Second Quick Updated Revision to My Book: Suffering "Long Covid"

I recently wrote a blog about putting out an updated and revised version of my 2022 book:

Suffering "Long Covid". (available as Amazon ebook/Smashwords ebook). It has also been nominated for the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

The blog was titled:

 JZ Murdock - an update on my writings and works.

Well?

I did it again. Updated it. Weird, as I thought I was done and a few new copies had made it into a brick and mortar in another city. Then it happened. NPR reported a new study I felt just really needed to be included. I had updated the book for January 2024, with the biggest new issues studied or uncovered about Long Covid, in 2023. I wasn't going to update for or in 2024 until the beginning of 2025. 

So, I updated it, again. And it is now out and available and the new(est) books have been sent to that store. It's doing well enough they gave my book a SKU# and are paying me upon delivery rather than after sales have been made. Progress. 

So. How can you tell which book you have in your hands? 

On the acknowledgements/copyright page behind the title page (or last page of the book in the ebook version) it has a line that indicates the copyright year. 

If it says 2022, it's the first version. If it says "Revised Edition, January 2024" that's the second version. If it says, "Revised Edition 1.1" (see below), that's the third and now most current version. And I do not plan to do it again.

We found some spelling errors in it and I fixed all that. That's what actually made me want to revise it ASAP. Not that many but any are too many. 

I was still coming out of the other end of long covid from where I am now and my attention to minor details, like spelling every word correctly in a book of 56,000+ words, well...I wasn't perfect. And I've checked, nothing truly important was incorrect. The information was all and still is all accurate. 

I have gotten very good feedback about this book. 

People who bought it, when they returned to the store they told the manager that they learned a lot and found it very helpful. A review on Amazon from a verified purchaser seems to sum things up nicely. From December 7, 2022:

As we enter our 3rd year of the COVID-19 Pandemic there are a variety of side effects being experience by over25 million Americans from the over 100 million cases of COVID-19.

The author provides excellent detailed observations and research into the symptoms he suffered during his personal experience with LONG COVD. Through the fatigue and other symptoms you can gain insight into what you and your family may be experiencing.

It is a detailed quick read and he used his background as a researcher and writer to bring greater awareness and understanding to the LONG COVID condition.

As someone who worked in epidemiology for 18 years I found this book to be an excellent resource of information.

Not bad, right?

[Noon update: I just got a phone call about someone who bought my book in the store, read it and came back in for some other things, but mentioned he liked the book. Then he asked in the store if they/I knew about the FLCCC Alliance? I looked them up just now and started to remember coming across them in my research. I searched my book just now and I had not mentioned them in it, which can only be for cause. So I asked Bing AI about it, and the response was this: "The FLCCC Alliance is a group of physicians and former journalists who advocate for alternative treatments for COVID-19, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine 1 2. However, these treatments have not been approved by the FDA or the WHO, and there is insufficient evidence to support their effectiveness or safety 1. Therefore, the FLCCC Alliance is not a reliable source of medical information, and their perspective is not based on solid scientific consensus." 

I just thought I should mention this. They may be onto something, maybe not, but it needs much more testing and verification. I'd considered including them in my book as well as some other questionable sources. But it leaves you caught between not mentioning viable possibilities without enough information, or leading people into something it's better they do not bother with, which perhaps they may come across on their own. It's a judgement call. Sometimes I mentioned such things, sometimes not. To gain perspective on that dilemma, I would suggest writing a book like this one and truly feeling the weight of your actions.]

Not bad, I say. That's it. That's all I've got for now...wishing you all...all the best!

Cheers! Sláinte!

My New Book - "Suffering Long Covid" October 2022

I felt the brutality of COVID-19 for the first time starting February 9, 2020. It was a Sunday. I spent the week with what I thought was the flu at first, but quickly realized was something I had neve reexperienced before. By the third night of trying to sleep and being unable to because I was counting my breaths, carefully trying not to cough... I realized something was very wrong.

Suffering Long Covid

I lied in bed debating going to the emergency department at the nearby hospital, only two miles from my house. I was exhausted after several nights of no sleep. If I drive, could I pass out? If I don't, could I die? Should I call an ambulance? And then, I passed out. I woke the next day actually...feeling a little better. The worst was over. 

But long covid was about the begin. That lasted somewhere between eight and fourteen months. Due to the nature of it, it is really hard to tell. I spent most of 2020 in my recliner in my living room. Awake, then asleep, lethargic. Exhausted. Sometimes feeling ill, sometimes not. I was feeling ill for one to three plus weeks each and every month of 2020 as it essentially zipped by. 

I was unsure at times over that next year if I was having reoccurring covid (by a month or two into it, I had realized I had contracted the new novel coronavirus), or if I was catching new iterations of covid. 

Or a new variation. I'd considered in the beginning when i realized what I had contracted, and survived, that I should write a book about it. But that first year or so I was just too exhausted and without energy to even think of it. I had brain fog. Weird blood clotting issues. My VA doctor had me take many tests and all came back looking like I was healthy. Except, I wasn't. 

March 28, 2022. Again it was a Sunday night. but early the next morning I was in the Emergency Department of St. Michael's Medical Center in Silverdale, Washington, eleven miles from my home.

It was a very disturbing night that went from paramedics at my home for the first time in my life and at 2AM. That saw me with sinus tachycardia, driving myself to the hospital in Bremerton, where I live. Two miles away. At 3AM. Paramedics had given me the OK to drive myself before they left and having offered me the ambulance. But I wanted to do it myself.

I ended up driving around in the dark, unable to find a massive medical center. So I went home and tried to sleep. After a few hours I got up and called the Veterans Administration triage nurse. She told me to drive to the next down that morning to the emergency department. So I did. It turns out the hospital two miles away, which I had used for twenty years for my kids and my family, had closed down only six months previous, and I hadn't heard about it.

I got a Zio chest patch heart monitor to wear for two weeks and then I was sent home. A week later I had paramedics at my house, again on a Sunday, again at 2AM. This time for blood pressure that was far too high.

I had more tests and again, I was healthy. Except, I wasn't. As I started feeling better, well enough to think, I thought I should write that book about this experience and share what I had learned. It started slow, but I got something down on paper. 

Eventually, I finished the book. Just as I had finished an internationally award winning documentary that spring of 2021, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero", began as just a way to try to start thinking and working on something, anything, again.

And now that book is available, too. 

"Suffering Long Covid" is now available as a book and ebook on Amazon. I have included my daily logs that I kept for my own benefit at first and then for my doctor to prove some of what I had been experiencing. I've also tried to support things I say in the book with references and links to information. 

I'm not a medical professional but I am a researcher and writer. I thought my story was interesting and if nothing else, I had learned a lot about COVID-19 and Long Covid. As science and medicine learned, I learned. I had nothing else to do by feel ill and as I had energy, research what was happening inside me. Why I was so exhausted and kept feeling ill. While all the tests at hospitals said I was fine. When I wasn't, quite obviously.

The book was difficult to write, but got easier as time passed. It was interesting to read my logs as I was already months later forgetting how bad things had been. I realized I wish I had a book like this to have read, and maybe others might find it, in some way or another, useful to them.

So here it is...if you have long covid, and I hope you don't, sometimes it helps to see what others have gone though. if nothing else, there are some very interesting pieces of information and references in the book.

I wish you all well. Be healthy my friends! 

Cheers! Sláinte !

Our Terrorist Cell

I'm sitting here in the evening, it's raining outside in Bremerton, Washington. I'm watching Netflix, a show called, Peaky Blinders. Great show. About 19th century England. Gangs. Reminiscent of  The Wind in That Shakes the Barley, Perhaps, especially because of actor Cillian Murphy and his being Irish and all, being born in County Cork (I rather liked visiting Cork). and all that.

It's no secret I'm rather partial to the Irish. Being half myself, all on my dad's side of the family. Having had a rather, albeit confused, understanding as a youth of my ethnic responsibilities and well... I do understand enjoying a good conspiracy. Especially for a good reason and all. A good... guerilla fight against greater odds, can be inspiring. Even, addicting. Especially to the disaffected and those who have little control over their lives, or who simply feel that way.

Early in high school I had learned about the troubles from a documentary. I'd long known I was half Irish, that my dad was Irish. I grew up with my mother, after they divorced when I was three. She always celebrated St. Patrick's Day. I remember a banner of cut out, green, "Erin Go Bragh" (or, Éirinn go Brách, Meaning "Ireland forever" in Gaelic) every year hanging in the house.

I hardly ever saw my dad after that and never did after I was sixteen, until he died in 1988. I doubt he ever had a thought himself about Ireland. But I did. I even tried to talk friends, fellow students in tenth grade into going with me to Ireland to fight in the Troubles. Well, it didn't happen. I had no money to get there. I doubt they'd have even wanted me. But that, is a story for another time. Or not.

Anyway, that's how I was at that time. I even wrote a screenplay about what I was like back then. The Teenage Bodyguard, is about a situation I got myself into just after graduating high school. Over the course of a week in 1974, I protected a murder witness from the local mafia.

Great story and a screenplay that is being liked every time it's seen or evaluated. "So why isn't it on the screen already somewhere", one reviewer asked in their review from BlueCat screenplay contest. Another from The Blacklist coverage said it was "a viable project that should be pursued". And so I am.

I kept finding myself in interesting situation back then. I don't know why. Mainly, because people kept asking me to act as a bodyguard for them. First was that frightened woman who asked me to protect her for a week when I was eighteen from some murderers she had worked with at Tacoma's first topless bar, The Tiki, run by the Carbone crime family.

A year later at nineteen, my own mother asked me to be my little brother's bodyguard in Manhattan. She was afraid if he got roughed up during a robbery, he could die inbeing so thin and fragile with liver cancer at the time. There had also been a rash of apartment break ins at that time. So I slept in our small studio apartment on the floor, with my .357 magnum next to me just in case someone tried to break in at 2AM or something.

I had also protected a variety of others off and on over the years. Gamblers wit cash coming to town, a big construction magnate's horse farm at the end of a road where I lived for a while, and so on.

My point being, I do get it. This whole, desire to go to battle, take on great odds, test yourself and live the life of excitement and adventure. it's kind of dumb for most, but I get the attraction.

As I watch this great show (Peaky Blinders), and sip some red wine (yes, there's Guinness in the fridge, but it's wine tonight, forgive me St. Guinness), I understand the feeling that there is no downtown here to go to, to meet locally with other frustrated or angry conspirators in some shady bar, to have talks, to sneak to covert meetings, to talk about how the government is abusing us unfairly and unjustly. How our enemies really have to go. At all costs. Or any. All of that. Not unlike our Founding Fathers did in local Freemason lodges, mostly held at or above local public (drinking) houses (pubs?).

I do get all of that. I understand that feeling. That focus. The mystery. The excitement. The addictive fear. The call to a cause greater than oneself. The ability to be something, right now, immediately. To evoke change when nothing else is happening in one's life. To achieve something now with power when no one else will give you that kind of responsibility or command over other human beings. Even to the point of taking their lives. Even if they are innocent.

I get all that.Well, not so much the taking of innocent lives. I really don't get that. Especially when they are your own. But I get it for a young testosterone filled young man, or woman. Or for one whose family and loved ones are indeed being abused if not murdered by the state as others in other countries have had to suffer through. I get that. I really do.

I doubt it's much different for terrorists in other countries, even in our own country in how some can misguidedly perceive our own reality in America as deserving of terrorism..The home of their ancestry. Maybe. But then, not a lot of Native Americans are terrorists. Some who are not even of that abused ancestry but who understand, empathize, with them. Who feel compassion for their seemingly just cause. Like non Muslims who go to fight with them.

I get all that.

The trouble is... it's nonsense. Mostly. For the most part. 99% of it anyway.

Those are the rumblings of a young man high on testosterone so much of the time. Give them a call to arms... oh my God. They will be there!

But there is another side. There will be those they harm. The innocent. Those they blind themselves about but who do matter, and greatly so. They become blinded by the fog of war and idealism. But not of conscience. And so innocents die. For no good reason.

Not until their hacked minds, hacked by disingenuous ones who put not themselves into danger but those of a younger cohort. Where justice turns into criminal actions and heroes become terrorists. There is brainwashing going on. Media is part of the problem. those manipulating it are more so. Be they Russian hackers joyriding or actually paid by Putin. Or Islamic terrorist leaders or simply... Facebook.

I'm glad I lived through those cold war years. I'm also glad I didn't have to grow up in Belfast or an Ireland under British rule where my ancestors were so abused and genocide wasn't a ridiculous word to banter about. When some Irish tried to eat grass due to starvation during the potato famine, where the dead and emaciated were found in fields with mouths stained green.

My terrorist cell is based in words, not guns, in political actions, not bombs.

 It is civilized, not barbaric. I'll kill no innocents. My terrorist cell, does not exist. Because I do not believe in terrorizing human beings. Or anyone. Or anything. It's a bully behavior, that of an immature mind, or mindset.

There is a time for violence. To be sure. But it is far less often than many would like to admit.

And that includes our American born terrorists. Those Christian misguided fools who have killed too many in our country already and should never again. And then there is simply mental illness, and social illness.

Do Act. But at some point we have to see as a race of intelligent beings that death simply isn't always the answer. While in some countries it may be necessary, at certain times, in ours it simply is not.

We have a disease in this country. It is conservatism. It is binary thinking. It is in authoritarian attitudes, having them, or adoring them. It is poor priorities. It is extremists. It is the far right politically motivated. It is the ignorant, the poorly educated, the incorrectly educated, those who believe in alternate facts, alternate realities, alternate morality, alternator mental health.

We need instead to seek out our best nature in life, not our worst.

We need to bring down our worst, and simply refuse to be a part of it.


#terrorism #peace #isis #racism

Something Bit The Republican Party. Was it the Tea Party?

The Republican Party over the past 20-30 years has built an environment that has finally paid off in having the likes of the blowhard Donald Trump and the despicable Ted Cruz as Presidential nominee frontrunners.

Yet, that wasn't their intent. Although forewarned, they wouldn't listen even to themselves in order to avoid this. They knew it back in 2012, claimed they would fix it, then went on like the Zombie Party they are, with business as usual.

Now they think that using Ted Cruz to neutralize Trump is a pretty durn good idea. It actually is a really neato idea... with the exception of one thing.

Over the years the GOP has shown itself to be exceptionally adept at actions based on bad ideals. Ideals that merely sound good in sound bites but lack substance under deeper consideration. Someone once said that Republicans are great at selling bad ideas (or can sell lies better than truth) and Democrats are bad at selling great ideas.

Their ability to hang onto power with dirty tricks has proven exceptional. Even at the expense of the American citizen and in how this country is perceived worldwide. Except of course where, for instance, Republican Governors have been found to be criminals, again through ideals based upon the ideologies of their party. Or simply, greed.

Essentially exhibiting a lack of self-discipline to do what is right, or perhaps simply to judge between right and wrong. The Party of Business is about profit, not people. And yet they wish to govern over people. 

They frequently have no shame. But then as I have pointed out in a previous blog, that has a lot to do with the right's extreme religious slant even as it signals their demise. 

Once again they have made a choice that is not good for them, or us, and based on a concept that arises all because of a situation they themselves have set upon this country.

If Cruz beats out Trump or forcibly replaces him it would be merely one more bad idea in a very, very long line of them. 

Trump would be an embarrassment AND a Danger to America as well as the world. Cruz would be a Danger and we'd never even get to the embarrassment stage of things.

Then again Bill Maher @billmaher Tweeted this week:

Cruz would be our worst President. 
But Trump might well be our last.
#BetterTedThanDead

Possibly so. We keep hearing from Republicans how they are going to do this or that to fix their problems and yet, so much of the time they are merely scrambling about, sometimes in a panic, trying to fix things they did themselves. To us. On purpose. 

Sometimes bad things happen they didn't foresee or desire. Yet unbelievably as we're seeing, sometimes they are getting exactly the situation they wanted. At times using plausible deniability to defend themselves. At others not even bothering to deny it.

It's as if, they are insane. At very least emotionally and mentally unbalanced. 

The GOP is the Koyaanisqatsi of American politics (from the film and Hopi People word, Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance).

It is as if they were bitten by some diseased animal years ago, perhaps in the mid 1990s and we've been watching the progress of this disease as it kills the Party animal while damaging all those around it. Perhaps a political form of rabies. 

From Rabies Alliance.org:

Often you can’t tell by looking. - We thought for years after the infected bite that Republicans were normal. We didn't at first notice. 

However, a rabid animal may stagger or stumble. It may display unprovoked aggressive behavior or be over-friendly. - Yes, quite so. 

Animals with advanced rabies may foam at the mouth. This is because the rabies virus affects the salivary glands causing hyper-salivation. They may also develop hydrophobia (fear of water). - I suspect a metaphorical approach to this one. It snaps in like it was built for it. Water substituting for xenophobia and a fear of non-whites or illegal aliens. I wonder what would happen if ever any extraterrestrial aliens were to show up?

If an animal shows any of these signs, you should contain it to prevent possible exposure either to you, your family, or another animal. - If only we could contain the GOP and their conservative puppet masters. It does point out however just how badly we do need to attempt to stay away from them (to not vote for them). 

However, none of these symptoms are definitive signs that an animal has rabies. - Oh, great!

To verify an infection, a brain tissue sample must be tested for rabies. For this the animal must be euthanized. - And, there it is. My ex-girlfriend back in college was a Vet. Tech and said she'd see a frozen dog or animal head sometimes in the Veterinarian's freezer waiting on a rabies test. They would send it frozen to have the brain cells tested. Typically the bitten individual would start the painful rabies series of shots just to be safe if deemed necessary.

Whatever happens to the GOP now, it's going to be painful. Painful for them, but more importantly painful for the rest of us. Even those of us who shouldn't have to suffer because of them. But then maybe we all are to blame in putting up with big money in politics for so long and allowing media to turn into entertainment as a profit driven venture.

We have turned over one of the most important elements in our checks and balances in the American system to Corporate thinking. A system that runs best toward not Truth but sales and profit. Is that the rabies of the American system itself?

I doubt we should wait to definitely discover via post mortem analysis if the GOP was infected, regardless what you call it. Rabies, extreme conservatism, religion, Tea Party, fascist extremist groups, or whatever. 

It seems quite obvious what's going on. And action is required... now.