Peace, love and understanding

Anniversary of a Substack, nearing the end, and a new forum

Peace, love and understanding

A MILESTONE, AND AN ANNIVERSARY

In the last week, Lightning Bug became a Substack bestseller, with the arrival of my 100^th paid subscriber. Thank you. I appreciate anyone who takes time out of their week to read or watch what I labor to present in Lightning Bug, and am especially grateful to readers who have supported my work financially. It helps pay the bills, but more important, communicates that you value this work.

My expectations were modest, I wasn’t sure how I would find the time to write, and I didn’t expect much interest, but as we approach the one year anniversary of Lightning Bug, I’m pleased. Considering that I have been allergic to social media for years, this has been fun. There haven’t been too many trolls, and there have been many thoughtful and articulate readers who reveal themselves in a heartfelt way. I hope that my own willingness to write about the foibles and follies of my life has helped hold the space open for this sharing.

In our work at the Leading Edge Clinic, we truly live the name of our practice on a daily basis. The last month has been full of learning as we see the benefits for patients from clinical tools such as Sulodexide, DMSO, and the Safe and Sound Protocol. In our weekly team meeting, as well as provider meetings for post-acute sequelae of Covid (PASC) and injury from the Covid shots (one group), and adjunctive cancer care providers (another, overlapping group), we teach each other and deepen our clinical understanding. As I often quip to patients, I have read more studies in the last four years than I read in the previous thirty years. I have learned more since partnering with Dr Pierre Kory and building this team, than I have in my entire career. This is the kind of medicine which I have always wanted to practice, even if I didn’t know it was possible, in which I get to spend extended time with patients, engage their minds and hearts, and observe healing in real time. I have hope, because I see improvements in many, relief of suffering, and can share this with my patients.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH

Sophie the girl kitten and Scott, a week after adoption

Sophie was the first female cat which Kerrie and I adopted. She was what we call a grief adoption, following the sudden and unexpected loss of our beloved orange and white cat Stanley. He was named after my father and two previous generations of Walter Stanley Marsland(s). I believe that my dad came to understand the honor paid with this name in our cat-loving household.

Sophie and Leo having some close time

Sophie is dying. Her back legs have stopped working. She has gone blind. The last food she ate was at least a week ago, and she accepts some sips of water a few times a day. Kerrie and I each took shifts sleeping on the floor of our mudroom with Sophie, until last night when we moved her into the bedroom next to us. Even Leo, our deaf Turkish Angora who is on the spectrum of feline autism, has taken shifts spending time with Sophie.

We have taken cats to the vet to be euthanized, but as we have grown older and more capable in our feline care, we have been able to tolerate the uncertainty and prolonged grieving of having an animal slowly slipping away. They aren’t in pain as far as we can tell. There can be some strain, but there are also moments of recognition and purring, connection, even humor and joy, which confirm the path we are on together.

Sophie returning with Baby Mouse

Sophie is a Manx, and if you’ve never known a Manx, well, let me tell you about her. Manx cats have a more pronounced hindquarters, which remind me of a rabbit. They like to jump up to high places, and in her younger years, it was not uncommon to bend over to tie your shoelaces and end up with a Sophie on your back. Manx cats often like to play fetch. So, Sophie likes, or liked, to play fetch. For years, we had a bedtime routine, which involved many tosses of a little stuffed mouse which came to be known as Baby Mouse. I would toss, Sophie would jump, leap, claw, catch, and bring Baby Mouse back to me, then run back to her catching position. It was a very athletic performance with occasional overshoots and collisions. You can imagine that Baby Mouse accumulated a bit of dinginess over time due to accumulated dirt and saliva. We made the mistake of washing her once, and that brought all games of fetch to a screeching halt, at least for a few days. Thus, the patina accumulating on Baby Mouse was permitted to continue.

Baby Mouse in the holy water font

It may be sacrilege, but Baby Mouse resides within a vessel on the wall which was meant to hold holy water. It has an image of the Virgin Mary and the swaddling Jesus on its backing. To leave Baby Mouse laying around would inevitably lead to her getting lost, and then much time spent crawling on all fours trying to find her, with Sophie following and cocking her head quizzically to see when you would figure it out. We bought other baby mice, the exact same cat toy as Baby Mouse, but if you tried to toss them for her, she wouldn’t go for it. Sophie would just look at you like “You can’t fool me, I’m waiting for the real, dirty, stinky deal.” It became easier to just return Baby Mouse to her honored resting place, blessed by the Holy Mother; and when Sophie was ready to play, she would stand underneath the Blessed Virgin’s font and look up.

Sophie on Kerrie’s shoulder

Sophie has always been a little bossy. If we were late getting the cats’ food ready at the expected times, she was more than capable of letting us know. Like Mussolini, she kept the trains running on time. She was also bold and social. If visitors came, while the other cats were fleeing for their hidey holes, she would fearlessly approach them and curiously appraise their potential.

To the moon! (Sophie in the HBOT with me)

When Sophie started to show stiffness in her hips, like any other aging athlete who played long and hard, I started to bring Sophie in the softshell HBOT with me. I would watch her ears to know how slowly to increase the pressure in the chamber, and brush her as best I could to keep her purring while we entered our dive. After about 30-45 minutes, she would let me know that she had enough. The HBOT helped, as she would be more limber after our sessions. The Arc Microtech device helped too. As we have learned about therapies which are helpful to humans in recovery from PASC and the Covid shots, it was natural for us as cat parents to apply them to our feline friends. Soon, we shaved her belly and made a ritual of applying the Arc around her abdomen every night. We called it her jet pack. The last discovery was DMSO. Being a bossy girl, and often underfoot, one of Sophie’s paws was stepped on about a year ago, and it is likely that a bone or some bones were broken. She favored that paw ever since, and when I learned about DMSO from A Midwestern Doctor’s Substack, I prepared a 20% dilution and massaged it into her paw pads. The next day she was walking more easily. Crazy stuff.

We’ll miss Sophie terribly when she is gone. In the meantime, we reposition her, dribble water to moisten her parched tongue, change out her bedding as needed, and treasure the sweet sounds and purrs that still come forth from our very first girl kitty.

A NEW FORUM, AND AN ELECTION

The campaigns leading up to the recent U.S. election have been a topic of intense scrutiny and discussion in our household for months. We have tried to quell our anxiety about the anticipated emotional chaos which would be unleashed in progressive, liberal Ithaca if Donald Trump won the presidency. I expected that the election of Kamala Harris would likely lead to ongoing promotion of the Covid shots with further resulting injuries, a more hostile regulatory environment for practices such as ours, and the possible closure of the compounding pharmacies which we rely upon to provide healing and life saving drugs to our patients.

Mark Halperin on 2-Way

Kerrie came upon a program called 2-Way which has been so very helpful to us, that I wanted to write about it. 2-Way is a discussion group led by journalist and political analyst Mark Halperin. The forum, which is hosted on YouTube, offers viewers a space to engage in discussions about current political events, trends and this recent presidential campaign. Halperin shares insights, analysis and exclusive political commentary, along with strategists from both the Democratic and Republican persuasion every weekday morning. Every weekday evening 2-Way has a special guest from the field. What makes 2-Way unique is inviting subscribers to participate in the conversation, ask questions, and offer their own perspectives on the issues at hand. (Mark has a Substack also, which I haven’t yet explored, called Wide World of News).

Mark prefaces these discussions by reminding participants to have the presumption of grace toward each other, and to hold a space of peace, love and understanding. Although the sidebar chat can often be subverted by trolls who insist on fostering a cesspool of vitriolic banter, the discussion on-screen is mostly civil. What I have observed during the many sessions which Kerrie and I have watched, is that Mark is a better listener than most Quakers I have known in my life—quite an accomplishment. In 2-Way, one can find Americans from all parts of the political spectrum, to greater or lesser degrees, attempting to make sense of one another. In an election in which the legacy media seemed hell-bent on fanning the flames of extremism and objectification, I found this space to be calming, refreshing, and a source of greater understanding. Now that the election is over, any person or group which intends to lead us out of the othering and towards productive cooperation, is more than welcome. As we move forward, I hope that there can be more conversations like 2-Way. Mark Halperin’s forum models respect for our individual experiences, with the goal of learning something about each other, and building the foundation to rebuild our country, together.