Tamara Unleashed

We left for DC on Tuesday and drove to Buchanan VA, a lovely little town with a great Airbnb. There was only one restaurant open and it was only open until 8 so while I was out on a walk I stopped and ordered a cheese quesadilla and chicken wings for Craig. The person at the register asked me if I wanted chicken to which I said No, just cheese. While the other person was making the food we were chatting and she said a cheese quesadilla sounded really good and I said yes it does and added that I do not eat meat. When I got back to the Airbnb after 8 PM, I discovered it was a chicken quesadilla and not just a little bit of chicken. By the time I got done removing all of the chicken there was little cheese and I was HANGRY!!!!!!! I ate some popcorn and got by.

Today after the Veteran’s rally, I decided I would like some Pad Thai – perhaps because I knew there was a restaurant as we exited the Metro near where we are staying. I ordered a Pad Thai with Fried Tofu and left Craig with the signs to wait for the food while I walked up the hill to get the car. Food was ready shortly after I returned with the car. After my shower I looked at the take out bag and it said chicken Pad Thai. The word Veteran was also printed on the ticket so perhaps there was a Veterans discount – cool. Fortunately the pieces of chicken in this are large enough that I can remove and enjoy the noodles. Pad Thai generally makes my mouth really happy. At least I will not be HANGRY tonight.

So weird.

I have transitioned off the steroids with no rebound cough. It is still not 100% gone but if I cough it does not turn into a prolonged bout. I am sleeping more normally although I have so much going on in my mind about the Robertson County Democratic Party Outreach and Engagement activities that I wake up early ready to think and organize. I finally found the brick wall I want to figure out how to get through. The RCDP Executive Committee had a “social” meeting yesterday and it was a typical “herding of cats” experience. So much passion and desire to take action – how to harness??

We had dinner with Natalie and her parents, who went to her first 2 Keith Urban shows. They said, even without Natalie, Keith does a fabulous show. Ear protection is mandatory. She is SOOOOO happy and looks radiant on stage.

We made a lot of progress on our outside work last week. My energy held up really well.

The gully from the pasture across the southeast end of property is being transformed into a rock drainage ditch with Craig’s manpower and Katie’s assistance. All of the stones near and far in the center photo are now neatly placed. This is not quite finished yet, but is done at the top where the water enters our property.

I finished sanding the front porch and took apart a weathered Adirondack chair. I sanded all of the pieces and it is cedar. All of cedar sawdust seemed to support my hypothesis from last summer that cedar is a great bug repellant for me. I was out until sunset with not one bite.

We are off to DC tomorrow – will drive to Buchanan VA the first day and arrive in DC early afternoon on Wednesday. The Unite for Veterans Rally AKA DDay Protest in on the 6th. We will likely be able to find some protests to join on the 7th as well.

I made it through the first 3 dosed (.25/.5 and 1 mg). I could not have continued to increase the dose and maintain any appetite. I lost about 20 pounds, half of my goal but there is not way I would want to continue on this drug long term so I decided to just stop it now. I now clearly know how few calories I need in a day and if my brain has been retrained at all, I should be able to keep this weight off with keeping my intake commensurate with my activity level and hopefully lose the last 20 pounds over time.

I am glad that I did the experiment and got back to where I was 5 years ago. Now for the HARD work.

This is a 30 minute, 6 episode, 5 season dramedy that I binged over the last few days. It has been a long time since I have watched something that so utterly charmed me and covered the breath of emotions as this show did. Set in Oslo in current times. it is a look into the life challenges of a single mother who works as a child protection social worker. It deals with many of life’s toughest challenges with the back drop of a culture and society that that looks after its basic citizens’ needs better. While there are always financial challenges keeping up with the needs and wants of 2 teenage daughters and a gap year in Argentina, there is no sense of fear of access to education or healthcare or a looming bankruptcy with an injury or illness.

A more equitable distribution of wealth does not eliminate problems of racism, child abuse, drug addiction or teen suicide but these characters seem to face their challenges with less fear.

It was less than a month ago that Natalie found out that Keith Urban was looking for a woman who could be in his band and sing duets with him on his High and Alive World tour that started in 3 weeks. Within 3 days she flew off for a 3 day rehearsal in an arena. Then she had to sort through all of the complexities of adding this to her commitments with Runaway June and learn all of Keith’s music.

She has 3 shows under her belt now it was amazing to see how she stepped up to this challenge. She KILLED it.

They are touring into October and if you have a chance to go see a show, I highly recommend it https://keithurban.com

We will see our first show on June 26th in Cincinatti for our 2 year anniversary and plan to see them again on September 26th in St. Paul and October 16th in Greenville, SC.

It was “amusing” to look at my last post on May 5. How naive I was – thinking I could outsmart a virus – particularly one that hit Craig so hard. I was still feeling pretty good on May 8th so I went to my personal training session, but did not push it. Later that night, I started feeling awful. My blood oxygenation was running in the low 90s so I went to urgent care on the 12th. A chest Xray did not show pneumonia and I was not running a fever so home I went with an inhaler. Based on previous experiences I knew I was going to need steroids but I had to wait until I could see my doctor on the 21st to get them.

It was a very long 9 days waiting for the steroids. My experience was complicated by the Wegovy. Craig lost his appetite for over a week so I knew that was a part of the virus. The virus plus my “Wegovy” diminished appetite became no appetite with aversion to drinking so I was essentially dehydrated and calorie impaired which contributed to my fatigue and light-headedness.

Today is my last day of steroids and my cough is much better. I have had a much harder time sleeping because of the steroids than I remember from past steroid experiences so I feel energized and sleep deprived at the same time. Now I have to wait and see if the cough will rebound off of the steroids.

I think this was a nonCovid coronavirus as it was reminiscent of my Covid experiences. I think my exaggerated viral syndrome responses are a manifestation of my long Covid (I still minimal taste and smell). While this is very frustrating, I feel fortunate that I know I will fully recover from these experiences.

Craig felt recovered from his cough and head symptoms after 2 weeks but it has taken another 2 weeks to get his stamina back. It was a nasty virus and we have no idea where he picked it up.

Our highest priority now is to be in top condition for our trip to DC for the Veteran’s protest on June 6th.

I was in Nashville last Tuesday night and when I got back Wednesday, Craig sounded awful. He said he had inhaled too much sawdust and would be fine. Shortly thereafter he started coughing and he was NOT fine. He lost his appetite and has had terrible fatigue but no gastrointestinal symptoms. He never had more than a low grade temperature but he got knocked down HARD. While I was busy treating his cough and congestion (with a few days of antibiotics that likely made no difference) I tried to keep myself from getting infected and potentially spreading it others. I worked out with my trainer on Thursday and when to the Veterans rally on Friday. Since then I have been home using Zicam nasal swabs, zinc tablets and hoping for the best. We isolated from each other the best we could. On Sunday I started getting a bit congested and had a bit of a productive cough by Monday. I was able to sleep a lot more than normal. I never felt truly bad and if it hadn’t been for what Craig was going through, I might not have paid much attention to the symptoms or tried as hard to get plenty of rest. For 3 days my daily assessment has been that I am not worse which was good.

Today I woke up feeling better. I then took a nap and am still in bed. Craig has been up for several hours but is now napping as well. He did say today he thought he was better as well as opposed to “not worse”.

Tomorrow I am going to work out with my trainer and get on with my life. Two weeks ago I offered to host the Robertson County Democratic Executive Committee (20 -25 people) for a social, team building event on June 1. While I do think our space will work well for this type of event, my secondary motive was to have a deadline to get A LOT of things done indoors and outdoors. Losing 7- 10 days to a virus was not on my plan.

No matter, we will get done what we can get done and host a lovely event. Fingers crossed that we do NOT have a heavy rain the day or two before that washes out our driveway.

Our dear friend Jack who was living with advanced heart failure died peacefully last weekend. Jack was the kindest, most supportive and creative human being. He will be missed by and live on through so many family and friends. One of my Covid projects was to use up 3 garbage bags of the yarn I moved from DC. I have been accumulating the yarn over the decades and decided to make lap blankets which were most amenable to the sometimes small amounts of certain colors of yarn that I had. I was determined to use it all. Most of what I have made over the years is baby blankets so the colors were generally not very manly. However as I was creating one that had darker bold colors, I knew immediately I was making it for Jack.

I gave it to him in 2022 and it was his constant companion over the past 3 years as his mobility was increasingly limited because of the hear failure. It was on his lap as he celebrated his last birthday on April 15th. His daughter Sally wrote the most fitting obituary for her father a true officer and gentle man. https://www.sandersfuneralandcremation.com/listings

Knowing something I made provided so much comfort to someone else is such a gift. Thank you Jack.

I have had one week at the 1 mg dose and while I have not noticed any increase in the side effects, I did lose nearly 3 pounds this week which makes it a total of almost 10 pounds so far. My energy is good and my strength training is no different even though I am consuming a lot less food. Maybe there is more muscle under the fat than I realize.

While I saw a new article about microdosing with the GLP-1 agonists for improved cognition, I have had things happen while I was on Wegovy that have me a bit concerned. The first was the “Did you turn the switch on” incident that I previously blogged about. The second is about this appliance which I use a couple of times a week.

Last week while in the middle of doing several things I decided to make more herbal tea. I kept trying to open the lid by pushing the “button” on the lid near the pouring spout. The button did not push so I thought it was stuck. I got frustrated and set it aside to come back to later. Later, it did not work and I got out a knife to see if I could get the button to work. It did not help. I thought about prying the lid open but stopped short and set it aside to ask Craig about it. When I explained the problem, he simply pushed the button on the handle and the lid opened. This was clearly a short circuit in my brain of some sort. Even though I had used that handle button multiple times before, I did not even see it in my focus on the “fake button” in the lid which is not even an actual button. This may have nothing to do with the Wegovy. I have not noticed any other cognitive challenges but I will keep track.

Craig really got hit with URI this week that kept us from the May 1 and May 3 protests. I did attend a TN Democratic Party (TNDP) Town Hall for Veterans at the VA facility in Murfreesboro, TN about 20 miles SE of Nashville on Friday morning. I randomly found the “flyer” on Facebook and Craig really prepared for the event by reading the Project 2025 section on the VA. He was not in any shape to go so I went. It was a lovely day for a drive. We had thought that an event organized at the state level would have a bigger reach and thus more attendance which was not the case.

The flyer said Town Hall and Main Entrance of Murfreesboro VA. I drove in through the main entrance of the campus, parked and went in to the main entrance of the hospital. There was no event inside the main lobby and the information desk attendant only knew that people were asking where it was and she did not know. She said it might be at another property up the road a bit. I ran into two other people on the steps as I was coming out who were also looking for it.

It turns out the event was what I would call a rally at the main outside entrance to the campus which I drove through 15 minutes before start time and did not notice any activity. The organizer said she set the table up at 915 and perhaps a table was there, but there were no people or signage when I drove by at945. Because Town Hall implied something indoors to me, whatever was there did not register any potential significance.

This was the event. As with the event in Clarksville last week, there were more organizers than veterans. The TNDP just formed a Veterans Caucus led by a new TNDP Executive Committee member. This was the first event she had ever organized. She was pleased with the turnout and my expectations were obviously way out of line. I sent her a f/u email and offered to help her with her future efforts. Accuracy and clarity in flyers is important.

It is unclear if Veterans are not interested in being activated or if they are not spending enough time on line trying to find events to participate in. I think much is the latter.

I decided to starting posting on Facebook again about my activism endeavors so there is a place that those that I am meeting at these events can “find me”.

While I have been easily infected with viruses in the past few years, this is the second one Craig has had that I seem to have missed. I didn’t go to the Nashville protest yesterday because it was raining and I didn’t want to take any chances by lower my resistance in any way. He has been miserable.