Rob's Update: Catching Up

Two podcasts, health updates, and a new cat pic!

Let’s get what you want out of the way, a picture of Wynnifred enjoying the sun.

Wynnifred enjoying the sunshine

Next, let’s the catch up. I should have had an update last week, but Thursday ended up being absolutely exhausting with a variety of errands. I expected to come home and after a couple of hours, do the update. Instead, I fell asleep. Ah, well, sleep is important.

Last week on my podcast, I did a podcast reviewing the book Masters of the Fist by Edward P. Hughes. You can find the podcast with a weird AI crop of my face and a title randomly chosen here:

Basically, the TL:DW version of the show is that I love the Barley Cross stories, and they’re all worth reading, but less so in novel form. Sometimes taking a bunch of short stories and assembling works great, like Foundation or M*A*S*H, but not here. I’m pretty sure Jerry Pournelle pushed for this because he was hoping to get Hughes to write more, but Hughes had a good day job.

Too bad, because Pournelle wasn’t wrong. Hughes could definitely write and the town of Barley Cross, which I first found in Pournelle’s There Will Be War anthologies, is really cool.

I will say, that will hopefully be my weakest podcast ever. At least, so far, it’s my least favorite. Basically, if I’m going to do a review episode, it’ll be better if I have someone to riff with. Reviews like what I did are better that way or in Article form.

In fact, I think my show will always be better with someone to riff off, so expect me to have someone join me.

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This week on my podcast we much more fun as I talked to Caleb Jordan Schulz, an amazing guy. He’s an artist, writer, house-builder, movie-maker, and adventurer. We had so much to talk about that I can’t even give you a TL:DW. It really is something else. Find it here:

The episode started off with Caleb appearing sideways and went sideways from there. What do you do when you walk up to a camp somewhere in Colombia filled with men in fatigues with AK-47s? He’ll tell you. How do you react when the bus you’re riding takes on a group of guys, all with guns in Montevideo? Well, you make friends with them.

But there’s so much more. We rambled about writing, movies, and adventures so much we didn’t even get to the house he’s building on a mountain in Vermont (I said Maine previously, but I “missed it by that much”).

Anyway, the Barley Cross episode might have been my worst one, but this one made up for it and then some. Great show.

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Also, this week I made a new article called Information Booth. As I mentioned, I don’t want all the business stuff included here in this update. I want it to be more fun and interactive, but of course, I want to make the business stuff accessible. Well, Information Booth has all that. Here’s the link:

I’ll be updating that regularly. In fact, I’ll make an update right after I send this out. Basically, it’s everything you could want about upcoming podcasts, events I’m attending, links to my books, and my current weight.

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Alright! We’re finally caught up and it’s time to give a bit of a health update. I’m going to be detailed here, which will include some maybe disgusting stuff, but the TL:DR is that I’m getting much healthier in a lot of ways, but there are occasional hiccups. One of those hiccups is why I’m posting this update late this week.

Seriously, the rest is worthy of a TL:DR if medical stuff bores you. If that’s you, thanks for reading and I look forward to updating next week!

But if you want the long-winded details, here they are.

You may have noticed my weight is way down. About 50 pounds since September. This is thanks to Mounjaro, which has worked very well for me. I’ve had a few minor side effects. Notably, I’ve had major acid reflux two days after I take the shot and my bowel movements went from just about right to much higher on the Mohs Scale. You can guess my poor little tushy isn’t too enthused about that.

There’s another side effect I’ll get to in a moment that’s basically a proof of TANSTAAFL.

The method of weight loss is simple. Mounjaro takes away my appetite. On my desk right now is a small portion of grilled chicken wrap that came with cottage cheese. I may nibble on that remnant, but understand it’s nearly 2pm my time, and all I’ve eaten is that and I’m full. Oh, I should mention I ate half of it yesterday, along with a small package of blueberries. That’s pretty much it.

Now, to be fair, I’m eating less this week, which I’ll get into for a moment, but in general I simply don’t eat near as much. It’s weird. I can basically have what I want, including splitting a Chocolate Thunder from Down Under with the wife and the grandbaby without concern about blood sugar or anything like that. It’s kinda amazing.

The weight loss has meant a drastic reduction in my A1C. That’s to be expected and one of the reasons I’m taking it. I’m well out of the diabetic range again, and hopefully getting better even if I’m not really paying attention to sugar.

It’s also meant my blood pressure is lower than it’s ever been. All of my life it was about 130-135/75-85. Never deviated. Well, it deviated after my first colonoscopy, shooting high enough I had to get meds. Note that this was soon after my friend Mar had a stroke, so I took this very seriously. I love Mar and admire his courage, tenacity, and toughness, but I don’t think I have those in his measure and don’t want to find out.

So I got meds. Plural. Two months ago I was taking three of them. With the weight loss, I’m down to two and there are signs I may be able to go down to one. I measured 118/66 yesterday, which is darn good of course, but I expected it to be really high. I’ve been in massive pain for almost a week and that generally elevates blood pressure.

All of this is to say that Mounjaro has been a boon to me. I can expect up to about 6 months more of weight loss, or so they say, and if that’s true, I will get under 300 pounds. I want to stabilize in the 280s, which I think will be a great weight for me. Given that I’m more than halfway there, I think I’ve got a shot.

But besides the weight, the A1C, and the blood pressure, I’ve had another issue and it’s reared its ugly head in ways that have essentially eliminated two weeks of productivity in 2026. Basically, two weeks where I couldn’t leave my bed.

This issue is gout.

Now, I’ve had some flareups before. I have a broken bone in my right foot that sometimes slips out of place, and a flareup in that foot is more likely and moderately painful. I have a reasonably high pain tolerance given the kinds of questions doctors and nurses ask me, so in the past these flareups have been up to a 6 or so. Inconveniences I have to deal with, but not debilitating.

But in late January and now late February I had full-fledged acute attacks.

Let me tell you, these are not pleasant. 1/100000000, do not recommend. I say pain level of 9.5 because I really don’t want to challenge the universe to say, “You think that was a 10,” but these have been the most painful days I can recall. My feet hurt so much I can’t sleep. I can’t find ways to keep them from hurting constantly. I lie in bed having my wife basically wait on me hand and painful foot.

Had I not had a great wife, I don’t know how I could’ve made it. I really don’t. She’s brought me water, food, drugs, and all sorts of other things as I was completely laid up.

To put that in perspective, I have to talk about something disgusting again. I couldn’t walk to the toilet so I had to use a 5-gallon bucket by my bed. You know, if I was a tanner, maybe that would be a good thing, but I’m not likely to use traditional tanning methods anytime soon so it was not fun in any way, shape, or form.

My wife is awesome and I’m so blessed to have her.

Now you may ask what changed that I went from flareups to acute attacks. I asked the same question and I dug into some research while lying in bed. It turns out that uric acid, the driver of gout, is stored in body tissue, especially fat. If you lose weight quickly, like say, 50 pounds in 6 months, that gets pushed back into the bloodstream and, well, Bob’s your uncle.

Basically, this is sort of a side effect of the Mounjaro, but again it’s worth it, especially since somewhere in September the problem should go away. At least, that’s what I thought when I discovered it. I may have a few more of these, but in the not too distant future, it won’t be an issue.

But, you know, it’s actually far better than that. As my body chemistry changes with the weight loss, prescriptions have to change. I now have a drug to fight uric acid and it’s working, cutting my uric acid in half to smack dab into the middle of the normal range as of yesterday.

So why the acute attack I’ve had to deal with this week? Sadly, it’s because of a communication issue. You acclimate to the drug by taking 100mg the first week, 200 the second, and then leveling off at 300 on the third. At each level, the drug interacts with body chemistry and can cause an attack unless you’re taking an anti-inflammatory.

I can take NSAIDs, but not regularly like I’ve done in the past. So that’s out, but the doctor prescribed for me one to add to the daily regimen. In fact, he prescribed a starter dosage to fight the acute attack back at the end of January.

However, he also prescribed a dosage that I was to transition to after the starter dosage. I wasn’t aware of this and the pharmacy across the street, which is normally so good about communicating that, probably did send me a message but I didn’t know of this second prescription.

Hence, I didn’t get it and it was there specifically to combat effects from the transition from 100 to 200 and then 200 to 300.

So there I was yesterday with what I would say was a crucial appointment with the doctor. Getting to the car and back to bed afterward were significant pain mountains to scale. Just standing up from the bed was huge.

My wife, again, was a trooper, doing everything I could have asked.

Despite massive pain, I made it to the hospital where they put me in a wheelchair. This whole thing has been incredibly embarrassing to me. I hate, hate, hate not being self-sufficient. It’s enough that my wife chides me for it sometimes, and is right to call me on it when she does.

But it’s one thing to ask for help from family. I’m there for them, I can grudgingly accept them being there for me. It’s not easy for me to take, but it’s part of family and sometimes I need to get off my high horse.

Hospital folk? Sure, that’s their job, but dammit I’m supposed to handle my own shit! Now there I am having them bring me out a wheelchair and push me around. This isn’t right.

I’m going thank Don for some inspiration here. Now, I’ve never talked to him about this sort of thing. We talk a reasonable amount at cons, especially LibertyCon, where I met him something like eleven years ago. In fact I was just having a great conversation with him about football at FenCon.

However, we’ve never talked about anything like this. I have no idea of the health issues involved, because again we’ve never talked about this, but he is this big, impressive dude who over the last few years has been in a wheelchair every time I’ve seen him. I get the impression he’s a lot like me when it comes to self-sufficiency and I’m sure he’s had his share of rage and frustration at home. Who wouldn’t?

But I’ve never seen any of that. We see each other once or twice a year, chatting on this and that, but he’s never been anything but pleasant and enjoyable to talk to. We’ve discussed SF, books, sports, and whatever else seems interesting.

No doubt his wife Inga has helped him like my wife has but even so it’s nothing short of inspirational to a guy like me. Something happened that sucks? Well, I’m gonna deal with it. The same is true of Mar, too, by the way.

So there I am sitting in that wheelchair, embarrassed, frustrated, and hurting. I thought about Don, because again, I saw him less than two weeks ago. Dammit, if he can deal with his life being now in a wheelchair, I can damn well stop my whining about being in a wheelchair for a couple of hours.

Yeah, so I’m an idiot that it takes me stuff like that fight through my self-sufficiency demands, but I’m glad I have friends like Mar and Don to look to when I’m weak. Thanks guys, even if you didn’t know until now I appreciated you.

Anyway, the doctors appointment after that went really well. I’ve already mentioned my weight, my blood pressure, and my uric acid readings. He actually agreed with my theory about the weight loss prompting the attacks and said the uric acid drug will combat that going forward. This should be the last attack, as long as the drug is working, so once I get past this one, I can go back to being me.

To help getting past this one, he gave me a steroid shot to eliminate the inflammation.

Yes, I’m steroids. I’m raging as we speak. RAWRRRRRR!!!!

But anyway, that helped a great deal and today I’m tottering about in pain. I’ve been using a walker around the house, and I may use it for longer walks, but I can make it short distances without. Hopefully, by the end of the weekend, the pain will be gone and I can pack for Gulf Wars.

To sum up. Man, things are trending great!

• Weight? Down 50 plus pounds and falling.

• A1C? Down to under 6 and falling.

• Blood pressure? Down to perfect (or maybe even too low).

• Uric Acid? Back to normal levels. Hoping to stabilize there forever.

I’m still recovering from the gout attack, but honestly, that’s just forcing myself to walk more and I need to do that anyway.

Okay, that’s a godawful long update, but if you’ve been following for a while, and I know some of you have, you probably have earned something this open about my health.

Anyway! Next week, Mike Burke and I talk poetry on Tuesday night. Here’s the link so you can join in, ask questions, make snarky comments about our different hairstyles, and generally mock us like we deserve: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/125581?utm_source=live-stream-scheduled-upsell.

Also, my plans for next week are to finish a few small projects and pack for Gulf Wars. By this time next week, I hope to be mostly set up at the war!

Have a great week everyone!