Long Covid – Where I Am

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I haven’t talked about this for a while, so I think it’s time to update everyone on where I am in the recovery journey. This is probably the last time I’ll talk about it.

For those who don’t know, I got Covid-19 in March of 2020. I was an early adopter. But really, Covid is not a joke. I was sick for almost six weeks, bordered on needing to go to the hospital a couple of times, and even though I did get over it, my recovery has been bumpy, to say the least.

I also became an early member of the group of sufferers from the malady that has come to be known medically as PASC and more commonly as Long Covid. We’re coming up on the two-year anniversary of my initial battle with the disease. I am better, much better than I was for the first few months post-Covid, when relapses of symptoms every few weeks would lay me low for a while and rob me of any progress made during the intervals. But I am not the same person I was before Covid. At this point it’s unlikely I ever will be. I’ve mostly come to terms with that.

What has gotten better: The relapses are fewer, farther between, and not so severe as they were in the first year post Covid. Then a relapse would mean coughing, chest tightness and shortness of breath, headache, body aches, and profound fatigue, usually lasting a week to two weeks. My last relapse was a few weeks back, the first in several months, and was really just a bit of achiness and fatigue. I had an occasional cough but not the constant hacking I used to have. Between relapses I can exercise almost normally with one BIG limitation.

What hasn’t gotten better and probably won’t: I cannot push the intensity of anything I do beyond a certain point. I’ve always been a pretty active person. I work out on an elliptical regularly and do strength-building routines. My husband and I have for years enjoyed taking long walks.

But if I increase the resistance or speed on the elliptical, I get short of breath very quickly. The same happens when I try to walk too fast. Even going up hills can make me huff and puff like a steam engine. There is no pushing through it. And repeated efforts don’t result in any improvement, just collapse. Over the last year I’ve discovered (usually the hard way) where my limits are and how to avoid pushing them too hard.

Pre-Covid, I could increase my endurance or strength by gradually increasing the intensity of the activity. My main limitations in any activity were due to cranky, arthritic knees. Hills were no obstacle. Post-Covid, increasing the intensity of an activity means only that I will have trouble breathing and likely drive me into the kind of fatigued collapse that will keep me glued to the recliner for the rest of the day. (If I’m lucky, that is, and it doesn’t put me down for several days.)

I am back to walking and working out, thank goodness. I’ve learned that I can (very slowly) increase the distance I walk, but not the speed. I’m back to walking a mile to a mile and a half a day. Sometimes even a bit more if I’m very careful. I can handle hills only by taking them at a much slower pace. I can and have increased the time I spend on the elliptical or working with weights, but not the resistance or speed. In other words, I can exercise, as long as I do it very carefully, without pushing myself too hard.

I still have episodes of feeling short of breath. Times when I feel I’m not pulling in enough air. I have a pulse oximeter and use it regularly. It continues to assure me that my blood oxygen level is fine. My heart has been checked and a CT scan of my lungs showed no significant damage, so there’s no explanation for why all of this is happening.

But it is, and I’m learning to live with it.

And I honestly think that’s as good as it’s going to get for me. I’m grateful I can do anything at all. It’s been a long, sometimes difficult road to get to this point, but I’ve found ways to live with my new normal.

As I finished writing this, I found this article from the New York Times that describes the problem with Long Covid sufferers and exercise: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/well/move/long-covid-exercise.html

This is me, now.

Writing Progress – Falling for the Deputy

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Yesterday afternoon I finished the first draft of Falling for the Deputy. I’ll spend a few days going through it to check pacing and fix any grammar, word choice, or continuity errors I find. (I almost always change a minor character’s name somewhere in the course of a book.)

Then it will be off to a couple of trusted readers and an editor. Once I have their feedback, I’ll go through it again, reworking what needs fixing. It should be ready to format and load up to Amazon a few days in advance of its March 29th release date.

Blurb:

After losing at love twice, Barbara Wilton needs a change, some place far from her home in Boston, so she takes a position as manager of a small branch bank in Willow Ridge, Georgia. She’s done with relationships and ready to concentrate on her career. The experience in Willow Ridge will help her move forward in the banking industry, but she doesn’t plan to stay there permanently. Nevertheless, an invitation to join the Hopeless Romantics book club, a position on a planning committee, helping a little league team that needs coaching, and being adopted by a stray dog begin to wind her into the community.

Barbara

Chris Harper was a police officer in Charlotte until his marriage fell apart. With his mother and elderly aunt in deteriorating health, Chris returns home to Willow Ridge to help them and takes a job as chief deputy to the local sheriff. The wound left by his failed marriage is still raw and, despite his mother’s nagging, he’s not interested in pursuing any relationship, even with the attractive new bank manager.

Fate, helped by a few local residents, conspires to push Barbara and Chris together. They meet during a false alarm at the bank and then he assists her with a car problem. But when his aunt receives a foreclosure notice on her house, Chris is angry with Barbara for not warning him that his aunt was behind on her payments.

She agrees to help him work out the problem with the bank, but the deeper issues between them keep flaring. Can two wary, wounded people learn to trust again and find happiness together? Find out in this sweet, second chance, enemies to lovers romance.

The 2022 Winter Olympics – The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly

Karen McCullough Posted on by

The Olympics ended two days ago and I’m still thinking about what happened then. I watched some of the closing ceremonies but, honestly, the pageantry doesn’t interest me. I love the Olympics for the sports. I love seeing competitions that I rarely get to see and watching people do things that look impossible. I revel in seeing athletes giving their very best. As far as I’m concerned anyone who makes it to an Olympic competition is a winner. I feel for the heartbreak of those who work so hard and don’t win any medals. I glory in the soaring performances and amazing feats of those who go above and beyond all the rest. I’m awed by the stunning talent on display.

In the Olympics just finished we got to see some of the best and worst of what the games can be.

I should state my biases right up front. I’m an American, born and raised in the US of A, and while I root for all athletes to do well, I’m especially thrilled to see American athletes excelling.

There were lots of wonderful moments. Redemption stories always move me, and there were plenty of those. Lindsay Jacobellis finally exorcising the ghost of her epic failure in the 2006 snowboard cross race by winning gold in 2022 at the age of 36. She tried and failed so many times in between. Her combining with forty-year-old Nick Baumgartner for both of them to win a gold medal in the team event was the best story of these Olympics for me. Followed closely by Nathan Chen skating beautiful programs in both team and men’s individual events to win gold in the individual after his horrible meltdown at the 2018 contest. They all worked incredibly hard, for such a long time, and endured so many failures to get that prize.

Other good stories included Shaun White coming in fourth in his final Olympic appearance in a sport he pioneered and dominated for two decades. He might’ve liked another medal but knew it was unlikely and he seemed to find joy in just competing one last time. Elana Meyers-Taylor became the most decorated Black athlete at the Winter Olympics. Erin Jackson became the first Black woman to win a long-track speed-skating race. Eileen Gu soared way above the competition in several different settings, performing tricks that looked impossible.

I was happy for the many athletes who recognized what an incredible achievement it is to win even a bronze medal and rejoiced in it. It’s an Olympic Medal and something few people in the world will ever possess.

The bad – My heart always breaks a little for those who try so hard and fail for whatever reason. Especially for those who come in with high expectations on their shoulders, like skier Mikaela Schiffrin, who was expected to win multiple medals in a sport she’s dominated, but who leaves with none. I can only hope she’ll someday get her own redemption story.

I hate it when announcers talk about bronze and silver medal winners as though they’re losers because they didn’t get the gold. Anyone who leaves the Olympics with a medal has achieved something very special. Even those who leave without a medal still share in a special level of competition most of us will never even get near.

The ugly – Do I even need to tell you?  This article says pretty much everything I want to say about the women’s figure skating debacle: https://slate.com/culture/2022/02/olympics-figure-skating-free-skate-valieva-trusova-shcherbakova-sakamoto.html

What to do? Not everyone agrees, but I think we need an age limit for figure skating. Yes, it will likely eliminate the quad jumps from the women’s competition, at least for a while. Honestly, I don’t mind. I’d rather see wonderful, creative skating than children jumping around on the ice.

Plus, the IOC has to grow a spine and quit coddling the Russians. They cheat. Possibly not all their athletes do, and I’m sorry that an Olympic ban might curtail a few dreams, but the evidence is they can’t be trusted not to cheat, so they need to suffer the consequences. It’s not likely, but I can hope.

Will I Ever Really Want to Read it Again?

Karen McCullough Posted on by

In a previous blog post, I talked about trying to get rid of as much of the “stuff” I have cluttering my home as I can. Some of it’s relatively easy to sort through and dispose of.

When my grandchildren were babies, I bought a fair amount of equipment for them for when they visited. Now that they’re older, I’ve already eliminated a lot of it, donating things to women’s shelters and groups helping resettle refugees.

I’ve gone through several boxes of old photos in the process of scanning them, and those will get tossed once I’m done with the project. A couple of boxes of financial records dating from well before the three-year period we supposedly need to keep have been shredded. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the boxes of stamp albums and loose stamps I inherited from several older family members.

I always have the most trouble parting with books. I love books and I tend to hang on to all of the ones I’ve enjoyed, found useful, or learned from over the years. Once the kids grew up and flew the coop, I turned the two upstairs rooms into my own makeshift library. Now, as I get older, I realize a time is coming when we’ll be moving out of this house we’ve lived in for 30+ years and I won’t be able to take it all with me.

Many—most—of the books have to go. It’s painful letting go of them. So I’ve developed a technique for deciding what to keep and what not to keep. I gather up a batch of books and bring them to my office, where they get sorted into three stacks. The criteria is asking each book: Will I ever read you again?

Books where the answer is a clear no go in one stack. A few I’ll want to dip into it again before I decide. And even fewer I can glance at and know that this book is a keeper.

As I’m getting older and my life reading time gets more and more constrained, though, I’m finding it easier to say that I’m never going to read this book again. I read it once, and that was good, but enough.

I don’t actually re-read all that many books because there are always so many new ones teasing me. At this point, I’ve eliminated almost half of the library and I still have work to do. I don’t have an actual goal except to get rid of all the books I know I’ll never read again.

Someday I may have to deal with all those books sitting on my Kindle that I’ve read or are waiting to be read. But that’s a problem for another time.

Falling for the Deputy – Now Available for Pre-Order

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Falling for the Deputy is Book 4 in the Hopeless Romantics of Willow Ridge series of sweet, contemporary romances set in Willow Ridge, Georgia, a small town outside of Savannah.

Can a group of hopeless romantics finally find love? Or are they destined always to be a bridesmaid and never the bride?

After losing at love twice, Barbara Wilton needs a change, some place far from her home in Boston, so she takes a position as manager of a small branch bank in Willow Ridge, Georgia. She’s done with relationships and ready to concentrate on her career. The experience in Willow Ridge will help her move forward in the banking industry, but she doesn’t plan to stay there permanently. Nevertheless, an invitation to join the Hopeless Romantics book club, a position on a planning committee, helping a little league team that needs coaching, and being adopted by a stray dog begin to wind her into the community.

Chris Harper was a police officer in Charlotte until his marriage fell apart. With his mother and elderly aunt in deteriorating health, Chris returns home to Willow Ridge to help them and takes a job as chief deputy to the local sheriff. The wound left by his failed marriage is still raw and, despite his mother’s nagging, he’s not interested in pursuing any relationship, even with the attractive new bank manager.

Fate, helped by a few local residents, conspires to push Barbara and Chris together. They meet during a false alarm at the bank and then he assists her with a car problem. But when his aunt receives a foreclosure notice on her house, Chris is angry with Barbara for not warning him that his aunt was behind on her payments.

She agrees to help him work out the problem with the bank, but the deeper issues between them keep flaring. Can two wary, wounded people learn to trust again and find happiness together? Find out in this sweet, second chance, enemies to lovers romance.

The Hopeless Romantics of Willow Ridge series are sweet, small-town contemporary romances. Each book is a standalone and can be read individually or as part of the series.

Hopeless Romantics of Willow Ridge series
Book 1: Falling for the Boss
Book 2: Falling for the Fireman
Book 3: Falling for the Doctor
Book 4: Falling for the Deputy
Book 5: Falling for the Hockey Player
Book 6: Falling for the Single Dad
Book 7: Falling for the Farmer
Book 8: Falling for the Scotsman

Pre-order Falling for the Deputy

Series Page for The Hopeless Romantics of Willow Ridge

Goals for 2022

Karen McCullough Posted on by

As I said earlier, I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Instead I set goals for the year, looking at the things I hope to accomplish over the year.

So, here’s what I’m planning to do in 2022. On the writing front, my first goal is to finish a book that will be released in the spring, Falling for the Deputy. It’s pretty well along, but not done yet. Then I will finish Playing at Murder. I really hope to have it ready to publish by late spring. After that, I’d like to at least get a good start on the first book of a new mystery series, using an idea that’s been hanging around my brain for several years now.

This worked so well last year, I’ve got to do it again. I’m going to try to do at least five more short stories and submit them, as well as submitting at least three of my older stories as well.

Another writing goal is to investigate the possibility of doing audiobooks. I’d like to start with some of my shorter pieces and then move toward getting audio versions of my novels.

On the personal level, I plan to continue the photo-scanning project, with the object of having it finished next Christmas. I should be able to complete it since I’m about three quarters of the way to completion. I’m also going to continue moving things out of my house, trying to get rid of as much ‘stuff’ as I can. I’ve cut down the number of books I own by about half, but could probably eliminate a lot more. In a future post I’ll explore how I decide which books can go.

Other things will occur to me, no doubt, but this is what I’m starting the year with.

Assessing 2021 Goals

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I’ve probably mentioned that I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. It’s pointless. Most resolutions go by the wayside before the first month is out. I used to vow to eat better, to exercise more, be kinder – all the standard things that were forgotten in weeks.

Now I make goals for myself for the year. Goals help motivate me, and I post them in various places to try to hold myself accountable for meeting them.

So, before I post this year’s goals, I need to look back at what I said I wanted to accomplish last year and how I did on those.

The first goal was to finish two novels in progress: Playing at Murder and No Time for Mistakes. The second of the two, No Time for Mistakes was finished and was published in October by Sweet Promise Press. Playing at Murder did not get finished, though I made a lot of progress on it, taking it from 25,000 words to 55,000.  I need about 15,000 more words to complete it.

My other writing goal was to finish five short stories and submit each. The good news is that I actually exceeded that goal, writing six new short stories for the year. I submitted all six and five of them have been accepted by various anthologies. Four are already published; one will be come out sometime in 2022. You can see where most of them are on my Stories Page. One of them is still out on submission.

The personal goals were somewhat mixed, too.  The project of scanning photos from albums made a tremendous amount of progress but didn’t get finished. Still, I don’t have too much left.

That’s part of the ongoing effort to clear out much of the ‘stuff’ I’ve accumulated over the years, and on that front I did make considerable progress.

I didn’t make it a goal, but I did say I wanted to find something I could do to give back to the community and help those less fortunate than myself. Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic sank most of my efforts in that direction other than providing some financial support. I’m not giving up on it yet.

So, that’s it. Some goals completed, some not. But I made progress on all of them, in most cases, considerable progress.

My next post will be the goals for 2022!

Crunchy with Chocolate Now Available

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Crunchy with Chocolate
An Anthology of Dragon Stories
October, 2021
Amazon: ebook and trade paperback

It has been said that one should never meddle in the affairs of dragons—for you are crunchy and taste good with chocolate.

Come enter the dragon’s lair and roll the dice. Within these pages you will still meet some of the biggest, baddest predators ever—but if you are lucky, you will also discover some that have a sweeter side.

Meet a dragon with a soft spot for hard luck cases and another who is a hopeless romantic.

Enjoy a musical battle between a dragon and the specter of one of the greatest guitarists to ever play.

Meet a dragon in trouble with other magical creatures because he enjoys hanging out with human children.

Join a mother and daughter and their teams of dragons on a dangerous cross-country race.

Reconnect with an imaginary friend – who is not so imaginary and escape the isolation of the pandemic.

And more…

So enter in BUT tread carefully—remember you are crunchy and taste good with chocolate.

My story is titled “The Princess and the Dragon”

If you think this story is a standard handsome knight rescues damsel from fierce dragon tale, think again. Here is a sneak peek to give you the flavor:

Suppose that, like Cyndrith, you happen to be the child of an ambitious mother joined to an insolvent father, a young lady of high birth, better than average looks, and broad but unorthodox education. As fate twists—only slightly assisted by your own and Aunt Vellie’s peculiar talents—you catch the eye of a neighboring prince at a time when he’s under pressure from the relatives to consider his duties. Your problems are solved. Right?

But further suppose that you do the obvious and necessary, you snag your man, and then you wake up the next day or week or month to find the honeymoon is over and you discover that your handsome, charming husband is a terrific dancer but an incompetent prince? And worse yet, your father-in-law, overjoyed that junior is finally settling down to business, and having just enough mens sanus left to realize that he’s losing it, decides to retire to Bath to take the waters, leaving the kingdom in the hands of your sweet but unqualified husband.

Cyndrith found the literature dealing with her particular problem scarce; the old legends insisted that everyone tended to live happily ever after, but her story looked likely to be a short, brutal tale — a leader who is hazy on the difference between cavalry and chivalry can generally expect an early and traumatic retirement.

Clearly, Cyndrith will have to take care of her own rescues, including confronting a rather unusual dragon!

Long Haul Covid – Update – Pulmonary Rehab Done

Karen McCullough Posted on by

It’s now been almost two months since I finished my eight-week course of pulmonary rehab and was handed a certificate to prove it. At this point I’ve seen considerable improvement in my general physical condition and ability to breathe as a result.

On the whole my Covid Long-Haul recovery continues to be a story of two steps forward and one step back. I’m in far better condition that I was last year this time. I still have relapses with unpredictable timing and length, but I don’t seem to be getting as sick with each now. The coughing doesn’t tear me apart and the headaches and body aches are manageable with OTC medicines. Fatigue during the relapses is still an issue, but even that has improved.

Between relapses I feel mostly normal now, with one exception.

I’ve been walking with my husband almost every morning for many years, except for that interval six to ten weeks in March and April of 2020 when I had Covid and the initial part of the recovery. For quite a while post-Covid I could barely make it around a couple of blocks. But that gradually got better, until a relapse would drop me back almost to square one again. But after each relapse I’ve recovered a little faster and stretched my distance again.

I recently had a personal post-Covid best distance of 1.78 miles! I’ve managed to pick up the rate, but I still don’t walk at the same speed I did pre-C. I use a pedometer app on my phone to track time and distance when I walk. I used to shoot for a goal of .25 mile each five minutes and usually had no trouble making that. Today, my speed is generally more like .18 mile/five minutes. Decent, but not as zippy as I used to be.

At this point I’m not sure I’ll ever get back to my former speed. In addition to Covid damage, there’s the age factor. And there seems to be a ceiling on my speed that isn’t there for distance. As long as I keep to the standard pace, I seem to be able to push the distance a bit.

But if I try to push beyond the .18 mile/5 minute pace, I’m likely to experience breathing problems and a total loss of energy either before I finish or shortly after – the sort of collapse that will keep me in the recliner for the rest of the day and possibly a day or two after.

I’m not entirely back to what was normal, but I’m adjusting to a newer version that I can live with.

2021 Goals Update – 3rd Quarter

Karen McCullough Posted on by

We just finished the third quarter of the year, so it’s time to revisit my 2021 goals to see how I’m doing.

My writing goals were to finish two novels in progress.  No Time for Mistakes, my third book in the No Brides Club Series is done, turned in, edited, and set to be published next week.  I’m now back to working on the other novel I hope to finish this year, Playing at Murder, the third book in the Market Center Mysteries Series. It currently stands at 33,000 words of a projected 70,000 – 75,000.  It will be a stretch to finish it by the end of the year, but I’m giving it my best shot.

On the short story front, my goal was to write five new ones.  I’ve met that goal now with five new stories this year, though I hope to write at least one more. Of the five, four have been accepted into various anthologies, including one in the Bould Awards anthology (I have two in that one, but one is an older story), one in the forthcoming Home for the Holidays Christmas Romance Anthology, one in the forthcoming Triangle Sisters in Crime anthology, Carolina Crimes: 20 Tales of Rock, Roll, and Ruin. Of the other two, one was accepted for an anthology that was cancelled, and the other remains unsold. I’ll continue to look for good homes for those two.

My personal project of scanning my photo albums slid somewhat during the summer, but I’m back at it now and making very good progress. I probably won’t finish it before the end of the year, but I expect to do so early next year.

On the personal hope list, my search for a way to give back in a meaningful way, to find a volunteer way to help, has been hampered by the reality of the continued prevalence of the Covid pandemic. I’m at a vulnerable age and already slowly recovering from Long Covid, so I’m not ready to get out and mingle with people except in very safe ways.