The Rodeo
A fortnightly lassoing of info, resources, and recovery tools
Welcome to our second edition of The Rodeo, my good people - our fortnightly roundup of cattle useful COVID, long COVID, and ME/CFS info. I’ve waited two weeks to finally be able to say, “this isn’t my first rodeo.” 🤠
Stick around for (or skip down to) the After-party 🥳 for a Cat-Dump-turned-long-COVID story.
Giddy up! 🐎
COVID current affairs
Let’s start with a simple, but “what the f*$@ don’t you get about this, already?!” quote:
“There’s no long COVID without COVID.”
—Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at Veterans Affairs, St. Louis Health Care System
According to The People’s CDC, cases are still rising in the Northeast, Midwest, and Western U.S.
😷 By now, you know the drill. A layered approach is best; this graphic from Mask Together America says it all.
👩🏻🦰 My personal layered approach means continuing to monitor the wastewater reports from my region, masking again in indoor public spaces with a well-fitted KN95 mask, socializing only outdoors, and only eating at restaurants with an outdoor option. I also ordered my four free COVID tests from the U.S. government to add to my mini stockpile.
I don’t know about you, but I’m rather enjoying the anonymity of going to the grocery store with a ball cap and a black KN95 mask. Redheads are rare birds and easily spotted in the wild. In this get up, very few people try to talk to me, and I can get my vegan cheese and get out.
🦠 If you do get COVID, check out this cool page I stumbled upon that discusses tests you should get, dietary and supplement considerations, and other treatment options: Recovering from Post COVID & Post Vaccine Syndromes. Also, check this out for the latest at-home testing guidance:
Research studies
🔬 Long COVID and ME/CFS research is coming fast and furious these days. The biggest one that caught my eye was Long COVID Blood Tests Show Distinct Immune and Hormone Function. Akiko Iwasaki from Yale and her co-authors have been doing some amazing work here. The line that caught my eye:
Serum cortisol was the most significant predictor of long COVID status. Other biomarkers indicated abnormal T cell activity and reactivation of multiple latent viruses, including EBV and other herpesviruses.
This was especially eye-catching to me because I tested negative for COVID in March 2020 and negative for the antibodies in May 2020. However, I have low-end-of-normal serum cortisol levels, T cell exhaustion, and Epstein-Barr reactivation (consistently off the charts early antigen numbers for the past three years). If Iwasaki and her team get us closer to a biomarker or imprint of long COVID, it could help millions of undiagnosed or medically gaslit long haulers to get the care and benefits they deserve.
🔬 Another article called Long COVID: The hunt for causes and cures really summarizes where all of the research is by now. This caught my eye in particular:
It could be that the body’s defenses are simply not turning off, as if the immune system is still shadowboxing a viral ghost. Alternatively, the virus may still be present and driving inflammation, in line with the viral persistence theory. Either way, the constant immune activity contributes to debilitating malaise and can significantly cramp a person’s quality of life.
🔬 Brandon over at the Long COVID Weekly Newsletter continues to do a great job summarizing the latest research, and he’s got some doozies in his latest edition. If you have Epstein Barr virus (EBV) reactivation or are just curious about it, check out his summary and the link on that study.
🙋🏽 Help accelerate the cure for ME/CFS, Long COVID, and related diseases through research participation: sign up for the Open Medicine Foundation’s StudyME registry.
Expanding access to care in the U.S.
🏥 HHS Awards $45 Million in Grants to Expand Access to Care for People with Long COVID: nine grant awards of $1 million each for up to 5 years to support existing multidisciplinary Long COVID clinics across the country to expand access to comprehensive, coordinated, and person-centered care for people with Long COVID, particularly underserved, rural, vulnerable, and minority populations that are disproportionately impacted by the effects of Long COVID.
This is the Biden-Harris administration, folx. While the U.S. government response to Long COVID has been less than stellar, I fear we risk even the possibility of initiatives like this if Biden isn’t our next president.
Podcast recommendation
🧫 Mitochondrial health is becoming a hot topic in the Long COVID and ME/CFS worlds. Check out Ari Whitten’s podcast episode where he talks to Dr. Datis Kharrazian about how to build mitochondrial resilience. A few ways to do this include getting quality sleep, intermittent fasting, and hormesis (gentle agitation of the system helps grow new mitochondria, including any physical movement, cold plunges/showers, saunas, sunlight, and red light/near-infrared light therapy).
Key takeaway at the end:
“If you’re a passive patient, you won’t get better. Getting out of chronic disease requires active participation on your part.”
Physical activity
🧘🏽Do you struggle with finding safe, manageable physical activity during your long COVID or ME/CFS experience? Or with ways to rest your autonomic nervous system? Check out Nourish Therapeutic Yoga, spoonie-friendly virtual yoga taught by a wonderful woman (Shannon) who is also living with ME/CFS. I’m on the monthly plan, which gets me access to her weekly Wednesday classes as well as to her video library. Shannon is also offering a four-week restorative yoga series starting in late October.
Stick around for…
🥳 The After-party 🥳
Added joy, tomfoolery, and buffoonery
🧟 The Zombie Apocalypse Is Here, and It’s Long COVID: Miguel’s Story
💰 This is a nightmare (and completely unsurprising): Social Security overpays billions to people, many on disability. Then it demands money back. Beneficiaries in five states described what happened when they received letters calling on them to return overpayments that can reach tens of thousands of dollars or more.
🪖 I was shocked that this was still a thing, but Baldy sent me this: The Last Skirt Mandate in Marine Corps Has Been Nixed After Female Troops Advocated for Change
🍳 Do you eat organic eggs? See how your favorite brand stacks up. Also, here’s what all the labeling on eggs means.
🤦🏼 Buffoon of the week: Tim “Black families sur-viiived slavery” Scott.
’s post a bunch of total fucking losers had a debate does this way better justice than I ever could.🐈⬛💩 And finally, it’s this week’s Cat Dump, which comes with a little story this time:
This here is Gotham. He wandered into our yard on Tuesday and got into an epic smackdown with one of our ferals. We’d never seen him before.
The reason I know his name is Gotham is because I had to use all my day’s spoons breaking up a fight between stopping Parker from beating the living shit out of him, and then luring Gotham over with my feminine-feline wiles to look at his collar.
If I haven’t mentioned this before, Parker is our one-eyed, six-cans-of-food-a-day, fuck-around-and-find-out feral.
And this is very much Parker’s yard.
Even our garage feral, Ripley, skirts around the yard to avoid Parker in order to get to her food and sleeping quarters in the garage.
Back to Gotham. Turns out his collar had a tag with, not simply the phone number of his owner (that would have been too easy), but a FUCKING QR CODE.
Do you know how hard it is to:
a) wrangle a cat that belongs to you, let alone one that doesn’t know or have a reason to trust you,
b) hold them steady long enough with one hand, with your phone camera in the other hand, long enough to get the link from the QR code to appear, and then
c) ALSO CLICK ON THAT LINK BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS????
Because that’s everything required, in one fell swoop, to find out who this cat belongs to and how I can contact them.
This would have been a near-impossible task for a healthy person, let alone an energy-deficient one. I was huffing, puffing, and shaking.
I clicked on the QR link and found out his name was Gotham and his owner was Mary Nitwit. I picked up Gotham and put him in our basement, because the sweet dummy was trying to step to Parker again and I knew he’d get the Mike Tyson treatment if he did. Also, there was already blood on my hand after I put him down. Here he is in our basement, all dumb and sweet:
I texted Nitwit, who it turns out lives on the private road parallel to our own, and without giving you the complete blow by blow, suffice to say I let her know that Gotham was here, he was bleeding, and that it is a mistake to let such a sweet dummy out of her house, what with our resident baddie wiping the grass with him but also because of the pack of roving coyotes in these here woodsy parts who howl and yip and yap in unison off in the nearby distance several nights a week. She thanked me, but swore he never usually leaves her porch.
Ultimately, she was unable to come get him because she was stuck at home alone with a one-month-old infant and no car. I told her I was stuck at home with a disability. She told me to just let him out and he’d find his way home.
So, when Baldy got home from work, I waited for him to give me the all-clear that Parker had left the premises and then I walked Gotham down our driveway and tried to lead him to the woods between our two roads. He stood on a rock looking down into the woods like he knew the way, but then he kept returning to me to rub against my legs. Like I said, he was a true sweetheart and I’d be lying if Baldy and I didn’t talk about spiriting him away and hiding him inside our house fur-ever.
I mean, you care enough to have a QR CODE TAG created for a cat you’re afraid of losing, but then you’ll just open the door and let the sweet dummy out to get mauled to death?*
* “But Amy, you and Baldy have two ferals who live outside 24/7/365, so surely you’re just a pair of hypocritical assholes?” No, we’re not, and don’t call me Shirley (asshole is fine).
Some cats will never acclimate to humans (they are called FERALS). We adopted Ripley a few years ago, already feral and a rescue from a horrific Florida hoarding situation, specifically to give her a safe outdoor(ish) place to live. Parker just found his way to our yard shortly after that. Neither will let us touch them. Parker at least now lets us within a few feet of him without running away. We feed them and Baldy (Mr. I’m Not A Cat Person, 2002) is constantly creating or tweaking the best shelter for them that he can, given their desire to remain outdoors.
Back to our tale. Eventually, Gotham left my side and I went inside to collapse. Nitwit texted me a few minutes later to say that he was home.
Wednesday - the day after WWF(eline) - I had a root canal. The cumulative effect of both is that on Thursday, PEM set in, with raging shingles-like neuropathy and the worst day of fatigue I’ve had in months (a 9 on a scale of 10). I’m bouncing back now, but the moral of the story is, don’t FAFO, whether you’re a cat, a numbskull, or a delicate fucking flower of a human.
Thanks Dania! Yeah, I have to believe every long hauler has at least a few stories about the ridiculous scenarios that led to a crash 🤦🏼♀️. Our nervous systems are so reactive now.
And, c’mon over! Parker won’t mess with you. Just don’t bring a cat 😹
Just a thought; They speak of cortisol levels and I know there was speculation early-on that anxiety was an indication of someone’s likelihood to have LC. We all know where they were going with that..... But I don’t disagree for a different reason: Anxiety is your body’s early response to something that has not yet happened. Maybe LC is your body’s early response to an illness it fears getting again. Iv’e often wondered if there is synergy to our overall being, If our health problems aren’t somehow mirrored in our personality, as if our being receives guidance from a central algorithm.