Long COVID Canary: A Few Days without Long COVID

 

Long COVID Canary: #Qigong Edition

 

REDUX LROD (AGAIN): But first tell me why there's a warning on this blog for sensitive content?

I'll give you 20 doll hairs if you can tell me why there is now a warning on this blog for sensitive content.  Is it something I said?  I mean, no one wants to hear about long COVID, but that takes it to another level. 

Anyway, I'm going to be posting some panels from a new comic strip and asking for your feedback. Hope you will participate. Guess the topic.....mmm-hmmm, long COVID.  Another attempt to make art out of a dim reality.  Speaking of which, the graphic novel I wrote during COVID got rejected by a million newbie, young agents and a few more mature ones.  I think it's my artistic ability that is the problem.  Lots of comments about liking the concept and the writing, but not so much the art.  Oh well. I guess you could say I have a primitive style and not great lettering.  I will post them as soon as I get my brain back: there are many.

Once on a plane coming home from L.A. at the very beginning of the pandemic, Bill Rosemann of Marvel Comics sat next to me and told me comic artists spend a whole lifetime working on their lettering. I made a font after that with my own handwriting, but I like the rawness of my own hand lettering better.  I think Rosemann was being nice to me a little bit the way you might be nice to someone who has written their first novel after not having spent a life-time honing the craft.  Not that it hasn't happened that someone comes up with a brilliant first book out of nowhere, but, you know, odds are kind of low.

Rosemann gave me his card and said he'd love to help, but he never answered emails. I'm sure he meant well.  Nice guy.

Anyway, stay tuned for Long COVID Canary in a Coal Mine comic strip coming to LROD soon.  

About time for a new book?

I'm starting to feel a bit more like myself after 2.5 years with Long COVID. I still haven't exercised, but I will soon have published a memoir in essays (November 15th 2022). So, there's that. I will post a retrospective of all the rejections I received before getting it published.  It's a little delayed due to circumstances beyond the publisher's control like health crises.  Keep an eye out for it, yes? 

Temporary LROD Closure Due to Long COVID

I'm closing down LROD—temporarily (I hope)—due to the fact that I am still struggling with long COVID. Instead of literary matters (other than I still am at some level a writer), I plan to write about the crazy efforts I'm making to get better.  It's not exactly snake oil, but it is:   low dose Naltrexone, Nitric Oxide Drops (the kind weightlifters take to increase blood flow to their muscles after pumping iron: to be clear, I'm not lifting weights, I'm lying in bed, trying to find ways to exercise without making myself worse), flavonoids, Chinese herbs, vitamins (D, B, C, E), fish oil (fractionated), Co-Q10, Ginseng, CBD, Tylenol (for muscle pain, though again, I'm mostly lying in bed), probiotics, acupuncture.  I'm also in a long COVID clinical trial at a local university.  Guess what that entails.  After a barrage of baseline testing (e.g., glucose tolerance, MRIs, body-fat indices, blood tests, swallowing a body temperature sensor), I will be strapping on scuba-like pants that will circulate heat to my lower body 5 days a week for 8 weeks: 40 minutes sessions of heat therapy.  I keep asking the study coordinator if the other four people who've completed the study report feeling any better. After pressing her for weeks, she finally gave a definitive answer.  "Feeling better is really very subjective."  

     This is how desperate I am to get better.

     Very desperate.

     So far, though: no luck.