It’s been a while since I talked about my struggle with weight. At the beginning of the pandemic, I started making plans. They were reasonable plans, not pushing myself too hard. I was aiming for a slow progression that made sense for long-term progress. But, like everyone else, I had no way of knowing that the restrictions that began then would be necessary for this long. I did really well for a while. Then depression and old self-destructive tendencies caught up with me – talking myself out of exercise, overbuying groceries then justifying overeating by telling myself that wasting food is bad (it is, but that’s not a justification for poor food practices.)

So far during this pandemic, I have been lucky. None of my family or friends has contracted coronavirus. And with the right preparation, self-quarantining, and very careful timing, I have even been able to see my family a few times. But I have noticed a particular post-visit sensation that wasn’t there before.

I didn’t notice it until recently. Or maybe it didn’t happen until recently, but the last time I went to see my family, I got really depressed once I was home. I suspect it’s because, on previous trips, I already knew about when I would be back. This time, I was fairly sure I wouldn’t see them again for the foreseeable future. The kids were going back to school in person (cautiously – there is a lot of plexiglass involved), and there is just no way someone like me can take a risk like that.

After over eight months basically confined to my apartment, I was excited to hear the promising news about the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and now the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is showing promise, as well. For those of us who have, for all intents and purposes, become prisoners in our own homes, (I did the math and it turns out that I spend an average of 98% of every week staring at my own four walls and sometimes out the window) it is difficult to temper our expectations of what this could mean.

As some of you know, I am currently looking for a job. I am lucky in that I can afford to take some time and look for the right one, at least for a while. In the last few months, I have thought a lot about what that is. After dozens of calls with people who have helped me explore the healthcare universe, I have decided that I want my next step to be something where patient advocacy and public policy intersect. It’s a bit of a niche right now, but based on what my new network is saying, patient involvement in a lot of aspects of healthcare is on the verge of having a moment.

My friend and fellow patient advocate, Casey Quinlan, recently wrote an article about preparing to move from minor patient to adult patient. It’s a great article with a lot of good steps to follow in order to go from pediatric specialists to adult specialists, keeping track of and taking responsibility for your records, and planning so all of that takes place deliberately and not bass ackward, as my grandpa would have said.

But as I was reading it, my first thought was that, though I was the target audience, my transition was a lot messier than steps and plans could handle.

I am an experienced diabetic. It will be 30 years on April 1, 2021. (No joke. I was released from the hospital on April 1st, 1991, so I count that the start of my journey, and it feels appropriate.) I am also a bit of a boundary pusher, so I am pretty good at anticipating the results of my own behavior. That does not mean that I am not thrown for a loop every once in a while.

That loop came in the worst way last night.

This is an unusual election season. Beyond the politics, the logistics have been a nightmare. With just months of warning, every state has had to make accommodations for the guidelines dictated by the pandemic, so there has been expanded mail-in voting (same as absentee voting) and expanded early voting, both of which would be necessary to alleviate the packed poling places that usually occur during a presidential election year. They are even more necessary with voter turnout expected to break records this cycle. As I write this, 20 million people have already cast their votes.

A couple of weeks ago was Yom Kippur, the most serious of the Jewish holidays, a time of contemplation and repentance. We take time for reflection, acknowledgement of our shortcomings and express our hope that the coming year will be a better one.

Aside from a truly brave and uncommon self-assessment of one of the rabbi’s biggest lifelong shortcomings, the services and the sermons focused on finding new ways of coming together as a community, web-based and socially distanced activities you can participate in to maintain your connections, and how important that is in a pandemic reality

I was recently talking to a friend who asked me about something. I knew immediately what this person was talking about. It’s a subconscious state of mind that has slithered into my life outlook. I am sure patients with other chronic and autoimmune conditions deal with it, too: I don’t trust my body.