Covid-19

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover: Ms Lab Rat’s Review of Ketotarian: The (Mostly) Plant-Based Plan to Burn Fat, Boost Your Energy, Crush Your Cravings, and Calm Inflammation

On Friday night, Dawn Elise posted a book recommendation on the Ms Lab Rat comment page. Because I like that gentle reader’s taste in authors, I immediately downloaded her recommendation on my Kindle without getting worked up about the title or giving any attention to the cover photo. If I had so much as glimpsed at the image of the egg centered on the book’s cover, I might have passed over Ketotarian. I am allergic to eggs, and I have not had all that much luck with Keto. What could be in it for me?

I found the narrative voice of the first pages so compelling that I read straight through to the recipe section. No regrets. Who cares if you are up half the night and must sleep in ’til 9 am? I’ll give myself a pass; we’re in Covid-19 Quarantine.


What I like most about this book is that its mission is not to proselytize, but to inform and entertain. Cole is honest about the convolutions of his personal food journey. Through his struggles he has gained the wisdom to refrain from pressuring his reader to follow him in lockstep. For example, he provides Instant Pot recipes, but doesn’t urge you to go out and buy an Instant Pot, or worse, to buy a particular model of Instant Pot (a habit of certain medical professionals-slash-food celebrities that I, for one, find galling.)


Cole covers an impressive span of topics; the index alone makes for fascinating reading. These are 38 entries under H: from hair dyes (47) to hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis (134). And while we are on the subject of thyroids, let’s go to page 134. For there I discovered a confirmation of why Keto dieting hasn’t worked for me: “…some people with thyroid problems don’t do very well with fasting, making intermittent fasting a case-by-case tool for people with thyroid issues.”

Cole explains, “The queen of all hormones impacts every single cell of your awesomely designed body. If your thyroid isn’t working well, nothing is. The crazy thing about thyroid hormone problems is that there are many different reasons for them…There are autoimmune thyroid problems like Hashimoto’s disease, thyroid conversion issues like low T3 syndrome; thyroid resistance, which is similar to insulin resistance; and thyroid problems that are secondary to brain-thyroid axis dysfunction.”

I have known I have hypothyroid for thirty years. But have any of my conventional medical practitioners told me I have Hashimoto’s? No. I’m not sure they knew, themselves. I had to go to a doctor who practices functional medicine to find out.

Cole makes a convincing case that western medical schools have dropped the ball on educating doctors about nutrition. “Expecting health guidance from mainstream medicine is akin to getting gardening advice from a mechanic. You can’t expect someone who wasn’t properly trained in a field to give sound advice. Brilliant physicians in the mainstream model of care are trained to diagnose a disease and match it with a corresponding pharmaceutical drug. This medicinal matching game works sometimes, but often it leaves the patient with nothing but a growing prescription list and growing health problems.”

I’m really grateful to Cole for giving me such an in-depth research fueled assessment of the diet he’s had the most success with personally, and for giving me a pass if I don’t think it will work for me. I haven’t had a chance yet to try any of the recipes, but I’ll be sure to update on my Goodreads Page
when I do.

Glimpses of Gratitude, Covid-19 Style

The other day, I rolled out of bed pretty late, because I just couldn’t stop listening to Sugar Calling, the new Cheryl Strayed podcast. I heard a common thread running through Cheryl’s conversations with Alice Walker, “Whatever We Have, We Have to Work With It,” Judy Blume, “A Terrible Thing Is Happening, but the World Goes On,” and Pico Iyer, “Joyful Participation in a World of Sorrows.” When I finally meandered downstairs to make my ugly happy smoothie (cooked beet, coconut milk, ginger, five spice, spinach, and a few drops of rosewater) my husband presented me with a hand-addressed envelope out of our pile of stalemail—mail that had been untouched for 24 hours since our postal worker dropped it in the slot.
I opened a gorgeous card with a Japanese aesthetic; a collage created with scraps of handmade paper by our friend, the artist Tricia Bath. She’d incorporated a 13th Century quote from Rumi, one that resonated with the thoughts of the contemporary writers I’d heard on the podcast that morning, “Be grateful for all you receive, good and bad alike, for it may be a gift.”
Gentle Reader, I don’t blame you if you roll your eyes over another Rumi quote. Stay with me. All of us have lost something while living through this pandemic. You may assume that if I’m still blithely quoting Rumi, I haven’t yet lost enough. So far, Covid-19 has been less of a challenge for me than it has for those people who have lost their jobs, their loved ones, or their health—or for those people who have kept their jobs, and have had to take on the additional jobs previously performed by their nannies, their children’s teachers, their parent’s caregivers.
Unlike many, I am not overburdened. I am not lonely. I am not grieving. I am not bored. I am not deprived of touch or deprived of keeping in touch—I still have telephone service and wi-fi. All of this is to say, Covid-19 is a catastrophe on a grand scale, and it would be irresponsible for me, the most peripheral of its victims, to dismiss it with a platitude of gratitude.
Except.
Gratitude is not a platitude. Whenever we feel lost, gratitude is our road home.

My father’s roadside signs in Wallingford, CT

When my mom texted our far-flung family with pictures of homemade sign my father had created and posted by the side of their road, the challenge was on. The front of my house is premium real estate for thank you signs. Workers drive by on their way to the VA, Children’s Hospital, and university hospital.

I’d wanted to make signs that look uplifting, but I have crappy eye hand coordination and no visual aptitude; the best I could do was make signs that look kind of Gothic and creepy and desperate. I’m sorry about that.

Without exception, every day I encounter a gift someone has made in response to this Covid-19 catastrophe. If nothing else, I receive the gift of my husband’s delicious cooking, all made within the confines of my many allergies and sensitivities (no dairy, wheat, gluten, nightshades, egg, peanut, walnut, strawberry, mango…etc.)

On my worst Covid-19 day so far, the day of my comeuppance, I came back home laden with guilt and shame, only to be presented with a stalemail package that was unusually light; a gift from my friend, the singer, actress, and writer Barb Timmons. When I opened the package, I discovered this lovely note and origami figure.

Is it a coincidence that both of the stalemail gifts I am mentioning owe a debt to Japanese design? I think not. Mainstream white America has defined itself more by avarice than by adversity, making us less aware of the beauty, power and dignity we all do in fact possess in times of oppression and catastrophe.

I know very little of Japanese culture, but one day, when I had a few hours to spare between appointments at the NIH, I took the opportunity to visit an exhibit at the Smithsonian titled, “The Art of Gaman.” Gaman means “to bear the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.” The exhibit featured arts and crafts created by the internees in the Japanese American concentration camps during World War II. These objects were made by average citizens without any trained artistic skills. They were dazzling. They gave me the strength to persevere through whatever challenges awaited me back at the NIH that day.

We are not weakened by catastrophe. We are strengthened. Maybe not right away, but eventually. Gentle Reader, today is Mother’s Day. If you have not received a gift today, indulge yourself by giving one.

I am grateful for your time. Be well.

People with MS Have An Important Role to Play in The Great Big COVID-19 Experiment.

Knowledge is power. The more we know about COVID-19, the more powerful we will be. This is why we spend eight to twelve hours a day checking our iPhones.. .to possibly learn twenty two seconds worth of relevant information that might SAVE OUR VERY LIVES. Or, at any rate, to learn another snippet about “The Tiger King.”

I thought I’d pass along a bit of relevant information I’ve gleaned , because it concerns my peeps, the folks with MS. Gentle Readers without MS…stay with me. I’ll be passing along a few bits of relevant information for you, too.

I’ve been taking the threat of COVID-19 extra seriously because I’m in that subgroup that’s supposed to be afraid… very afraid: I am one of the Immune Compromised. Like many of the insured with MS, I’ve been taking very expensive medication that I’ve since read may have made me fractionally more immune compromised in the face of COVID-19. Had I been on a more effective MS medication, I may have been significantly more immune compromised. So I guess I’m glad I was on a dud of a medication? Mostly, I feel those of us with MS and medical insurance have been played for suckers to generate profits.

Anyway, I’m off my meds. Good riddance. Except. I am now experiencing weird visual symptoms that may (or may not) have been prevented had I continued with my lame MS drug. There is no way to know if I’m having a relapse without going to a doctor, and who wants to do that? I don’t have a control-group-twin sister who is still on Tecfidera.

Yesterday I read about a tool more ethical than a control-group twin sister— a global initiative that is amassing data to help people with MS and other demyelinating diseases of the central nervous system to make more informed decisions about our risks related to COVID-19. It’s a database called COViMS.

We neuro-compromised don’t have to do much to participate in this database. We just have to a) catch COVID-19, b) get tested (good luck with that!) and c) tell our doctors to use this link to fill out a brief report, though “only after a minimum of 7 days and sufficient time has passed to observe the disease…through resolution of acute illness or death.”

The form takes ten minutes to fill out, but that’s not our problem; that’s our doctor’s problem. We will either be recovered or dead.

I am always looking for a way to be useful after I am dead. (I’m not too keen on being useful during this all-too-brief period before I am dead.) For years, I’ve been wanting my dead body turned into some form of compost. Seriously, that would be a dream come true. But if that dream is not to be, having my COVID-19 struggle recorded in a searchable database will have to do.

There is, however, a small but distinct possibility that my COVID-19 struggle has already come and gone and is only now getting documented in this very small database known as my blog. I was wrapping up a session of qi gong in our back yard during an unseasonably warm and sunny day when I suddenly experienced an acute pain in my lungs. It felt like I’d inhaled asbestos mixed with the smoke from a thousand cigarettes mixed with a thousand tiny daggers. There had been a brief regrettable period in my youth when I was a two and a half pack a day smoker. My lungs felt worse than they did then. And felt worse than they did through my childhood bouts of pneumonia. There was no database to consult about my chances of surviving COVID-19. As far as I knew, being Immune Compromised meant I was about to be a goner.

Operating under this speculation, I did a few embarrassing things.

I received a text from a friend of mine, who was anticipating the arrival of three grown children from New York. She had just discovered the toilet paper shortage was real. I replied by bequeathing her our precious Costco sized trove of toilet paper, without checking in with my husband first.

I then texted my son that I was proud of him. Or that I loved him. Or that he should do good in the world. Something that could have raised an alarm.

I then called my parents. They told me to hang up and call a doctor. So I hung up and tried for a telemedicine consult through my insurance company. In order to qualify for a telemedicine consult, I had to fill out a brief questionnaire about my health status and symptoms. The questionnaire asked if I were immune compromised. I was immediately patched through.

The doctor on the other end of the telemedicine consult was a young woman who looked and sounded ten times sicker than I felt. As she asked me questions, her toddler toddled into the background, asking questions of her invisible patient in her private toddler language. The doctor informed me that I would not qualify for the COVID-19 tests in my area. She advised me to get some rest. She told me that I was breathing more freely than a patient she’d be concerned about. Feel better, she said. Feel better, I said. The toddler said something in her private toddler language. The exchange cheered me up.

I realized that even though I have MS, and had inexplicably burning lungs, that didn’t necessarily mean I had COVID-19. And even if I did have COVID-19, it was not necessarily inevitable that I was about to die. Maybe there was a chance I could live through COVID-19. At the time, there was no database to consult. Instead, I grated ginger into my tea and I rubbed tea tree oil onto my chest and I did a round of qi gong with Jeff Chand on You Tube and I consulted with my body and my breath. Within a few hours, I was updating my parents that my lungs had stopped hurting so badly. I received a text that my friend would not be needing my toilet paper, after all. I received no reply whatsoever to my text to my son; clearly, I had not freaked him out.

I went to bed with my lungs aching, but not too badly. I woke up barely feeling my lungs at all. In the two weeks since then, I’ve had one other inexplicable scare wherein my lungs hurt severely for a few hours, but mostly, my lungs have been serving me quite well. How well? A few of my college friends talked me into trying Wim Hof’s guided breath meditation on YouTube. I learned I can hold my breath for two minutes, a super-power I would have loved to have known I was capable of back in 1972 or so, when I was watching a Batman and Robin episode in which the daring duo was trapped in a room with rising water. There isn’t much we can control during this COVID-19 crisis; controlling the breath has become ever more appealing.

My friend Monica also has MS and has also had a COVID-19 scare, although we didn’t know it at the time. She announced her symptoms as we sat in a sun-drenched lobby that looked like it belonged to an upscale hotel and not a Neuroscience Center. We’d all just finished what I announced would be my final MS yoga class for the nonce…I was at that point feeling a bit apologetic about my freakish instance that COVID-19 could be on its way. Our friend Kim was sipping the kale and blueberry smoothie we’d recommended. Monica had abstained from ordering a smoothie; she explained she was recovering from battling a freakish bought of diarrhea, and was still experiencing the strangest side effect—she seemed to have lost her sense of smell. None of us yet knew these were symptoms of COVID-19. I would miss only one MS yoga class before the hospital finally cancelled its sessions. Since then, I’ve been hosting the MS yoga sessions on Zoom.

At the end of the first Zoom yoga session, Monica and I were the last two participants left on the screen. She told me she was looking forward to the COVID-19 antibody test. Wouldn’t it be cool if we’d already had the virus, and could just relax? I countered that since COVID-19 was a novel virus, we had yet to learn how effective antibodies would be, and for how long. Today on NPR I learned that those antibody tests we’ve been looking forward to do are actually riddled with false positives. It’s still too early to relax.

Even so, the unique challenge we all face is that we have to relax…at least enough to keep ourselves from developing a harmful immune response should we encounter COVID-19. And we have to stay vigilant. At least enough to keep the virus from getting to us in the first place. It’s a tricky balancing act. Those of us with autoimmune disease are uniquely positioned to have already experienced the loss of control the rest of you are now experiencing. It’s not easy to be calm in the face of imminent danger. But it is imperative. The immune component of the disease opens up an opportunity for all of us to take back some control of our health by treating ourselves well.

Gentle Reader, what have you been doing to relax?

Words of Wisdom from the New Rochelle Containment Zone

Long time readers may recall my littlest sister, PYT aka Pretty Young Thing. She doesn’t have MS, or any chronic illness. But in true little sister style, she’s managed to become the center of attention…

I am blogging as a guest of Ms. Lab Rat today. It’s always nice when my big sis invites me to share her toys.
I have lived my life blissfully outside the MS maze. Every year researchers send me their MS sibling study and I share my boringly perfect health. I take no medicine. I have no difficulties doing anything (that’s a lie of course- I have great difficulty remembering to re-apply lipstick, and I tend to be self-absorbed) but what the study is really interested in is my balance and vision, my memory and peeing.
I have achieved ‘guest lab rat’ status because of COVID-19. I may not be in an NIH study but I AM living in the center of the New Rochelle ‘containment zone’. As I write this, it is Day 3. All quiet on the Eastern front. The National Guard is here cleaning and handing out food but I haven’t seen them. I’ve been on my silent street, watching my husband successfully coax our kids off training wheels. The road has fewer cars and they can ride longer stretches without needing to stop.
I have learned how to spell quarantine from assuring concerned friends over text that we are not, in fact, trapped here. My neighbors however have been quietly self quarantined for 15 days or so. It was easy to miss the absence of their presence. I realized too late that I hadn’t been asking if they need anything from the store- they do not.
Those of us who still roam free, stand on our lawns and discuss how surreal it is to be in the middle of a pandemic we were clearly not prepared for. We speculate on the ripple effects, share how our kids are reacting, is this a new seasonal reality, what it will do to the economy…and then we stop because we don’t even know what next week looks like.
I take my son out for a drive around town- grateful that children seem to be hardy in the face of this virus. If it were otherwise, I would be losing my mind. I have 3 kids around the age where fingers go in their nose and mouth and who only wash their hands when they are caught. This experience is making much better hand washers of us all.
I’ve made a point of going to the grocery store (even tho we are well stocked) so they have some business in return for staying open. I need them to be open in a week or two.
My son wants to ride in the car attached to the front of the shopping cart- he is 6 and barely fits. I’ve never asked him to wipe down the interior before but today I do…I’ve become that mom who sees germs on all the surfaces. On the cart handle, on the check out screen, on the cash back that I request, on the enormous stack of monopoly promotion cards the cashier hands me because there are few other customers to give them to. If we don’t win a boat, vacation home and screening room the game is certainly rigged.
I stop at the ice cream store to get a celebratory “training wheels are off” cake but mostly to give the poor clerk who showed up to work today something to do. While I am there, another customer orders a large cake for the team he is coaching- he imagines they will be celebrating the end of a multi-year run. I imagine the cake collecting freezer burn …no one is showing up to celebrate with their team. But I like his determination that the milestone should not be missed.
I drive by our TaiKwonDo studio and am happy to see students in the window- only to receive an email at night saying they’ve decided to close for a while too. I worry about how small businesses will survive this My husband reminds me that we just paid 6 months of a membership for 3 kids in advance. I am okay with that- they may not be as hard hit as others. I make a mental note to go back to the local hair salon, the one I had broken up with over bad color. I’ll get the Pheobe Waller-Bridge cut.
My fear isn’t that I will get sick. As I said at the top, I am boringly healthy. My fear is that I will get someone else sick. That I carry invisible COVID creepies to someone- like our heroic lab rat -and knock them off kilter. Or worse.
I reached this conclusion a day before our local institutions. I’ve taken it more to heart, and curtailed my own commute. We were all too late to the realization that our freedom to move must change.
What opened my eyes was our mother. I had invited her to lunch, a few days earlier, in the city. She’d cancelled a trip to Spain with my father for fear of COVID-19 . She drove into NYC instead of taking the train to avoid any risk of COVID-19. And then she sat down at a table with my husband and I, having lunch with two people who were likely closer to COVID-19 than her Spanish Air B & B hosts. I had not known she would later stop by our house- a block from the Temple which was ground zero for the cluster of infections- to drop off clothing to my kids. She was diligently curtailing her life to avoid exposure to a virus and my invitation led her to come hold hands with the hotspot, give it a kiss and a hug and head home to Connecticut, to my dad, with a little threat of Coronavirus hanging around the car. Being a good mother- she has not mentioned to me the oblivious selfishness of my invitation.
So if I have any wisdom to share from inside the containment zone it is to be more aware than I had been when this virus comes to your town- and it will. To be aware of your neighbors and what they may need. To be aware of your community. To be mindful of what you may carry along with you, as you carry on about your day. There are lab rats out there and they need every single one of us to think of their safety, even when we are secure in our own.

Who is Ms. Lab Rat without the Maze?

Last week, when Covid-19 still seemed an abstraction to many in the US, I made the decision to self-sequester and to drop all unnecessary activities. It was a no-brainer to drop my writing workshop at a local senior center, especially since I am immune-compromised myself. But I vacillated for days about dropping my clinic visit at the NIH (National Institutes of Health). 

Maybe that’s because I’ve formed an identity around participation in clinical trials, as this video, and indeed this blog, attests.

Currently, I am enrolled in not one, but two, clinical trials at the NIH. Participation in the first of these trials is contingent on this little lab rat reporting to the maze every six months. I’ve been a fairly compliant lab rat. But as the threat of Covid-19 became more imminent by the day, I became more and more leery of jumping back in the maze.

What if I were exposed to the virus on the airplane, or on the Metro, or at the NIH itself?

As the date of the clinic visit approached, I half expected the clinic would cancel my appointment for me. With less than a week to go, the clinic had yet to send me the usual itinerary, or to arrange my flight. The email I finally got from the clinic coordinator was not a cancellation, but rather an offer to splurge on a taxi for me. Which was a nice gesture. The clinic would be sparing me from exposure to the virus on the Metro. But…while they were at it, why not spare me from exposure to the virus in the clinic, or on the flight?

I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me days to consider the inverse of these scenarios. Rather than worrying about catching the virus from those I would encounter — why had I not been worrying about the possibility that I am myself a carrier of the virus, and could therefore pose a danger to others? What if I were to infect the clever nurses, the intrepid doctor, my fellow lab rats, and perhaps the lovely cashier at the hospital cafeteria?

I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. 

I cancelled the appointment. 

Yesterday, I was relieved to discover that my on-again, off-again fever was on again. I emailed the clinic that I had a temp of 99.6… which is next to nothing, as fevers go, but would be high enough to disqualify me from lodgings at the NIH.

The world around here is about to get a lot scarier. It’s about time I get used to the thought that it isn’t anyone else’s job to save me. I wish I hadn’t felt I needed an excuse to legitimize trusting my own sense of self-preservation over the professed concerns for my safety from the NIH. But I did. 

Was I worried that this somewhat indefinite postponement of my clinic visit would mean I lose my Lab Rat status?

Not at all. Gentle Readers, you may recall I that mentioned I was enrolled in two clinical trials. The trial I haven’t yet mentioned  is one I participate in from the safety of my home. I am one of 25 lab rats beta-testing a series of games on smartphones. These games are designed to measure neurological functions. While this smartphone app may never take the place of a clinic visit, it may yet prove helpful in situations where a patient can’t show up in a clinic. Like, ya know…in a crazy dystopian scenario where a mysterious virus is taking over the planet and an MS patient no longer feels it’s all that safe to travel. 

When to Disclose/When to Retreat

Here I am, last summer in Beijing, the white person facing the wrong direction while everyone else is doing tai chi .

Twenty five years after receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, I am lucky to still have the option to decide whether or not to reveal my condition to a new person or group. I’m not MS closeted, but I do like to wait until I’ve already formed an impression before I am designated/dismissed as “disabled.”  I’d rather expand peoples’ conceptions about MS than contract their conception of me.

I wasn’t sure if, or when, I would share that I have MS with the tai chi class I’ve just joined at the local rec center. The first session, I’d flowed along with everyone else and hoped I would have energy remaining for teaching my  class with college freshmen in the afternoon. Once I verified I could perform both activities in one day, I thought I’d be ready to add this new tai chi class to my schedule.   

When I went back for my second session, I stood with the other students and watched our instructor demonstrate the complete series of sweeping, balletic motions we would all be working towards. Most of the series looked like it might eventually become achievable for me. But not the kicks. 

We’d just spent the past hour meditating on our feet, then doing repetitions of the first three moves of the complex series. I’d been feeling like a badass for merely staying upright all that time. The instructor singled me out, as the newcomer, informing me I would one day be able to execute all the same moves he had just performed. 

As much as I don’t want to get in the way of reaching my full potential, I couldn’t see that my future would ever include a series of high kicks. I’d been feeling it would be enough for me to eventually execute the complete series while making smaller movements that merely approximated kicks.  

It was time to dial down the instructor’s expectations. 

So I made the call. I disclosed to the group that I have MS. 

The woman who’d been practicing beside me was baffled. She told me she’d worked with a lot of people with MS, and I don’t look like any of them. She said, I guess you know all about the latest drug.

A few years ago, I would have rattled off the good news about the latest drug, the one that had stopped my very aggressive case of MS. I would have told her how I’ve been commuting for years to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for my doses while waiting for the FDA approval to release untold thousands of MS patients from the shackles of disease progression. Life sure didn’t turn out that way. 

I said, “There is always a latest drug. I’m here because I’m interested in the oldest treatments.” Since she was clearly a regular, I asked her how one pays for the class; she told me I could work it out the following week. We both assumed I’d be back. 

That was a week and a half ago. Since then…my son texted. His text put a check my lifestyle. 

Everyone who knows me knows I love my son. I love him more than all the pee in China. I have traveled to the other side of the planet for my son. At his request, I am now going to hunker down. 

The other day, he texted from Indonesia to remind my husband and I about the dangers of Covid-19. “There is a two-week plus lead time, so it might be wise to start hunkering down before there are any tri-state cases.”

Now, this young man happens to be living in the future. Literally. The sun rises for him 13 hours before it rises for us. He has spent the last year and half as a consultant based in China. When we visited, my husband and I saw for ourselves that China is ahead of the US in many ways, some positive—China has way more efficient mass transportation—and some negative—China has way worse air and water quality. Sadly for China, they’ve been way ahead of us with Covid-19. 

Which ought to mean, we have been given an opportunity to prepare. 

My son and his girlfriend MC managed to get out of Beijing in late January, while there was still time Thankfully, Thailand accepted them. They’ve been on the run from Covid-19 ever since. 

As an, ahem, older person with multiple chronic illnesses, it makes sense for me to take Covid-19 seriously, and to cut out all unnecessary exposures. My schedule is jam packed with transcendent, meaningful, one might say, necessary, exposures—which start to look foolhardy when viewed through the lens of Covid-19, 

Yesterday I cut out what is probably my most dangerous exposure—my weekly workshop with the over-70 set at a senior living center, who are feeling as vulnerable to this virus as passengers on a stranded luxury cruise.

I found this homage to Titanic at a train station in Nanjing.

I will miss these writers badly, but the sad truth is, our workshop was already flagging. In the five years since the workshop began, ten of the writers have died. Seven are currently out of commission with health problems, and yes, one of those seven has a very bad cough. The two writers who’d shown up for workshop yesterday didn’t blame me for getting out. I love so very many people in that complex. I hope they will be spared. 

Four of these writers have died since this picture was taken.

It was a no-brainer to decide to cut out the yoga class and the tai chi classes I’ve been taking at the local hospital…which may be the second most likely location for me to catch Covid-19. It was an easy call to suspend my gym membership. And as much as I love my yoga class at my neighborhood studio, I’d made a promise to my son. The new tai chi class will of course be the easiest unnecessary activity to cut from my schedule. Maybe some day I’ll be back. Maybe some day I’ll be doing those high kicks. It would be a shame to have fessed to a whole new community about my MS for nothing. 

I am not even considering cutting out my class at the art college. Those students are too young to catch Covid-19. Right? I counted seven students coughing yesterday. For once, I’d hoped they’d been smoking cigarettes or sucking down bong hits. 

Today, I have a fever. A mild one. 

Which caused me to call off the usual weekly writer’s workshop at my house. I can’t tell you how many workshops I’ve held while staving off a fever.

But things are different now. 

Be well!