would be a salutation. A friendly or cursory in-passing exchange of pleasantries. A nod. A smile. Maybe even a grimace, depending. Any kind of acknowledgement of the presence of another human being. Right?

My husband later said that he would have greeted them in the casual way that greetings are exchanged with strangers in passing, but there was “something in the air around them that made him want to pass them quickly, without looking at them or talking to them.”

It wasn’t that we weren’t feeling social, or anything like that, you see. It was just that the space the girls occupied felt empty and cold. It felt like a void, a barrier, and a warning, all at once.

Funny thing was, when we saw them walking up the graveled road, the girls seemed incongruous in their antique babydoll dresses under the darkening light of dusk. They appeared to be out of place. They didn’t fit into the setting. In the hallway of the hotel, however, they looked perfectly appropriate and at home. They were right where they should have been, and should always be: in the dim hallway of a haunted hotel.

I wish I’d had a chance at attempting to photograph the girls. In lieu of that, I have a pic of the hallway from the viewpoint of our room, as well as a couple of the hotel from the outside:

Our floor at the Jerome Grand Hotel, looking down the hall from our corner garden room.
The hotel from the road on the drive up the hill.

The Asylum restaurant on the hotel’s ground floor.

Stay tuned next week, when I’ll regale you with the phone incident and the toothbrush cap incident.

After all, it is October, when I usually post horror short films. I’m here to share true stories with you, instead. We took this trip at the end of September. Spooky season got underway for us in proper form, that is for certain!

Updates on Charlotte, my moldy lung.

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Poor Charlotte. Charlotte the Lung is permanently partially collapsed. Charlotte is… moldy with a fungus.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First of all! Please do stay tuned for the tale of my haunted anniversary trip, as it is forthcoming. I have pics and everything! That was going to be today’s post, but since I went to see my pulmonologist earlier this week, I’ll go ahead and share those updates with you who’ve been following Charlotte the Lung’s ongoing (mis)adventures.

This time, I met with my own pulmonologist, Dr. M, so we could go over my bronchoscopy and Pulmonary Function Test results. (The surgeon who performed the bronchoscopy had shared his post-procedure findings and impressions, but I’m not his patient.)

This is what Dr. M told me, in order:

1). [::Walks into the room; sits down; looks at me::] “Your lung has a mold.”
It’s the fungus aspergillus. It grew in a Petri dish in the weeks following my bronchoscopy. This took me by surprise. Of all the things I thought I’d hear, “Your lung has a mold” wasn’t one of them. (Charlotte!!) Dr. M suspects that aspergillus was able to flourish in my lung because of the intermittent immunosuppressant therapy I do for Sjögren’s Syndrome. That would be Methotrexate, which I’m back on at the moment.

2). My lung will always be partially collapsed.
A larger area of collapse would require a stent, Dr. M explained, but mine is small. And it’s fine. I’ve been living with it, and I’ll continue to live with it. I mean, what else am I going to do? And really, it’s fine.

3). My Pulmonary Function Test revealed air-trapping,
which is when all of the air that’s inhaled in a breath can’t be exhaled. This a normal finding for someone with a collapsed lung. It’s common with conditions such as COPD and asthma, as well.

–The creepy web in my lung (covering the smallest airway in my Right Lower Lobe) wasn’t a birth defect, after all.
Turns out that the web was a by-product of inflammation caused by damage (collapse) and disease (aspergillus infection), basically a build up of cells. A strange, filmy sort of mass.

–The scarring in my lung
is likely the result of the aspiration event and aspiration pneumonia that started all of this, and it, too, is permanent.

Oh, Charlotte. From aspiration of a foreign object to severe aspiration pneumonia to COVID to my intermittent immunosuppressant therapy, we had, in the words of Dr. M, “a perfect storm.”

It could be so much worse. I’m grateful, thankful that this is all it is. I certainly appreciate having an in-depth understanding of why I wheeze and experience shortness of breath, have occasional difficulty taking a deep breath, why it’s harder to breathe when laying on my back, why I have a dry cough, and why I can’t get through an hour of HIIT cardio or hike at a certain altitude without using an inhaler.

I’ll have another CT scan and Pulmonary Function Test and appointment with Dr. M in six months, so we can see how things are going.

My treatment plan remains the same. I’m continuing on my two inhalers. I declined the 30-day course of anti-fungal antibiotics, opting to see whether the fungal infection will resolve itself, though Dr. M thinks that I’ve had it for a good while. I’m to let him know right away if my wheezing and shortness of breath get worse, or if I develop other symptoms.

It’s been a good week. I’ve been enjoying my reptile kid as he gears up for hibernation; job-hunting; working out; doing the usual household tasks; being a Cat Mom; playing games; watching hours of T.V. with my Favorite Person; and reading a lot. These are from today:

[10/3/2024]
Also today. Funny how it looks like I’m laying on one cushion. There are two.
Favorite Person is hilarious!!
I’m greatly enjoying the Andy Greenberg books I picked up, even though they get me riled up with fury and disbelief. Well, this one I’m currently reading, anyway. (Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers)

It’s the world we live in.

Okay, I can feel the Capricorn stirring. I’m tired. I’ll wish you all a good night and a great week ahead!

Soliloquies.

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I can’t believe it’s been one year since this:

We did.

We spent last week out of town to celebrate our one-year anniversary and I was looking forward to sharing details and pics tonight but I’m feeling unwell and can only think about crawling back into bed so that’s what’s about to happen and I hope that you’re all doing better than I am.

Tales of our marvelously creeptastic haunted hotel stay and ghost-hunting tour experience forthcoming!

Go in peace.

A desert tortoise post at summer’s end.

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Friends, desert tortoise pre-hibernation season has arrived. It’s Geronimo’s busiest time of year as he eats everything in sight ahead of his cold-weather retreat, and it’s my favorite time of year. I love the end of summer and the beginning of fall. Contrary to popular opinion, we do have seasons here in Arizona, just in our unique desert way.

At this time of year, Geronimo often sleeps under the stars rather than in his burrow. He’ll graze in the early morning hours, retreat into his burrow to wait out the daytime heat, then come out again at dusk. What does he do at dusk? He does Geronimo things. He naps. He eats. It is a content life for the sweetest, gentlest creature. Geronimo is pure love, and I am grateful and honored to be his mother.

I went looking for Geronimo in the late afternoon yesterday, and I found him partially tucked away beneath the unruly ruella, one of his favorite napping spots. The highlight of the hour that followed, as far as he was concerned, was his discovery of the mesquite branches lying on the ground near his burrow. He happily tore into them. Delicious!

Found him!
I’m happy to just hang out with him here, but he must resume his roaming and grazing.
Hello.
Kisses!
Ambling along in the last of the daylight.
What’s this? Mesquite… on the ground?!
Indeed. Mmmm mesquite.
Let’s feast!

The love and trust of a desert tortoise in captivity is incredibly special. Geronimo is precious. He is my whole heart. It is impossible to explain how much I love him.

If you live in Arizona and you have a backyard, you may qualify to adopt a captive desert tortoise through the Arizona Game and Fish department’s Desert Tortoise Adoption program, if you are so inclined.

On that note, happy summer’s end to you all!

Transparency, and a few updates.

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Well, friends, this is embarrassing to admit, but I’m going to: I was a no-show here last week because I managed to get myself sucked into and stuck in a game (2248). This is so unlike me, it might as well be science fiction. As the cliché goes, I’m sorry to have left you in the dark. My husband got me into this particular game, so take it up with him if you must.

For the most part, I’ve been ignoring YouTube, and I’m spending less time scrolling on Instagram. I’m as absent on FB as ever. I’ve given up on Twitter (“X”) completely. I don’t know. At some point this summer, I started playing games on my phone, and here we are.

Also in the last two months, I picked up my long-dormant reading habit. I’m on my second book since then. My reading time every morning is precious, even if the book is infuriating, such as my current one.

Speaking of YouTube, and also quite ironically, considering the fact that I’ve drawn away from the platform, I’ve been thinking of putting up videos every so often… to show you stuff, not to talk about stuff. (I doubt you’ll catch me talking in the videos.) It would just be a video-capturing of pieces of my day or life, in general, to share here. Whether I’ll ever get around to acting on this idea remains to be seen.

And, since I have it, here’s a blurry pic taken in an Irish pub last weekend:

Blurry in an Irish Pub.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to start up my “Monthly Favorites” posts again, since I’ve had several requests for those! Stay tuned for that. I’ll now have books to include on that list, even if they’re infuriating. They’re good. They’re brilliant. I’m enjoying them in any case.

Go well and be well, friends!

At last, a spectacular monsoon storm.

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We had a magnificent violent monsoon storm in the late afternoon, and I have to document it here because it’s been years since we last experienced such an event. We should have storms like this – we used to have storms like this – every summer. Torrential, wind driving the rain horizontally through the heavy air, most of our front yard and street flooded for about an hour. Sirens non-stop in the distance for a time, because Arizonans can’t drive in the rain. (Call it one of our charms.) Downed mesquite trees. Our desert tortoise marching happily around the backyard, splashing in the puddles.

It smells lovely out there. I will never leave this desert. It’s another planet, and it is enchanting.

That’s all I’ve got for tonight, friends. Be safe out there!

It all comes down to what’s in the stars. (Medical updates!)

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Well! It’s the end of another week and I’m not sure how it’s also the middle of August. How’s that? My precious niece started Kindergarten yesterday. I’m a proud Auntie who can’t get over the passage of time. The kid’s going to graduate from high school, like, tomorrow, for chrissake.

In Sjögren’s syndrome news – seems to be all medical all the time up in here as of late – I went to see my rheumatologist today, and she’s starting me back up on both Methotrexate and Salagen. I’ve been on and off of these meds over the years; while I’m not a fan of their side effects, they do help. I’ll not complain. My one constant medication, Plaquenil (Hydroxychloroquine), doesn’t bother me at all. Additionally, new eye drops arrived in the mail this week, courtesy of my eye doctor after a recent exam.

That completes my current Sjögren’s syndrome pharmaceutical arsenal: Plaquenil, Methotrexate, folic acid (necessary with MTX), Salagen, and Refresh Liquigel eye drops. We’ll see how they (the latter) work.

And food! I figured I’d give a nod to the natural side of things, as I’m wont to do, and so I’ve been researching foods that cause inflammation in the body. Many autoimmune diseases, including mine, involve inflammation, so might as well learn about them, thought I. The list of pro-inflammatory foods is alarming, but I’ll not be intimidated. An anti-inflammatory diet is a plant-based diet, so I’m a step ahead. It’s just a matter of getting into the details. Which foods to avoid. Which ones are particularly good. Etcetera.

Charlotte the Lung has been behaving, so that’s brilliant. I’m scheduled to meet with my pulmonologist in a few weeks. He suggested that a new medication for Charlotte might be a possibility.

It all comes down to what’s in the stars, as usual.

Here’s today’s quick selfie snappity-snap:

Kitchen stretch.

That’s it for this week’s medical updates, friends, for anyone who may be interested.

The absolute best change I’ve made this year has been my return to a regular workout schedule. I’m overdue for a fitness updates post, so keep on the lookout for that!

In the words of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Thank you and Good Night.

Happy International Cat Day!

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The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
~ T.S. Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

For those who don’t know, then, in honor of International Cat Day, I’m pleased to introduce you to Sabrina. She also goes by Ballerina, Muppet, The Babiest Baby, and The Babiest. That would be five names, actually!

Sabrina.

Then there’s Roary, also known as Roar-Roar, The Roary-est Roar-Roar, The Roarster, and Monkey. They each have five names. We’re The Naming of Cats over-achievers.

Roary.

We have a Monkey and a Muppet, I often tell them, certain that Roary knows that she’s the Monkey and Sabrina knows that she’s the Muppet.

They’re precious. They’re well aware that this was their special day. They’re both curled up at my feet as I write this. A first!

Enjoy some throw-back pics of Sabrina:

Muppet.
Ballerina.
The Babiest!

And throw-backs of Roary:

Monkey.
The Roarster.
The Roary-est Roar Roar!

Have a wonderful week ahead, friends.

Much love from Sabrina, Roary, and Yours Truly, proud Cat Mom and Childless Cat Lady who most certainly does not want to make you miserable.

In which we celebrate my webless lung. (Charlotte’s Web revealed.)

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Why hello, friends!

With all kinds of shenanigans afoot everywhere we turn, it’s kind of a relief to slip into this space and simply regale you with the ever-so-exciting conclusion (I hope) of Charlotte the Lung’s mis/adventures.

First, here’s Yours Truly this afternoon, feeling glad to have received an overall positive report from my pulmonary surgeon when I went in earlier this week. I feel glad because Charlotte is feeling glad. If she’s not happy, then I’m not happy. Is that a normal relationship to have with one’s lung? Probably.

No webs in these lungs! [Aug. 1, 2024]

Also, State 48 REPRESENT! (Ahem.)

Now back to Charlotte: I did take pics of the surgery photos on my surgeon’s computer, as he encouraged me to do. Of course I thought of sharing them here, for anyone curious. If you’re squeamish, look away now!

To my disappointment, the creepy web wasn’t of the spidery variety. It was more like the webbing on a duck’s feet. As for WHAT it was, the surgeon isn’t 100% certain, but he’s pretty sure that it was a congenital defect – that I was born with it.

Ready? Okay, here you go:

The web stretched over the proximal opening of the lumen (medial basal segment of my right lower lobar bronchus).

And in this one, the angry red photo at the bottom shows the After:

Freshly freed of the web. After removing it, the surgeon treated the remaining tissue with cryotherapy.

My lab report was good, overall. The surgeon’s impression was “atelectasis of the right lower lobe,” which isn’t news – the atelectasis has featured in every CT scan I’ve had since last fall, including in one that wasn’t even a CT scan of my lungs. (It was a scan of my bladder, and the radiologist noted “right lower lung lobe atelectasis” because the abdomen scan captured the lower lung lobes.)

The surgeon also let me know that the enlarged submucosal glands he found in my right middle lobe are simply a normal aspect of Sjögren’s syndrome, “because Sjögren’s is a systemic disease.”

This was the best news. There’s no evidence of Sjögren’s syndrome complications in my lungs – just its hallmark signature on submucosal glands.

And this handily brings me to my next appointment in a couple of weeks, which is with my rheumatologist; she oversees my Sjögrens syndrome, as rheumatology deals with autoimmune diseases.

Finally, I will see my actual pulmonologist in January. Charlotte the lung is no longer on notice, and that’s what we like. She’ll have to undergo another bronchoscopy at that time, though, in order to check on the cryotherapy work that was done on the tissue remaining after her web was removed.

I believe this just about covers the situation. Thank you all for reading and for just being here, friends. It means a lot. Have a stupendous week ahead!

Sjögren’s syndrome and Charlotte. (Also, July 23rd was World Sjögren’s Day!)

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Hello there, friends. My bronchoscopy cytology and surgical pathology reports came back, and it seems that Charlotte, my right lung, is indeed experiencing complications of Sjögren’s syndrome, my autoimmune disease. This is more or less what was suspected. I’ll see my surgeon in person at my pulmonary appointment on Monday (I’ve only spoken with him on the phone); I suppose I’ll come away from that meeting with specifics.

One of my questions is did the event of aspirating the vitamin lead to this autoimmune involvement, or was the autoimmune involvement already in my lung when it happened? What is the correlation, exactly? Because all of this started when that vitamin got into my airway and landed in my lung. I have many questions, actually. I’ll come back here next week with the answers, for those of you following and interested in this situation!

Also, speaking of Sjögren’s, it so happened that the 23rd of this month (three days ago) was WORLD SJÖGREN’S DAY. Sjögren’s syndrome is a chronic, systemic autoimmune disease for which there is no cure, and it has its very own day in order to raise awareness and funding for research.

Of course I had to represent by wearing a Sjögren’s t-shirt. It garnered me some looks at the grocery store, but I didn’t get any direct inquires. Who’s to say that no one went and looked up “Sjögren’s” later, though? I’ve done that. I’ve gone home and Googled mysterious words on t-shirts. Bumper stickers, too. I can’t be the only curious person who learns things from messages others display on their persons and cars, now, can I?

I put on makeup, found a spot with good lighting, and took off my glasses for this pic in honor of World Sjögren’s Day. EFFORTS.

And here’s an everyday appearance one!

A better look at the shirt!

Sjögren’s Syndrome Warriors – NEVER Underestimate Our Strength.

Those of you dealing with chronic illnesses, especially ButYouDontLookSick illnesses, I see you. We are in this together.

Thank you so much for reading, as always, my friends. I hope you all have a splendiferous week ahead. Stay safe out there!

There was a creepy web growing in my lung.

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My right lung has become such a featured character in this blog that I finally decided to name her. “Charlotte.”

Plot twist: It’s looking increasingly like my lung issues don’t have much to do – directly – with inhaling that vitamin, or with the aspiration pneumonia that followed. It’s more like the aspiration event triggered a process, or pointed to pre-existing issues. More on this later, one way or the other.

For now, if you’re interested in my ongoing pulmonary adventures, read on!

I had my bronchoscopy done at the hospital earlier this week. It turned into a surgery. I named my lung “Charlotte” because she’d spun a web, which the surgeon found when he got in there with the camera. Surprise!

This strikes me as creepy, and not in a good way. Not in a spooky dark aesthetic spider web motif way, which I adore. More like in a space horror situation way. An Alien kind of way.

Anyway, the surgeon cut the webbing and removed it to be sent to the lab for testing, then treated the remainder of the tissue with cryotherapy, smoothing it down around the edges. The lab will tell us whether there was an egg sac with baby aliens incubating in my lung, waiting to burst out of my chest. I see you, Charlotte.

The web wasn’t Charlotte’s only party trick, though. In addition to that and the chronic scarring and atelectasis (collapse) that we’ve known about from the CT scans, there are festivities going on up in my right middle lobe: a lesion and some enlarged submucosal glands. The surgeon used cryobiopsy to take samples from each of those.

In addition to the biopsies, he performed a lavage (BAL) in the lower lobe, meaning he filled the lung lobe with fluid and immediately suctioned it back out to be sent to the lab for analysis.

All of this is in my right lung. CHARLOTTE. My left lung is completely normal. My left lung does not get a name. (As dubious an honor that may be.)

Something else interesting that the surgeon discovered is that the medial-basal section of my right lower lung lobe is abnormally small and narrow, almost as if it never really developed. He said that this looks like a congenital (birth) defect.

That about sums it up, friends. All of the information above is detailed in a much lengthier account written by the surgeon, which I accessed in my online medical portal.

There’s nothing much else to report. The next day, I went back to the hospital for a pulmonary function test. [::shrugs:]

It’s been a rough few days of recovery, but I’m on the other side now, and all is well. I haven’t worked out since Monday; the post-anesthesia pain and stiffness were more intense than I’d anticipated. I felt like I’d been banged up in a car accident from my waist up to my jaw! My throat and jaw are still a little sore, though I was only intubated for an hour. I still ache around my rib cage. It isn’t a whole lot of fun laughing and coughing. Overall, though, I’m feeling much better.

Next steps! In two weeks I’ll meet with the surgeon to review the lab findings, and he wants to go back into my lung in three months to make sure that the edges of the remainder of the web are still smooth. If they aren’t, he’ll smooth them down again using the same cryotherapy technique.

I’m looking forward to the lab results. I’m hoping for answers, a plan, and a different medication, because the Wixela isn’t exactly helping these days. (The Albuterol works, in the moment, thankfully, so that one’s good.)

I’m loving this worn out old skele-tee with its rib cage. I’ve had it for decades. It’s comfy and apt, and I’m glad it didn’t make its way into a Goodwill pile.

I’m leaning forward looking down at the camera with my hands resting on my thighs. It’s such a weird position, it looks like I have no neck, haha!

In other news, we’re going to see Longlegs tomorrow, and I’m so excited!! I’ve been waiting for this film since January.

Have fun doing whatever you’re doing that’s a good time!

More pulmonary adventures! (Lung updates.)

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Hello and welcome back to my blog that seems to be all about my lung. Seriously, I’m looking forward to the day I don’t have to come here with lung updates, because that will mean that everything that needs to be known will be known, not to mention sorted. It’s been a long year and two months of this nonsense, let me tell you.

Earlier this week I met with my pulmonologist, who, after listening to my breathing, said that he wants to get into my lung to investigate with a camera. The procedure, a bronchoscopy, is scheduled for next week. I have focal RLL (right lower lobe) bronchiectasis, RLL atelectasis (he thinks that this collapse is due to my linear scarring), and relapsed childhood asthma – that last, a likely consequence of the aspiration event/pneumonia. (If I never had childhood asthma, my current asthma symptoms would be referred to as “RAD,” or post Reactive Airway Disease… a fancy way of saying that I have lingering respiratory symptoms post-pneumonia.)

There’s a possibility, says the doctor, that my Sjögren’s syndrome is involved in some of these pulmonary shenanigans. I hadn’t known that Sjögren’s syndrome can affect the lungs, so that was something nifty that I learned!

We shall see, then. On my part, there’s nothing I can be doing differently. I’m diligent about taking my medication, and I’m getting regular exercise; when I described the intense workouts that I do six days a week, the doctor said excellent, keep it up. That was good. Confirmation is good. I can keep doing what I’m doing, and next week, we should know more.

That’s it for updates! Thank you for reading, as always, friends. And take care, please.

Several average days in the life of a jobless GenX-er. (FOOD and FITNESS-centric!! Lots of pics!)

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Hello. I’m a fitness junkie, a combat veteran, and a jobless GenX-er with PTSD, autoimmunity, and a partially collapsed lung, and this post is for anyone who’s curious about what I may get up to in an average week. Let’s jump in!

Every morning, first thing: I put in lubricating eye drops so I can fully open my eyes, and I drink water so I can swallow. (Sjögren’s syndrome.) Also, take I take my thyroid medication. (Autoimmune thyroiditis/Hashimoto’s.)

The necessary lubricating eye drops and a thyroid pill first thing in the morning.

Then I make the bed. We’re looking at my side of it, with my plush octopus (that I call “Levi”).

Making the bed, not crawling back into it. (Alas.)

On this morning, I was able to bond with my desert tortoise, because he was out. It was Monday. We had our first monsoon rain of 2024 that day, and Geronimo spent more time in the yard than in his burrow! I went out to enjoy time with him in the morning, afternoon, and evening. By the end of the day, my heart was full with Geronimo love. It is so special. HE is so special. He is my heart; I love him so much. I can’t even explain it.

Lots of time with my precious little boy on this day.

Then I came in and prepared our coffee, as usual. I love this little ritual, love looking forward to coffee. My fav is black with a powdered blend of eight mushrooms, and also powdered monk fruit extract. Kyle likes his coffee the same way, but he takes plant milk in his.

Black coffee with mushrooms and monk fruit.

I prefer to finish my coffee before eating breakfast. Breakfast is usually some kind of cereal with frozen blueberries. I mix up a half-serving of vanilla plant protein shake to use instead of milk. It is delicious! If I don’t have cereal, I’ll have a piece of Ezekiel toast with Earth Balance and a full-serving chocolate plant protein shake.

(Mon-Sat, that is. I make chocolate-chip protein pancakes every Sunday morning.)

Cereal with frozen blueberries and a vanilla protein shake for the milk.

I almost always watch a video or two while I eat. I’m subscribed to quite a few YouTube channels, a handful of which are just regular people whose shenanigans I follow in their vlogs. The video I watched on this day was one of those.

Watched a video while eating breakfast.

Next, I pop the rest of my morning meds and do my Wixela inhaler.

Meds. Inhaler. Horror-themed water bottle. Check, check, & check.

Then I head into the bathroom to press a warm/hot compress onto my eyes, which is both a Sjögren’s management thing and the first step in my morning skincare routine. My Sjögren’s mainly attacks my eyes and mouth. Mostly my eyes.

The morning compress on my eyes feels incredible and makes a huge difference.

After that, I get ready for the day – brush my teeth, do my skin and hair, and put on something comfy.

For my first task of the morning on this day, I continued with my office closet re-org project. This is where I keep the clothes I don’t wear on a daily basis.

Moving things from one closet to another always generates a re-org project.

I gathered things for the Goodwill, did some laundry, and also spent some time searching for remote jobs.

Tuesday! On this day, I headed out to the dentist’s for a cleaning.

Going in to get my teeth cleaned is about a Tuesday thing to do as any other thing.

From there, I went to do some grocery shopping.

Grocery shopping at Fry’s

Also went to grab a few things from Target. Now, I’m not an impulse shopper, and I don’t enjoy shopping for clothes, but I walked past this dress on the clearance rack, and I had to try it on. Then, of course, I had to buy it. It was only $9.61!

Gorgeous dress on clearance!

It’s hard to understand what’s going on just by looking at pics. The inside layer is a short strappy bodycon slip dress, and the outer layer is a long floaty lace shift. The back is open. This dress is beautiful, and I can’t believe that I got it for less than ten bucks. Believe it or not, I didn’t own a single long solid black dress. Now I do. I have an occasion in mind for it, too.

This is the back. It’s open.

On my way home, I stopped in at a friend’s house to water their plants while they’re out of town. Later in the afternoon, I grabbed my usual protein bar for a pre-workout snack. I eat one of these bars six days a week, before every workout, and I never get tired of it. It’s basically a Thin Mint in bar form.

One of my fav protein bars.

So, yeah, I work out six days a week. This day was Tuesday, so it was strength-training with dumbbells, aka Body Pump on Les Mills On Demand. This was release #99, in case anyone’s interested in knowing that!

Hydrating.

I grabbed these screenshots from the video clip I recorded during the back track. Apologies for the horrible lighting, friends. Yikes. It’s bad.

Rows
Clean-and-press

Body Pump’s approach is an hour of light weights, high reps, and very little rest. These dumbbells are adjustable, and here I have them set at 15 lbs. It’s a good weight for the millions of reps that we do during the fast-paced 5-7 minute back workout.

Adjustable dumbbells

The next day was Wednesday, and I spent a little time in the kitchen.

Making a big batch of pico de gallo.
Fresh pico for days! I make it extra green (hot)

Then I made a high-protein “longevity” salad:

High-protein longevity salad with tahini-lemon dressing. I had half of a red cabbage, some green onions, and a couple of lemons to use up, so this salad was the perfect thing to make.

Wednesday is a Combat day. I have atelectasis (collapsed lung – mine is partial, as it’s only my lower right lung lobe); I have to do this Albuterol inhaler before I can start a Combat workout. Combat is basically 60 minutes of H.I.I.T., and I find it hard to catch a deep breath toward the end of the highly intense workout.

Because of atelectasis.

This is LMoD Combat #77, by the way. It’s one of my favorite Combat releases!

More apologies for the dark and grainy screenshots. The lighting was dim and totally unsuitable for filming. But you get the idea.

Just playing.
“The Wall”
NOT playing.
Leg check.

Later that night, I caught a mirror selfie almost by accident when I was talking to Kyle. I was standing at my little dresser getting ready to remove my make-up, and I had my phone in my hands. Glanced in the mirror while we were talking, and lo, I saw an opportunity. I will never understand how mirror selfies work, so when I saw this, I had to snap it.

Hilarious, but it seems to have worked.

The next morning was Thursday. Today. I had an onion and a scant cup of green lentils that I wanted to use up, so I made lentil soup for lunch.

I love an easy lentil soup recipe that calls mostly for pantry staples!
Lentil soup and spinach tortilla wraps stuffed with the high-protein longevity salad and tahini-lemon dressing that I made yesterday.

We also had the sugar-free vegan black bean brownies I made last week. They sound weird, but they are actually scrumptious, deeply chocolatey and rich. No one can believe that there’s two cans of black beans in this pan of brownies. It’s just a great recipe!

Black bean brownie. SORCERY.

Tonight: Dinner with my love while watching one of our current shows.

“The Boys” – if you know, you know.

I brewed up our nightly hot ginger tea. We started drinking this tea to assist with after-dinner digestion, and now, we’re oddly addicted to it. We drink it because we crave it!

Our favorite nighttime beverage: hot ginger tea.

When I sat down to put this post together, I realized that I never got pics of the girls this week! I immediately set out on a kitty-hunt. Here’s what I managed to get:

A Roary.
And a Sabrina.

And now, my friends, I’m heading to bed. Tomorrow is Friday, and I’ll be able to continue (and hopefully finish) some ongoing tasks around here.

I hope you all had a good week! Until next time!

Back in the flash.

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Hello, friends. I’m back in the desert after nine days out-of-state with the fam, and it feels good. Fun times were had, and the vacation rocked spectacularly. It was damp, though! My partially collapsed lung had somewhat of a time in the humidity, but I did well with my two inhalers. I only really needed the Albuterol one during one of the three hikes we took.

We went hiking and kayaking, and we did a lot of walking. We got three-day passes at a gym that offers Les Mills, so we even worked out a couple of days, humidity notwithstanding.

My lung is not in charge. Bronchodilators are.

Here’s a few vacation pics:

Where the Les Mills happens.
Where the dinosaurs happen.
At Kualoa Ranch. We didn’t sweat in the humidity. We glowed.
With the dopiest T-Rex, but still.
Hanging with the fam
Fav filming site on the ranch!
She’s friendly.
In the lookout – ?

At the end, we did most of what we’d hoped to do. The key aspect and best part of the trip was FAMILY. Both of our families are from the Aloha State, and it was magickal getting to go there all together.

Speaking of magickal, Happy Summer Solstice to you! Here in the Sonoran desert, summer solstice marks the year’s turn into monsoon season, so we’ve got that to anticipate. My scaly son Geronimo is gearing up for the summer rains, and I will be ready to experience it with him. Expect desert tortoise pics here in the near future!

Enjoy your solstice weekend, friends!

Going on a trip. Catch you on the flip side.

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Wherein I realize that I need to wake up at approximately the time that I usually post, hence my weekly Thursday “night” check-in with you is just that. I’ll be out of my natural habitat until June 10, friends.

I want to let you know that I see and read your comments, and I appreciate them greatly! I will respond, though eventually. Thank you for bearing with me. I hope this finds you doing well.

Peace.

Of mythos and life reflection, and why you matter.

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Good evening, friends. It’s been Gemini season for two days, and I’m eager to absorb the breezy lightness and intellectual stimulation offered by it. On my way there, though, I’ve been reflecting, doing this whole sweeping review. This assessment. A taking-stock. Things have been generally good and even exciting, but there’s also an element of heaviness in the picture. Someone close to me is still lost in crisis, and their struggles give me pause. How did I come to be where I am? I’m thinking out loud here, spilling a segue from thoughts unfinished in my head.

Born in San Francisco and raised in San Jose, I found California to be cold and impersonal. Now I live in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert in a vast metro area named for a sacred firebird of mythological renown, a place that is the antithesis of the Bay Area. 33 years ago I came to Phoenix on a whim, but I stayed here to rise from the ashes a hundred times, as if I knew I’d go down in flames over and over in the process of navigating life. Emboldened by cyclical rebirth, I’ve acted recklessly a few times too many. I’ve since learned. I’ve settled down in the embers, and I’m enjoying their warmth. I’m basking, and it’s delightful. I believe I know how my desert tortoise feels when he comes out of hibernation and sits still on the rocks for hours, absorbing the sunlight.

It’s incredible to me that I’ve managed to rack up the decades despite my follies. As grateful as I am to be around, though, I sometimes feel frantic about growing older when I consider all that I need to get done, still. Look, I’m 55. Sometimes it’s hard to keep calm about aging when smooth jazz renditions of my high school rock jams come on in the elevator and I realize that I still don’t have my shit together… not as far as I’m concerned, at least.

Like everyone, I’m a deeply flawed person. I suspect that I take this to heart more harshly than I should, and I try to remind myself of this. We tend to over-criticize ourselves, as if it isn’t hard enough taking criticism from others for our life choices, both personally and generally. Sometimes, we even have to deal with people criticizing us for doing what’s right.

For example, like many childfree people, I’ve been chastised for my decision to not have kids, indicted for being “selfish” – a song-and-dance accusation. Let the self-appointed womb police say what they will. Society can trust that I’ve done it a favor by staying out of the gene pool. Society should thank me for never having kids. I was in college when the egg donor people rejected my eggs because my phone interview revealed that my biological father had a certain mental illness. (I ended up selling my plasma, instead. It wasn’t nearly as lucrative.)

Society is a mess what with the homeless falling left and right through the cracks of social order (speaking to our failures on an institutional level). Why contribute to the problem by spawning a potential Dahmer? I wouldn’t have kids knowing that I have serious mental illness in my genes any more than I’d own a firearm knowing that I have PTSD.

At any rate, regardless of my reason, no matter what that might be, I won’t be convinced that the totality of the experiences I’ve lived as a human on this planet is invalidated by the fact that I’ve never had babies. Don’t allow others to convince you that you, your life, and your experiences are worthless.

Just as strangers will criticize without knowing the scope of the reasoning behind our choices – as if it’s any of their business – there may be those who know us who will exact criticism in personal attacks. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that humans can be wretched, just petty and mean, and they will go to lengths to try to hurt us. Now, I want to direct this to a particular person, my loved one who probably won’t see this: Don’t. Give. Up. I’m sending this energy to you through this post, hoping that you’ll receive it even without reading these words.

As Winston Churchill said, if you find yourself going through hell, keep going. (…unless you want to stay there.)

Buddhism teaches us that right from the beginning, life is suffering. We are born into it. Life isn’t fair, nor is it easy and light. But carrying heavy things can make you stronger. I appreciate this truth increasingly as time goes on. I would love to run back to my angry, angst-ridden 15-year-old self and say, “Hey! You’ve got some pretty absurd and unbelievable hardships coming up in your future, but you will find the fire in your belly and the steel running down your back. (In the words of American Horror Story’s The Axeman.) You will persevere.”

Keep going. You will get through. The best way out is through.

Getting out there and doing stuff on May 11, 2024. The movie was WTF, but the company was stellar!

I hope this helps… someone, anyone, one of you, if not the person who led me into this contemplation. You and your achievements carry meaning and worth. This is a cliché, but it’s true: No one can have the power to bring you down if you don’t give it to them, and this includes your own self. You’re not meant to be pulled into self-sabotage, or lured into self-hated. I want to remind you, gently, that the personal growth you achieve through your experiences is a triumph.

I love you.

Desert Tortoise greetings on a Good Night (in a good and busy week).

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These last few days have been crammed with activity of all sorts, so all I have to offer you tonight is this photo of my beautiful baby boy, Geronimo. I took this pic two days ago.

Desert tortoise in 2024 hibiscus paradise.

Geronimo spends his waking hours nomming his way across the backyard. His appetite knows no bounds. Here, he can be seen with the remains of a hibiscus flower stuck to the side of his mouth. In other words, he’s busy living his happiest, best springtime life out there! He has nothing but love for all of his fellow sentient beings, and that includes you. If you’re reading this, know that Geronimo has your back. He’s strong enough to support us all.

Until next week, Friends.

All Right, Lunger. Let’s do it. (Lung and Fitness updates!)

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We’re talking about my lung, so I stretched and reached for that Tombstone quote, even though my lung issues have nothing to do with tuberculosis. (Definitely a stretch, but Tombstone is my all-time favorite and most re-watched movie. Let me have it!)

Today marks a bizarre anniversary. It was one year ago today that I accidentally inhaled a large vitamin caplet. That’s right. It’s been a year. On May 10, 2023, I aspirated a vitamin. The next day, I consequently developed aspiration pneumonia.

For those of you accompanying me on my path back from this absurd and inexplicable event, I’m here to share the latest. My recent CT scan – taken a month ago – revealed that I’m continuing to make progress. Some scarring remains, and there are some ongoing shenanigans taking place down there in my lung, but I’ve improved considerably.

Impressions copied/pasted from my CT scan report:
1). A stable 6 mm solid nodule versus nodular scarring in the right lower lobe.
2). Mild bilateral lower lobe bronchiectasis and multifocal mucous plugging in the right lower lobe.
3). Stable regions of chronic linear scarring and subsegmental atelectasis in the right lower lobe.

The reason why all of this damage is in my right lower lung lobe is that that is where shit goes when you inhale it. If you didn’t know, now you know.

My doctor encouraged me to give it time, because the situation at the beginning was “very, very bad,” and the COVID I had back in November likely impacted my recovery process. I should be patient as my lung continues to heal, she advised.

I’m not worried. We compared this CT scan with the one that was done a year ago, and the whole picture’s looking MUCH better. In the initial scan last year, my right lung lobe was so riddled with opacity that it lit up like a wayward Christmas tree.

Symptoms-wise, I still wheeze somewhat, though nowhere near as dramatically as before. I still sometimes struggle to take a deep breath, especially at night when I’m lying on my back, and also toward the end of my hour-long Body Combat workouts. To help with this, my doctor increased my Wixela inhaler medication dosage and instructed me to use it twice a day, morning and night, rather than just once. She also has me doing my Albuterol inhaler right before working out, so I can breathe comfortably throughout the hour. It’s been capital! I’m breathing easier during Combat, and thanks to my nighttime Wixela dose, I’m also getting to sleep a little bit faster.

It’s been quite the road. Along the way, I couldn’t have imagined what this one-year anniversary post would contain, and now here we are: I still have symptoms. I have damage. But the symptoms and the damage aren’t keeping me from doing anything, and that, my friends, is all that matters. As far as I’m concerned, this is my new normal, and I’m okay with it. Working out religiously 6x/week, I’ve managed to re-build my muscle mass while also getting back down to my normal weight of 110 lbs. (Fortunately, I’d only gained 12-ish lbs during the seven or so months I couldn’t exercise.)

In honor of this one-year, um, vitamin anniversary, I took some pics yesterday before and during my Combat workout.

First, earlier yesterday afternoon:

Sitting around with red lights in my eyes, as one does.

Okay, I took a bunch of selfies while sitting on the couch, and they all came out with red dots of light in my eyes. You know that I’m still too lazy to figure out how to edit photos. It’s whatever. Just know that I’m not possessed.

This brings us to these slightly awkward, cheesy, potentially cringey pics! Enjoy.

Arms, post-Body Combat:

VEGAN GAINS.

Shoulders, post-Body Combat:

MORE GAINS.

Forearms:

Okay, not a great pic, but you get the idea. Haha!

And the real stars of the show: Inhalers!

Help with exercise and sleep, respectively.

I’m supposed to be taking my prescribed Mucinex, as well, but I’ve been awful at that. Meaning, I haven’t taken it at all, and I don’t know that I will. I don’t feel that I need it, but you know what? It wouldn’t hurt to try it!

Okay, I’ll take the Mucinex. See, you guys help me out just by being here, by being a part of this experience. Your reading holds me accountable, and for that, I thank you.

Until next week, then, right?

[::holds up water flask for a water toast::]

Go forth in good health, my friends.