Tidbits from life
Plus, the Antidote #40: vaccine updates, webinars up the wazoo, and the Best Place to Have Herpes™️
The Tonic is a lighthearted, heavily resourced newsletter for folks interested in learning about long COVID, ME/CFS, and other health conditions. Come for the info; stay for the whimsy. Or vice versa.
If you are new here and curious about the tools that have been helping me in my long COVID recovery, please check out the Recovery Tools series tab on my Substack site. (Please start with part one, as it includes an important disclaimer about how highly individualized recovery tools can be with a heterogenous illness like long COVID).
Paid supporter shout out!
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Tidbits from life
I’ve got no big main topic for you this week, but I’ll popcorn you with a bunch of short ones.
Fifty
It happened! I’m a big girl now. I had a wonderful weekend away with a smattering of family and friends (who all took COVID tests prior - the only thing on my gift registry). I had a wild symptom flare in the middle of the weekend, but it was nothing that a cold shower, a few salt tabs, some cello music, and some rest couldn’t fix. It was just my nervous system trying to protect me. Thanks, bud!
Speaking of birthdays, this note on Substack caught my eye and cracked me up. Buy your own cake if no one else will!
The good docs
Have you ever taken a moment to really appreciate the good docs in your life? Especially if a novel, soul-eating illness has exposed you to more mediocre ones than you care to count? In a post long, long ago, I shouted out Dr. K., my longtime headache specialist (from well before long COVID). She was the first doc to take me seriously when I said I wasn’t recovering. She sent me for that first MRI that started the ball rolling of uncovering the shitshow of dysfunction. She has also willingly and almost lovingly agreed to fill out any disability paperwork I’ve needed, and she’s super careful not to document any minor improvements I’m having in her notes, so that disability doesn’t cut me loose too quickly. She’s a GEM. And yes, she helped me resolve eight years of chronic, near daily migraines, because on top of just being a compassionate human of integrity, she’s a relentless searcher of solutions. She’s a “throw the spaghetti up against the wall and see what sticks” kind of doc. Just incredible.
Anyway, so I had my check up with her this week, and she was a delight as always. On my way out, she said, “oh, wait here for a sec.” She left the room and came back with this for me.
I couldn’t possibly love her more.
New friend!
I’ve made a new friend in the past few weeks. Whoa! So fun!
I’m never really “in the market” for new friends, mostly because I have a ton of existing friends and I already carry a certain level of guilt and frustration that I don’t get to see most of them as often as I would like. But sometimes new friendships just happen so organically, you can’t help but enjoy the buzz. This new friend is several time zones away and so far we’ve been using audio notes and text to get to know each other. It’s just been delightful getting to know someone new, discovering what you may have in common (we discovered she once dated my college philosophy professor!), learning about what makes you different, and getting in a few laughs along the way.
My new friend also became a new subscriber to The Tonic. So, hi to my new friend! 👋🏻
Operation Domesticate Ripley
Baldy and I (but mostly Baldy) have been on a mission this summer to domesticate our feral garage kitty, Ripley. Or, at the very least, to get her comfortable coming into our basement so that maybe she’ll spend the winter in a warmer place than the garage.
It’s been going quite well so far. Baldy talks to her a lot when he’s outside doing his chores, and she began meowing back at him a few months ago (and she has the sweetest, most endearing ‘mew’). Eventually she began seeing more of me and meowing at me too. She lets us get right up to her when we put down a food bowl (though she still shrinks away if we offer a hand to sniff). We’ve even gotten her to come into the basement for some treats and she’ll do a little exploring while she’s in there.
She’s now hanging out around both of us and our basement door so much that she’s sort of neglecting her job of being a vigilant, predatory outdoor beast. So it’s like we’re domesticating her without bringing her inside yet, and that feels a little…I don’t know…dangerous? Irresponsible?
Along those lines, a few days ago while Baldy was at work, I let her into the basement and gently closed the door behind her. My thinking is we need to make more progress soon so we can have her spend more time with us and get her out of harm’s way. She didn’t panic, but she was a little concerned that the door was closed. Then she explored both sides of the basement a bit before going to hide under the oil tank. She wouldn’t come out for me, even when I left the basement door open and went back upstairs for hours. I think maybe I moved too quickly for her.
We thought for sure she’d come out once Baldy was home from work, because he’s her person. But she didn’t come out then either. He had to get into the tight space near the oil tank and basically scare her out, after which she just ran and hid in other tight spaces in the basement. Finally, he was able to extract her. We were certain we had traumatized her and set back any progress we made, but within minutes, she was back at the basement door meowing. Cats! They’re an enigma.
Stay tuned for more updates on ODR.
I got a cold
My first one in almost five years! (acute COVID was March 2020, and then I got a minor cold in September 2020, but nothing since). What a strange feeling after all this time. I had been feeling kind of sluggish over the weekend, but just thought it was a long COVID flare from doing a bit too much socializing lately, or from having added a bit of jogging intervals to my walk a few days earlier. Turns out it wasn’t a true flare, just a cold. I tested negative for COVID and strep. I hung out at a park with a good friend and her near one-year-old last week and now baby girl is also sick with a runny nose and cough. She tested negative for all the serious stuff, thank goodness.
The main thing I’ve been trying to keep in mind is 1) not to panic, 2) not to overanalyze what it means that I got a cold (was I overdoing it? was I foolish to socialize so much with no mask on? will I regress in terms of my recovery from long COVID?), and 3) to get proper rest.
The truth is, I’ve sort of been bracing myself for the first virus of some sort during this recovery, and curious about how I’d handle it and what effect it would have on me. I’ve been reassured by my fellow “thrivers” in the CFS Recovery Program that many of them have gotten colds as well as COVID reinfections, and they have handled them fine just by using the tools of the program, those that help us swat away fears and keep our nervous systems calm. They have told me things like, “it’ll be different this time; you’re now equipped with the tools to respond well.” I am choosing to hold tight to their words and take good care of myself for these days. I’ve pulled back on my schedule and my compulsion to complete tasks, and I’m taking it easy with my boyfriend Fritzy. I’ll report back soon.
Make some money!
A fellow Substacker,
, posted about Ally Bank in her newsletter. It’s an online bank that offers higher interest rates than most other banks. I used her referral code (thanks, Kira!) and opened a savings account with 3.5% interest. And, by using her code, she got $50 and I got $100 (after three months of minimal monthly deposits to a savings account). How can you go wrong? They have options for savings, checking, and investment accounts.If this sounds good to you too, here’s my referral code. Let’s make some money together!
COVID, Long COVID, and ME/CFS
😷 Black Americans with long COVID: ‘I'm still here, I'm alive and breathing’. Also, new COVID vaccine policy puts Black families and pregnant people at risk.
🤕 Razor blade throat: a symptom accompanying the latest COVID variant.
🤒 Immune dysregulation: could it be the tipping point in long COVID?
💉 More vaccine news: FDA Approves Moderna’s Next-Generation COVID-19 Vaccine mNexspike. And Infectious Disease Docs Slam New COVID Vaccine Recommendations and also CDC Experts Make the Case for Maternal COVID Vaccination (last two may require free MedPage Today subscription).
🛌🏼 Pacing is political:
with a hot take on the privilege of resting and pacing as a human right.🚸 Children:
with an important piece on long COVID becoming the number one chronic illness in children. What an enormous crisis that very few are taking seriously.😵💫 Dysautonomia: the
with her fifth installment on decoding dysautonomia, this time covering how to address the root cause. This entire series should win an award - seriously. It is thoroughly researched and wonderfully written. Do check it out.💊 Medications for ME/CFS: a study on the various treatment regimens of women with the disease.
Webinars/conferences/podcasts/videos/resources
🔬 RECOVER research review: “Characterizing Long COVID during early childhood,” to be held Tuesday, July 8, 2025, at 12:00-1:30 pm ET. Register here.
🌎 Pandemic prevention and preparedness: an international panel presentation on what will happen in the wake of the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Agreement. Tuesday, July 8 from 10-11am EST. Register here.
🥼 Long COVID research: join the Patient-Led Research Collaborative for a webinar on the status of the many research projects they have funded, to be held on July 9th from 1-4:30pm ET. Register here.
🫀 Dysautonomia conference: join Dysautonomia International for their 13th annual conference from July 11-13 in Raleigh, NC (online option available; note this conference has a fee). More info here.
👩🏾💻 Three-day online event: The Gordon Medical Forum: Long COVID and ME/CFS from July 17-19 with top integrative medicine doctors and health experts. Register for free here.
😣 Nervous system conference: The Reset Your Nervous System Super Conference will be held from July 21-27th and features many well-known experts. Register for free here.
🤖 Can AI Crack Long COVID? Here’s a recording of that recent webinar.
😔 Processing grief: a brief video by Alex Howard.
😪 Fatigue & PEM: Dr. Eleanor Stein with her video tip-of-the-month for June. Go here and scroll down. Note this topic is handled in two parts this month, so there are two videos.
💊 Low dose rapamycin for ME/CFS: a recent video by Dr. Jarred Younger.
Health miscellany
🏠 Evictions and Black mothers: how their physical and mental health suffers.
🤳🏾 Health trackers: Do Apple Watches and Oura Rings really make us healthier? (I’ve said it here before that I saw big gains in my recovery by taking them all off; they had become a dysregulating obsession).
👵🏼 Longevity: should we forget what we’ve been told about people who live in the Blue Zones?
with yet another interesting and measured piece.🥵 Heat waves and AC: excellent advice herein if you don’t have AC or if yours craps out during a heat wave. Also, climate change is boosting the risk of sleep apnea.
😏 Mistrusting your body:
on five ways that doing so shows up in your life. A great read.🏳️⚧️ Trans health care: a profile of this trans historian and her work on the Skrmetti case, which the Supreme Court just ruled on, saying that banning gender-affirming care for minors did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment. It is going to take so many years to undo this colossal fuckery. In the meantime, we will lose children to suicide. It’s completely unconscionable.
😰 Stress and anxiety: what’s the difference?
😠 Government fuckery: by now you’ve probably seen that our U.S. dictator’s enormous shitshow of a spending bill is a done deal. Here’s a few pieces on the damage that lays ahead: GOP tax bill would mean 11.8 million people uninsured, $1.1 trillion in health cuts (this may not be the exact version that passed, but close enough). Too Sick To Work, Some Americans Worry Trump’s Bill Will Strip Their Health Insurance. In non-Big Stupid Bill-related health fuckery: Trump immigration crackdown is hitting nursing home staffs. Oh, and Chemical Safety Board to disappear under Trump's orders. The cruelty continues: Trump administration removing 988 hotline service tailored to LGBTQ+ youth in July. And as a reminder, The Scientific Research Lost Amid the Trump Administration’s NIH Cuts. Standing in the way of progress and people’s basic dignities is pure evil. Here’s a defiantly hopeful message from
: In the Wake of the Big Beautiful Bill.🌍 Fuckery abroad: First independent survey of deaths in Gaza reports more than 80,000 fatalities. And ‘A bloodbath’: doctors describe carnage at Iran’s hospitals after Israeli strikes. I truly hope that one day, Israel gets its comeuppance for all of the death, maiming, and destruction it has caused. This has gone tragically far beyond self-defense. This disabled, anti-Zionist Jew agrees: There is no disability justice without a Free Palestine. Here’s a quote:
None of this is being done to protect Jews. None of this is simply collateral damage. It is the intended outcome of a genocide that too many, especially those in both the Jewish and disability communities, are choosing to look away from.
💉 GLP-1’s for weight loss: advice from a doctor who’s used them.
🤧 Allergies: to other humans!
🍴 Food insecurity and cancer: a study out of the U.S. that found that food insecurity is a substantial factor associated with increased mortality among survivors of cancer.
🩸 Menopause:
with 6 Myths About Menopause That Prevent Women From Getting Appropriate Care and Doctors don't get much menopause training. State lawmakers are trying to change that.Inspiration & Recovery
🙏🏻 Honoring your body:
with a great piece called To the One Who Cancels Plans.❤️🩹 Healing:
with A New Paradigm for anyone with long COVID or dysregulating conditions.🚲 Dusty strikes again: this time on Raelan Agle’s channel. Dusty is in CFS Recovery with me and she’s a constant source of inspiration and support to me and others.
😰 Trying hard to recover?:
🧙🏻♂️ Ornamental Hermits? 18th-Century England’s Must-Have Garden Accessory. Hmmm…this feels a little like old-timey human trafficking.
⛰️ New Zealand: 'Best place to have herpes'. Pretty cheeky!
👧🏼 Sons over daughters? Not so much anymore. Now if only we could get their basic human rights back…
❤️🔥 Ms. Rachel: she says she’ll keep advocating for children in Gaza, even if it means risking her career.
📚 Local librarians: embracing an indigenous cataloguing system. Who knew Dewey was such a bastardo??
💓 Timeless beauty: Scientists reconstruct 10,500-year-old woman’s face using DNA.
🤦🏻 Buffoon of the week: It’s failed businessman DJT, failing again in spectacular fashion. His military birthday parade was an undeniable failure, but apparently, the small crowds may have been due to pathetic party planning. What a breathtaking waste of money.
🏆 Winner of the week: this week’s winner is Faith Kipyegon, who broke her own world record in the women’s mile. The video is thrilling and worth four minutes and six seconds of your life.
🐈⬛ 💩 And finally, it’s this week’s Cat Dump. (Where’s our Independence) Day edition.
Always love the Tonic...happy birthday, Amy!
Happy birthday it sounds like you celebrated in perfect fashion!!!. I love that you are focusing on integrating Ripley a bit more, I freaking love your cats. 🐱