The TueDo List: TueNight is the Night
Our Gen-X Variety Show + Shingles Tips + Casey Quinlan
In, like, 4 hours! Join us for the TueNight Live: Gen-X Variety Show. We’ve got a great lineup of storytellers and performers including Jill Sobule, Kat Kinsman, Tara Phillips and Robin Gelfenbien. Tickets are just $10 and we’re donating proceeds to the Loveland Foundation, which provides therapy and healing support to Black women and girls nationally.
THIS WEEK:
Did you hear us cheering about the SCOTUS decision protecting LGBTQ workers? Hooray! 🌈 Here are 40+ summer activities you can still do during a pandemic. The best books of 2020 (so far). 21 ways to support Black Lives Matter if you can’t protest, like signing up for this free daily anti-racism email. Celebrate Juneteenth this Friday with Alicia Keys and John Legend for Verzuz. Celebrate Pride with these stories about queer power and defiance. This piece on Yoga With Adriene makes us want to do more yoga. Beyoncé’s open letter demanding justice for Breonna Taylor. Are all New Zealand PSAs this brilliant? Reading and how quarantine has changed us (it’s not all bad!). Not that we need more shoes, but we’re eyeing the Converse Pride collection. YES, cat, YES.
RANT: Shingles Before 50
At first I thought I'd pulled a muscle in my left shoulder blade area from gardening. Then it started to hurt so much I thought either my spleen had exploded or I was having a heart attack. I asked my pediatrician friend, “Should I go to the ER?” She said, “Do you have a rash?” Lo and behold: A small patch of red spots under my left boob. Shingles. The next day, my doctor prescribed anti-viral meds and Advil. After a couple days of not being able to sleep or concentrate from the pain (like being hit over and over on my torso with a flaming hot lead pipe) and a freaky tingling sensation, I finally got Gabapentin, which helps with the pain but more importantly, works directly on the nerves to heal them so that the pain doesn't last a really long time.
I was floored by how painful and debilitating this is.
Shingles are no joke; make sure to ask your doctor if you have any symptoms like mine or others (here are a few). And a tip: If you get shingles, ask your doctor if they can prescribe Gabapentin in addition to the anti-viral (but always ask your doctor first). I am 48 and plan on getting the vaccine ON my 50th birthday. I never, never want this again.
— An anonymous TueNighter
(As always, please check with your doctor before trying anything too wacky, we only present for your informational pleasure.)
TUENIGHT 10: Casey Quinlan
(Photo: Chet Strange for The New York Times)
Age: 67
Basic bio: Casey Quinlan blends her background in network news and standup comedy to inform her health policy work. She hosts the podcast Healthcare Is HILARIOUS and wrote the Amazon bestseller Cancer for Christmas: Making the Most of a Daunting Gift. She causes trouble for a living.
Beyond the Bio: I was never one to suffer fools, or societal expectations for what I could/should/might be. All together, the only restrictions I feel on my life, and my potential to drive positive change for humanity, is this freakin' pandemic lockdown ... but this ol' girl is figuring that out on the fly. Like she has everything else. And she's still here!
What makes you a grown-ass lady? I let a lot of stuff go, since life's too short to try to fix something that's irreparably broken, or to pick up someone else's baggage. And I have zero fucks to give about societal expectations of "lady."
Here’s her TueNight 10:
1. On the nightstand: Enough books to crush me if they fell, .38 revolver, antique crochet box, three cut glass boxes that belonged to my grandmother, back scratcher, photos of the beach. (It's a bookcase headboard.)
2. Can't stop/won't stop: Staring down stupid, fighting for human rights in healthcare, talking about data privacy in the surveillance economy, and working hard to find the funny in... all of the things.
3. Jam of the minute: Gary Clark Jr., Ray Wylie Hubbard, John Prine, Yola.
4. Thing I miss: People (in COVID19 lockdown right now, no plans to break that), traveling to conferences (see previous!), my mom and dad (died 29 days apart in '02).
5. 80s crush: Toss-up between Prince and Tom Petty.
6. Current crush: Mike Monteiro. Read his book Ruined By Design. You'll be crushing, too!
7. Latest fave find: Heather Cox Richardson's Substack newsletter.
8. Last thing you lost: My sanity, over a Trump tweet (it's an hourly thing around here).
9. Best thing that happened recently: I got to interview James Heathers, the PhD "data thug" brainiac behind the Twitter feed @JustSaysInMice. It was AMAZEBALLS.
10. Looking forward to: Non-pandemic-wise: Working on a doc series on patient leadership in healthcare. Pandemic-wise: Hearing live music in the room again, getting on a plane to head to a health/research/policy meeting, drinking at a beach bar.
STORY: Depression During a Pandemic and a Lifetime Before
By Sarah Buttenwieser
I’m afraid of my bed. When I landed in a major depressive episode at the end of October, bed wasn’t exactly a choice. My legs grew suddenly heavy. Bed called as if I were being suctioned toward it. Although there was nowhere where I wanted to be, except anywhere else, I felt scared there. Bed was a place my chronically depressed father had always favored. Because I didn’t want to be majorly, chronically depressed like him, bed became a Rubicon. And I crossed it.
Wearing is caring. Stay safe, TueNighters!