Quarantine Diaries – Week 80

Posted on September 24, 2021 by Thistle

It was a fairly calm week, so let’s get to it. This week’s numbers:

  • Cases: 306,769 (+4,615)
  • Deaths: 4,314 (+152)
  • Seven-day rolling average: 595 (-213/day)
  • Positivity rate: 4.9% (-2.2%)
  • Cases per 100k: 41.7 (-2.8)
  • Hospitalizations: 820 patients; 289 in ICU
  • Vaccinations: 1,483,257 first dose (89% of eligible population, 74% total); 1,226,944 fully vaxxed (73% of eligible, 61% total)
  • In L’s classes: none this week (cumulative: 5 students, 6 staff)
  • Week 5 for our school: 13 students, 2 staff (cumulative: 56 students, 4 staff)

There really isn’t a lot of news this week. Statewide, the number of kids with covid during the first month that classes were back in session is almost the same as the cumulative total for the entire 2020-21 school year. Yikes. Last month, 12.5% of all covid cases were for ages 9 and under, which is really high compared to previous variants of the disease. Hospitals and specialists in town are seeing an alarming number of teens (who previously had covid) with severe blood clots, especially clots in the lungs. The number of deaths in the US reached a grim milestone this week too – we’ve now surpassed the number of US Spanish Flu deaths. Border patrol stopped shipments of millions of fake vaccine cards. And on a more personal level, another friend of mine has contracted covid. She’s fully vaccinated and her symptoms are mild, but a loved one of hers, also fully vaccinated, is in the hospital with covid pneumonia.

(cases separated by vaccination status)

In better news, my family all got their flu shots this week, and as of yesterday, I qualify for the covid booster shot. I was originally supposed to qualify for my third dose starting October 1st, eight months after my second, but the CDC ruled that six months was sufficient. Sadly, they also ruled against third doses for people without underlying conditions, which leaves my husband and sons helpless for now. At least they got their vaccines later (March, April), so they still have more immunity from them! As for mine, my doc told me that she had very little reaction to the first two doses but this one knocked her on her butt for a few days, so I anticipate I’ll have some more major side effects again. We’ll see. And last but not least, the library system in town is going back to seven-day service next week, for the first time since March 2020! I mean, they were almost back to normal, with Mondays added a month or two back, and this will just add Sunday as well. But it’s nice to have a bit more normalcy anyway!!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Wellness Wednesday – 100 Days Coffee-Free

Posted on September 22, 2021 by Thistle

One of my primary goals for the year was to cut out coffee. In mid-July, thanks to my hospital stay, I did that. For 19 days, I didn’t drink any coffee. On day 20, I caved and had an iced coffee. Since then, I’ve had coffee once every few days. Despite everything. Despite the fact that I know I feel like crap in the days that follow. Despite not sleeping as well when I drink it. Despite knowing that this is probably an allergy and causing a lot of inflammation. I keep making these goals to cut it out completely before giving up after a couple days. I can’t tell you how many pretty little graphs and such that I’ve drawn out to color in as I make it closer and closer to my goal of 100 days coffee-free, only to fall off the wagon four or five days in.

It’s funny – I remember doing the same exact thing with alcohol. I was never addicted to alcohol the way I was with coffee, but I had begun drinking a glass of wine when my anxiety was bad, and I knew that was a dangerous path to go down. Additionally, I tended to have more binge-eating issues when I was drinking alcohol regularly. Plus, I wondered if drinking alcohol, which I’d only started doing in 2014, was at the root of my inability to lose weight. So for a while there, I made goals to go 100 days alcohol-free and 100 days binge-free. I hit both goals in early 2019, and have continued to stay mostly binge- and alcohol-free in the years since.

My old bujos are marked with counters – habit-trackers where I counted days, starting over whenever I had a drink or a binge. I did this rather than make a full 100-day color-in graph, because there’s no room for messing up or an off-day in that kind of graph form. You can’t un-color-in days. Which is really frustrating when you only make it a few days in, and would probably be even MORE frustrating if you make it to almost 100 days before something goes wrong!

I’ve spent too much time making perfection-needed goals, rather than keep-trying-until-you-make-it goals with regards to coffee over the last few months. So I’m leaning back into that 2018-2019 headspace, learning from my younger self. Addiction is a hard thing to break, especially when it’s also tied to self-soothing, identity, anxiety, and ritual. I’ve done really well to finally get to the point where I’m not drinking coffee daily, and no longer getting caffeine headaches. Eventually, I’ll be able to cut it out entirely. In the meantime, I need to give myself grace to fall off the horse and get back up again the next day.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Ghosts of the Tsunami, by Richard Lloyd Parry

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Thistle

Subtitled: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone

In March 2011, an enormous earthquake shook Japan. Afterwards, one of the largest earthquake-driven tsunamis swept over communities in the northeast part of the country. In this book, Parry lets the survivors tell their stories of the time leading up to the disaster, and the aftermath that followed.

I want to start by discussing what led me to this book, the weird roundabout way I ended up going full-circle. It began in 2011, because a friend of mine actually lived in the disaster zone and was very close to the nuclear power plant explosion that also resulted from the tragedy. He and his wife were safe, and shortly thereafter, moved to the US. I’ve talked with him, and might have a guest post soon about his personal experiences living through March 2011. More on that later in this post. Because of my friend’s experiences, this is one natural (well, and not-natural) disaster that has stayed with me.

Then last year, when the new Unsolved Mysteries season came out, one of their episodes was about the tsunami, and especially about the ghost/spirit phenomena that occurred afterwards. I’m not here to make any judgements about what is/isn’t paranormal and/or coping mechanisms, religion, etc. I found the episode fascinating, but mostly because it was the first time I’d seen clear footage of the tsunami. It made me want to learn more – less about the “ghosts” and more about the experience of the tsunami itself. I was told that the episode borrowed heavily from Ghost of the Tsunami, so I picked out this book, hoping that from it, I could get further resources on what I was looking for. Ironically, the book ended up exactly what I was looking for, with only two small sections discussing the focus of the UM episode; the rest far more about the experience of disaster.

I have never lived through a mass disaster, natural or otherwise. (Well, at least not one that I haven’t been far removed from – the whole country is experiencing the pandemic and the US is doing a sh!t job at managing it, but that’s a different situation altogether.) I’ve watched various disasters from afar – hurricanes and shootings and the twin towers and tsunamis and more. I know well what it feels like to experience secondhand horror, like most folks. But I’ve never experienced tragedy on a large scale myself, and in general, I like learning about the experiences of others (good and bad) that I haven’t had. I am not a grief or tragedy vampire, however, vicariously living through others’ pain and reveling in it. I want to learn, but I want to do so respectfully. In the past, I have put back nonfiction (or turned off documentaries) where authors treat their subject exploitatively, and I was prepared to do the same with this one. However, it was not at all exploitative. Parry was careful with the subject, let those who lived through the disaster tell their stories, and kept himself in the background. It was excellent journalism.

For this reason, I’m not going to say much more about the contents of this book. I wouldn’t do it justice. A thirdhand account isn’t something anyone needs from me. Instead, I’m going to encourage anyone who is interested in this subject to pick up this book. Don’t be thrown by the title or the UM episode – this is not about ghosts in the traditional paranormal sense.

As for my friend, I reached out to ask if he would be interested in sharing his experiences in a guest post here. Personally, I think that the closest we can get to understanding a situation, without going through it ourselves, is through the stories of people who did. I wanted to give him a chance to tell his story, if he wanted, and to give y’all a chance to read it, if y’all wanted. So look for that coming soon.

Posted in 2021, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Sunday Coffee – My Favorite Smoothie

Posted on September 19, 2021 by Thistle

I shared this recipe on my other social medias, but I love it so much that I decided to put it here too. I’ve made quite a number of different protein smoothies over the years, some better than others. But recently, I made one that is absolutely the best – creamy and delicious like a chocolate milkshake. And I don’t mean a “pretend banana tastes like cream” kind of milkshake. I detest banana and think that its use as a food substitute, much like cauliflower, is an abomination.

The first step is to pick out your fruits and veggies. The only one that is a must-have for this particular smoothie is avocado. I use frozen avocado just because it’s easier, but you can use fresh as well. There are no exact measurements, but I’d guess I throw in about a quarter to third cup of avocado. For the rest, you can do as you like. Personally, I find frozen butternut squash to be a good veggie for smoothies because you really can’t taste it at all. Fresh summer squash or zucchini is the same. For this smoothie, I use butternut. Then I choose two frozen fruits, usually peaches and strawberries, like pictured here. Depending on how you like to flavor your milkshake, you can use blueberries, oranges, mango, pineapple, cherries, etc. I personally don’t use raspberries or blackberries because their seeds are too big and it ruins the texture, but that’s entire up to each individual. Why frozen fruits and veggies? I don’t like using ice in smoothies, because the texture never gets thick and the ice stays in tiny melting chunks. Most of the time, I’ll use 2-3 frozen items and one fresh, so that it ends up with a perfect thick milkshake consistency.

Second step: Add your protein powder, unsweetened cocoa powder, and sweetener to taste. I use Puori dark chocolate why protein powder. It’s the only whey protein powder I’ve ever tasted that didn’t leave a nasty aftertaste. With other powders, I have to use peanut butter to cut through that aftertaste, and since I found out I was allergic to peanuts, that hasn’t worked so well!! But Puori has very simple ingredients that are minimally processed, and very little sweetener (a tiny bit of coconut sugar). When I make other smoothies – for example, spinach, squash, peaches, pineapple, and lemon smoothies – I don’t use any sweetener at all. The fruit it perfect. But with this particular smoothie, the added cocoa (about 1-2 spoonfuls) requires just a little bit of sugar. I use a tiny bit of brown sugar, roughly a teaspoon, but you can use whatever sweetener you prefer.

Lastly, add liquid. In this case, I added water, but sometimes I add both water and orange juice, depending on how I feel. I tend to add water up to midway through the top fruit line, though in this particular making (that I photographed), I accidentally added more than normal. The more liquid you add, the thinner the smoothie, and this was more of a thin milkshake texture than full-on Frosty. I prefer the latter! You can tell I added too much by how high above the Fill Line the smoothie goes, heh.

So there you go. I’ve been drinking these a lot lately. Most of my smoothies are low-fat high-protein since they’re just whey protein and fruit/veg, but the added avocado in this one makes it a balanced post-workout snack or light breakfast on the go. It also helps me get in a lot of nutrition when I normally struggle with fruits and veggies. I hope to get to try out more types of smoothies that incorporate a wider variety of freggies in the future. Puori has a bourbon vanilla flavor too, and I think that would work well as a base for a pumpkin-pie smoothie!

What are your favorite protein shakes?

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Quarantine Diaries – Week 79

Posted on September 17, 2021 by Thistle

We are in the middle of a worrisome scare here this week. Ambrose’s college just opened up to on-campus students last week. He only has two in-person classes, on Mondays and Wednesdays. Monday, he went to these classes, and by Wednesday, he found out that one of his profs had come down with covid. Ambrose had been wearing a mask and was in the back of the classroom, but that’s still worrisome. It just shows how hard it is to truly plan for this disease. A potential two-week incubation and infectious period pre-symptoms is just nuts. How many people were potentially exposed? What if Ambrose, who shows no symptoms, later develops them, and the rest of us have been exposed in the meantime? What of the doctor’s office that I was at on Tuesday, in a busy waiting room – could I have spread it to another couple dozen people? It’s so hard to deal with a disease that’s so silent and invisible for so long! Hopefully, the vaccine and masks and other protocols we use will keep us all safe, but sometimes it feels like we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s been 18 months now, and somehow the four of us have been lucky. How long can that luck hold out?

This week’s numbers:

  • Cases: 302,154 (+6,201)
  • Deaths: 4,162 (+145)
  • Seven-day rolling average: 808 (-175/day)
  • Positivity rate: 7.1% (-0.5%)
  • Cases per 100k: 44.5 (-6.5)
  • Hospitalizations: 960 patients including 330 in ICU **Note: A quarter of all hospital patients in our county are covid patients.
  • Vaccinations: 1,458,525 first dose (87% of eligible population, 73% total); 1,191,883 fully vaxxed (71% of eligible, 59.5% total)

The school number situation has gotten a bit more complicated. We got a notice this week that said due to parent outcry, weekly counts per school would be available on the district website. This is likely due to the difficulty of getting a clear picture of what’s going on when you only find out about cases that are in your kid’s class(es). I mean, what do they do about lunch periods, when a quarter of the school is all in one place? Does that count as a “class”? The potential contact across the room in a cafeteria is far different from one in a small classroom, or an after school club! It gets especially confusing when we get notices that say things like this:

If we quarantined Laurence every time we got a notice home, he’d be a virtual student. We get at least two notices per week! And then there’s the fact that after 20 days at home, it’s considered an absence. So we couldn’t do that anyway. Besides, this is all in the process of changing, because Abbott decided he’d rather go back on outlawing virtual school rather than on outlawing mask mandates in schools. So suddenly school districts across the state are being required to offer virtual options with no planning and no infrastructure, because the time when they do all that (the summer break), they weren’t allowed to. It’s a MESS. Anyway, Laurence doesn’t want to return to virtual school, and since he’s vaccinated, we won’t make him, but we’re also not going to quarantine him every time we get a letter home! Sheesh.

But going back to the school numbers. The district put up the weekly positive case counts for all 70 campuses for Week 3 last week. We don’t have the data from before that. But our high school, one of 70 campuses and NOT the highest in student body, came in with the highest total number of student cases in the entire district (31). To give some perspective, the entire school year last year, there were 160 total cases at our school. So we almost hit a fifth of that in a single week. Looking at the feeder middle and elementary schools, they’re also very high, so it looks like my little area of the city is being hit hard with covid at the moment. Sigh.

  • In L’s classes: 1 student, 0 staff
  • Cumulative: 5 students, 6 staff
  • Week 4 for our school: 12 students, 0 staff
  • Cumulative: 43 students, 2 staff <– This is less than the above because they gave us no numbers for the first two weeks of school in the total school cases. Sigh.

That’s how I plan to track the school numbers going forward.

There’s not a lot of other news this week. The big one is that Pfizer released a timeline of applying for EU status on its vaccines for kids (ages 5-11 by the end of this month, ages 6-mo to 5 in early November). I will feel much better once this has been approved and there’s less danger to all these kids going to school!! Especially since the school situation continues to remain stupid. There’s the above notice from our district, and the state is re-suing the district here in SA that is requires vaccines. Not sure how they plan to get away with it since the state’s no-mandate directly conflicts with the federal yes-mandate. But that’s for the politicians and lawyers to hash out.

Meanwhile, people continue to do and say that stupidest things. Newest trend: ingesting or gargling Betadine, which is a topical anti-bacterial solution for cuts and scrapes. It’s what they use on stitches post-surgery, and it has a lot of iodine in it, so the people ingesting it are getting iodine poisoning. OMFG, the idiots. There are anti-vaxxers complaining about being “bullied” because the public health directors keep talking about needing to get the vaccines and wear masks, because they’ve clearly never been bullied in their lives. Then there is this bit of beautiful stupidity.

(PS: The first amendment has nothing to do with travel or health requirements, either.)

Seriously, this kind of thing could be an art installation: A Tribute to American Uneducation. (Yes, the misspelling is on purpose.)

Not much else to report. Sadly, a football coach at one of our local high schools passed away from covid this week. He was 29 and had been in the hospital for months. And one of our performing arts centers has found a creative way to handle vaccinations, which circumvents any politics. They are letting the artists who come decide how strict they require the center to be with patrons. So for some performances, you might have to provide proof of vaccination, and others, a recent negative test might do. I guess that’s one way to do it!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Drowning Kind, by Jennifer McMahon

Posted on September 13, 2021 by Thistle

Jax has distanced herself from her older, bipolar sister, Lexie, and refuses to answer a series of phone calls one night when Lexie is manic. The next day, she discovers that her sister has drowned. Jax travels to her sister’s home, a manor that has long been in the family and the place where Lexie died, only to get wrapped up in the same mysteries that her sister was investigating.

I’m really striking out on my RIP books so far! It’s a bummer. This one had an interesting premise with a few spooky paranormal bits about a series of drownings and a miraculously healing spring-fed pool. After that, though, I struggled. A section is written from the past, in 1929, where a woman and her husband travel to the miracle-springs as a way to solve their infertility problems. Of course, the legend goes that no miracle is given without an equal curse to balance it, so Bad Things follow. That part of the book was more interesting, though I struggled to connect with the narrator, Ethel.

Most of the book follow’s Jax’s story, though. And it’s where I had the most difficulty. First, there was a “Chekov’s gun” early in the book that kept getting referred back to, but was never truly addressed. It was used as a device near the end, but left completely unresolved. Then, there was the fact that Lexie was such an unlikeable character, and I couldn’t figure out why Jax would feel any real shame or guilt for distancing herself. There was this weird disconnect between “I worship my older sister” and “my older sister tortured me for fun and everyone loved her and ignored me.” I mean, that could work in a story, if there was the implication that Jax’s hero-worship was something born of the abuse she suffered through. But it was put down to “it’s just family,” and then it was like…but everyone in the family is awful. Dad shows up at one point, too, and he’s just as off-the-wall horrible as Lexie. Last, Jax is a therapist who has gone through all sorts of psychological training, and yet succumbs to the weirdest, wildest theories, throwing them out one after another near the end of the book. There was a strange juxtaposition of “is this really supernatural or is it all in her head?” without any real resolution. I like ambiguity as much as the next guy, but…meh.

Honestly, I kinda knew it wasn’t going to work for me pretty early on. I considered abandoning it multiple times. It was Ethel’s story that kept me going. I should have let it go. I’ve had a lot of failed reads this year, and The Drowning Kind wasn’t worth the disappointing finish.

Posted in 2021, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Saturday Coffee – 20 Years

Posted on September 11, 2021 by Thistle

On September 11, 2001, my family consisted of Jason, me, and 10.5-month Morrigan. This photo of us was taken in September that year, though I couldn’t tell you if it was before or after the 9/11 attacks. At that time, Jason and I were struggling with extreme financial hardship after seven months living in Madison, WI, and we’d briefly moved in with his parents in southwestern WI near the end of August. Morrigan was just starting to take his first steps. Jason was looking for a new job. I wasn’t yet pregnant with Ambrose.

Jason’s father was a PA, and at the time, worked one overnight per week in the ER. Normally, he got home pretty early on his overnight shifts, and we would be quiet in the morning to make sure he could sleep. On this particular morning, he didn’t return home like normal, and we were all worried because Jason’s mom couldn’t get a hold of him. Eventually, he called the house. It turned out that in an entirely unrelated turn of events, there had been some kind of incident (maybe a multi-car pileup, or something? I don’t remember) near the end of his shift and so he’d been busy with patients past his normal hours. When he called, though, he told us to turn on the TV. Jason’s mom relayed this info, and I asked what channel. His response? “It doesn’t matter.”

By the time we turned on the TV and got the news, the second plane had already hit. I remember dropping to the floor. It wasn’t just the horror of what was happening. My sister lived in NYC at the time. I had no idea how close she lived to the attack, or if she was okay. Phone lines were down, of course. In 2001, cell phones were around but not as common, and most of those communication lines were scrambled, too. A lot of phone tag started happening back and forth to various family members, all of us trying to get ahold of Becky. I think it was my dad who finally got through to her, but there was so much confusion and my brain recorded all of this in a weird kind of slow-motion free-fall, so certain details get hazy.

Others remained fixed. We watched when the buildings collapsed. We watched people jumping from windows. We watched as smoke engulfed cameras. And we were so far removed from the situation, nothing compared to those who witnessed it first hand, with every sense alert, the smells and sounds and feel of the air.

My sister watched the second plane hit in real time. It turned out that she had been at her ballet studio only half a mile from the towers. When the first plane hit, they thought it was an accident. There weren’t smart phones or ready access to the internet everywhere in 2001. As she and fellow dancers stood at the windows of their studio discussing the horror, they saw the second plane hit. At that point, their instructors chivvied them into the basement to shelter in place. Some time later, they sent all the dancers away and told them to head away from the buildings. I’m honestly not sure how Becky got home, if she lived in walking distance or if she had to find some other way in a city that had shut down. Eventually, she got a signal on her cell phone and called to let us know she was okay. She told me once, a long time later, that her boyfriend had come to visit her the previous week, and they’d gone up in one of the towers together. That’s how close to possibility she got.

I also remember the way things turned. How at first, everyone tried to unite and rally together, and how that unification turned its head toward Muslims, because all that fear and horror needed an outlet of anger and hate. I watched Muslim friends being turned on. My father-in-law, who is white but had jet black hair, was stopped multiple time and asked if he was “one of them Arabs.” Hate crimes escalated, and we saw a rise in violent speech, and what became “acceptable” to say. There was all this sentiment about how these colors won’t run, how America will come out of this better and stronger, but in the end, this horrific event caused a cataclysmic change in our culture. We continue to get more divided than ever, and our country continues to collapse. It’s not what they planned when they hit those towers, but in a way, they did what they intended to do: they weakened us, they made fissures, they planted seeds that continue to break us.

It’s a monstrous set of memories.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | Leave a comment

Quarantine Diaries – Week 78

Posted on September 10, 2021 by Thistle

Let’s get right to it. I don’t have pics for this week, so I’m going to sprinkle this post with lots of cute kitten photos instead. Heh. This week’s numbers:

  • Cases: 295,953 (+8,542)
  • Deaths: 4,017 (+81)
  • Seven-day rolling average: 983 (-295/day)
  • Positivity rate: 7.6% (-3%)
  • Cases per 100k: 51 (-10)
  • Hospitalizations: 1,159 patients including 365 in ICU
  • Vaccinations: 1,435,702 first dose (86% of eligible population, 72% total); 1,162,982 fully vaxxed (70% of eligible, 58% total)
  • Our school: 1** student; cumulative school-year total: 4 students, 6 staff

**This was clarified for us this week: We will only get a notice if there is a case in our student’s class or activity. So all the numbers I’m reporting here are people my son took classes or other activities with. Great!

I’m going to be honest – I’m terrified of what’s coming. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I feel like we’re in the eye of the storm, so to speak. Number-wise, things are improving on almost all fronts. In fact, the city downgraded our community from “severe (stable)” to “moderate (improving).” However, when you look at what’s happening in the school systems, this is what you see. The week of August 18th, there were 173 self-reported positive cases. The next week, that was up to 5,167; the next was 18,111; and the next was 27,033. A total of over 50K cases in schools, and that’s only self-reported, which is under-reported. I can’t tell you how much is in our county alone because I believe those are statewide numbers, but either way, those are insane jumps from week to week, and those kids and staff members are then spreading the virus at home. It feels like things are just going to get worse at some point, when we reach some kind of apex. I don’t know.

Already, schools are in rough shape. I mentioned a few that closed down last week, or extended the holiday weekend, or canceled sporting events. Another nearby closed an elementary school this week, and another voted to have a mask mandate after they had nearly 800 students out of school in quarantine (with 200+ active cases, nearly all from students). At one school just north of the city, every single kindergarten teacher tested positive, and a 3rd grade teacher is in the hospital. The school didn’t even notify the parents – they found out from each other, and then the story broke in the news. All those five- and six-year-old kids, exposed from their teachers, and no one even told the parents. This is what they’re calling “freedom.”

Speaking of which, some crazy lady began following Judge Wolf around with a camera as he was leaving HEB this week, shouting that he was a traitor and a communist because he puts masks on children (clearly the woman has no idea what a communist is), won’t allow “freedom,” and says that she follows true science, which isn’t paid for by money (um, what kind of “science” doesn’t require money? Science is expensive, y’all!). She yelled about how he was a devil worshipper and paid off in bribes and the election was rigged and soon he’ll be locked up in jail and hanged like at the “Nirenberg” trials (that’s the mayor’s last name, but it wasn’t meant to be a pun, she just flubbed the name of the Nuremberg Trials – and I’m SURE the “connection” of the names has been made in crazytown circles). It was f–king insane. She’s so deep into q-anon that she doesn’t know her head from her foot. It’s people like her that are continuing this pandemic.

There’s some good news this week, though. First, there’s a slight possibility that the governor might approve funding for virtual programs at schools. I think he’d rather do that than back down on the mask thing. Second, the $100 HEB gift card incentive program has been approved, though I’m not sure it’ll really convince anyone who is truly anti-vax to get the shot. Third, studies have shown that vaccinated folks who catch Delta are infections for a much shorter period than unvaccinated people (just another reason to get the shot!). Fourth, President Biden has announced a plan through OSHA that all employers with 100+ employees must either require the vaccine or weekly negative covid tests. (Abbott has already initiated legal action to try to prevent this, saying – without realizing the irony – that it’s a “power grab” by the government. Um…) I hope that is the extreme up-the-nose test – how many times will people suffer through that horror before they give in and get shot?? I’ve seen more and more employers drawing lines in the sand, like American Airlines:

Woohoo! I heard of another employer, also an airline (United, maybe?) that says sure, they’ll “look into” people’s bogus religious exemption claims, and if they determine that you have a real religious exemption, you’ll be approved as an employee who isn’t required to get the vaccine. Then you’ll be placed on unpaid leave of absence until the virus is at low enough loads that it is safe for you to be working with the public again. With the risk of being put on unpaid LoA again if the virus surges. If only all employers were being so sane!! More power to the ones that are forcing consequences on folks who are just whining children at this point.

On the home front, last weekend’s note from our school district says that last week’s student case count, district-wide, was 409, up from 291 the week before, and that most of those cases are at the elementary school level (what a surprise!). Ambrose began in-person classes today, which means that even though he’s been vaccinated, he has to start getting weekly covid tests, since the college can’t require masks per Abbott. My friend whose son got covid last week, and who tested positive herself at the end of the week, are both recovering well. My friend Stephanie’s nephew also tested positive, which is just crazy given that he goes to school on an Air Force Base where masks are strictly enforced and vaccines are mandatory for eligible people. But both her nephews are under the vaccination age, so one got it, and so far it seems as if their quarantine measures are working well as everyone else is still testing negative. Fingers crossed!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Another Failed Doctor

Posted on September 8, 2021 by Thistle

I had a rather upsetting visit to the doctor last week. I hadn’t wanted to go to this doctor, because my first experience with her in June wasn’t great, but I went. For some context, my PCP referred me to a gastroenterologist back in May. She believed it was possible I was having some nutrient malabsorption issues because of some weird things that happen when I eat certain ways (specifically, if the carb content of my daily diet drops below 50% of my calories, I start experiencing extreme thirst, facial inflammation, peeing 3 dozen or more times per day, muscle/joint/bone pain, etc). The actual doctor she wanted me to see didn’t have any openings for months, but the other doctor in her practice, one Dr. Mallikarjun, had an opening in June. I went ahead and took that one, to my long-lasting regret.

June’s appointment was…unfortunate. The nurse was awesome, but Dr. M was HORRIBLE. The only questions she asked was if I had diarrhea, heart burn, or unexplained weight loss. Since the answer was no to all of those, she asked me why I was there. Um…okay. So I explained why my doctor sent me over, and before I even got halfway through the explanation, she cut me off, told me we could do an endoscopy and small intestine biopsy, and then left the room, leaving me to figure out what to do next. I didn’t even know what she’d be doing these procedures for! But I set the surgery up for the end of July, and a follow-up with the doc at the end of August.

Only then, I ended up in the hospital with colitis in July, and I didn’t want surgery so soon after sepsis. I called to cancel the surgery while I was still in the hospital, and figured that was that. Until I received a call from the surgical center a few days before surgery, calling to give me instructions for the surgery day. I had to explain to them the situation and got the procedure actually canceled. Meanwhile, I’d had an abdominal CT scan, and there were some troublesome spots on my liver that my PCP wanted the gastroenterologist to check out, in addition to following up on the colitis situation. I still had my f/u with her scheduled for the end of August, so I went back, even knowing it was going to be bad. I just…had a feeling. And my instincts, as usual, were right.

First, the office had no record of me ever having been there. Turns out, they’d changed systems and lost all their patient records. (This explains why they were trying to bill me for something I’d already paid, too, as well as them not actually canceling the surgery.) Dr. M had no idea who I was, and asked if she met me during my hospital stay. When I explained to her about the original biopsy plans, she again cut me off mid-sentence (she ALWAYS did this!) and said we could reschedule. I told her I wanted to wait until the hospitals weren’t filled to capacity with covid patients, and she LITERALLY ROLLED HER EYES AT ME. She turned back to her computer and told me that fine, follow up with her in six months. Then she asked me the same questions about diarrhea, heart burn, and unexplained weight loss, listened to my abdomen for half a second, and said I was fine. No follow-up on the CT scan at all, and less than five mins after she entered the room, she was done.

Only, as she was turning to leave, she suddenly paused, then turned to me and said, “Also? Lose weight.”

I wish I could get across her tone here. They were the cruelest, most dismissive words she could say, filled with absolute contempt and judgement. I’ve had doctors act condescending to me about my weight before, but never with undisguised contempt. In that moment, I was frozen in shock. Thankfully, I managed to get my mouth back in working order before she left, and I started stumbling out an explanation about that being why I was sent to her in the first place, nutrient malabsorption, etc. She cut me off – again – with another eye roll and said that yes, she remembered, if I ate too many carbs bad things happened. Clearly, she remembered wrong, because it’s the opposite, and I corrected her. She gave a dismissive wave of the hand and told me that it was “simple math” and that if I ate fewer calories than my body used, I would lose weight. If only it were really that easy, right? I began to talk about inflammation and hormones and autoimmune issues, and she again gave a dismissive wave. Those didn’t affect weight loss, she said. They only affected your metabolism, and if you eat at a calorie deficit–

By this point, I’d gotten over my shock, and I was ANGRY. I cut her off this time, and said, very slow and strong and clear, “I can be have a thousand calorie deficit every day for months and still be gaining weight.” It was the only non-yes-or-no sentence of the entire visit that I finished in completion. She looked at me for a second, clearly deciding that it wasn’t worth arguing about because I wasn’t going to take her “advice” seriously, and said, “There’s nothing wrong with your small intestine. Clearly you’re absorbing nutrients if you’re gaining weight, so it can’t be a nutrient malabsorption issue.” Then she stood up, told me to call the office to make a follow up visit in six months, and left.

This, my friends, is a complete and utter failure of the medical system, and of a doctor. Dr. Mallikarjun ought to be stripped of her medical license, or at least required to take some classes to get her up to date on science (and patient care!). You’d think a gastro MD would know that 1) weight loss and gain is far more sophisticated than “simple math,” and 2) nutrient malabsorption is not the same thing as “inability to take in calories.” I mean, you can take in calories but, say, not be absorbing potassium correctly, leading to low potassium levels. Just as one example. Then there is her “beside manner” so to speak. I’ve had plenty of doctors dismiss me or condescend to me, but the outright disgust and contempt is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced from a medical professional. They may not believe me – and they’ve ALWAYS been wrong when they don’t, because I ALWAYS find the root of the problem when they fail to – but the “suck it up you lazy b!tch” attitude is 100000000% unacceptable. And that’s exactly the attitude she had.

I haven’t decided whether or not to file a formal complaint. I did see my PCP, who was very upset that I was treated this way, plus that Dr. M didn’t even bother to investigate the spots on my liver. She’s sending me to a different gastro doc to start from scratch, because that was completely ridiculous and a waste of months of time. She also said that she will never refer another patient to their office, and she’ll be spreading the word around the rest of the practice (which is a multi-office clinic with dozens of doctors and PAs). Good. No one needs to see Dr Mallikarjun and her horrible judgmental and blind practice.

Each time something like this happens, I get a little better at advocating for myself. I hope to do better in the next situation, not allowing myself to get cut off every sentence, standing up to the doctor when they make dismissive comments about my weight or health practices. I work HARD for good health. I eat well, I eat moderately, I exercise as often as I can, I get good sleep, I take care of my body. I do all the right things, even if my body doesn’t respond the way it’s expected to. And I don’t want to be involved with any doctor who doesn’t understand and respect that.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Devil’s Night, by Todd Ritter

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Thistle

It’s the night before Halloween, and Perry Hollow’s history museum goes up in flames. It’s a tragedy, but becomes more so when a woman’s body is discovered in the wreckage – not burned, but bludgeoned to death with a cryptic message left on her arm: This is just the first. Kat Campbell is overwhelmed and dismayed at the prospect of another serial murderer in her small town…and things get weirder when the police discover a spray-painted pentagram left on the ruins of the museum.

This is the third and final book in the Kat Campbell series. I read the first two last year, and enjoyed them for the most part. I was really looking forward to getting back into this series during RIP. And at first, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed seeing Kat and so many other characters again. Some of the pithy little turns of phrases cracked me up, too. (Like, regarding an Italian businessman, “He lives for publicity, good or bad. He’s like the Donald Trump of Italy.” Ha! Even better given this book was published in 2013, well before Trump began his bid for presidency. He was a fool back then, too.)

But honestly, that’s about where my positives ended. There were too many attempts at elevating the writing to a pretentious level far above where a mystery/crime level generally falls. (Who just walks around talking about leitmotifs, honestly?) There was an attempt at a love triangle that came out of nowhere and was cut short by some major deus ex machina. The Big Reveal involved a huge stretch of believability. Then there was the following conversation, that made me stop and reread and want to bang my head against the wall, and beg that it was the character and not the author who was this ignorant:

“I figured it might help, it being close to Samhain.”
Kat was getting a headache. “Wait. Sam what?”

Y’all. Really? This is a character who is super pretentious about being a witch and a Wiccan, who goes on and on about various protection herbs and freedom of religion in America and how Halloween is co-opted from paganism etc, and then he goes on to say Sam-Hain instead of pronouncing it correctly? I mean, that could be the case. I’ve definitely met That Guy before. But if so, Kat is well old enough to have heard the very common mispronounced Sam-Hain before, and wouldn’t be confused by it. And it didn’t need to be like this, because that guy was pretentious enough to definitely say it correctly (on purpose, to cause confusion, as well as to show his superiority, like he does at every second in his conversations). Kat could have said, “Wait. Sow what?” instead, and that would be perfect. So while there’s a possibility it’s the character, I honestly have to think it’s actually the author.

I mean, the author also made it so this Super Pretentious Witch Guy didn’t know who Severus Snape was circa 2012, which is a pretty big stretch. Then he (the author) went on to spend an entire paragraph explaining, in minute detail, the shape of a pentagram, with analogies like, “the [stars] children draw in their first bursts of artistic creativity.” It’s a pentagram! We all know what a pentagram looks like! Just. Say. Pentagram. It reminds me of when Paul Auster described “bugs” (germs) as “that odd little word we all fall back on to describe the invisible contagions that float through the city and worm their way into people’s bloodstreams and inner organs” (Oracle Night). Or when Beth Fehlbaum explained what Chuck E Cheese is, and went into detail describing the structure of a knock-knock joke (Hope in Patience). These are not obscure things. Bugs, Chuck E Cheese, knock knock jokes, pentagrams…we know them, okay? Cut out the overly explanatory bits of the prose, and move on. Don’t treat readers like they were born yesterday.

Anyway. Story-wise, it was fun, and I liked the setup being a by-the-hour framing. But I think the book needed a lot of editing and revision, and for a third and final book in a good series, it was rather disappointing.

Posted in 2021, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | Leave a comment