Fairewinds Update: Silence is Not Golden
/
Hi Fairewinds Community Member,
Thank you for reading, writing, emailing, and calling us with the day or week’s critical nuclear or renewable energy questions. We truly appreciated your incredible and phenomenal response to Fairewinds Nuclear Spring Series! But then, as many of you noticed, we went radio silent, even before we had wholly wrapped the Nuclear Spring Series!
Friday (October 1st), we finally got back to some serious work with the new Blog post series, Meltdowns And Shakedowns: Our Nuclear Legacy, which will run well into December! Our special thanks to April’s Austrian NEC 2021 conference, hosted by Atom Stoppe and organized by Gabi Schweiger, and her program colleagues Claudia Kothgassner and Roland Egger (as well as the rest of their team). We were excited when Gabi asked Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen to present at the virtual conference about Regulatory Capture / Regulatory Collusion. While focusing on Nuclear Regulatory Collusion, we visualized Meltdowns And Shakedowns: Our Nuclear Legacy.
Lots of changes have occurred for us during 2021, with more to come. So far, we have been lucky enough to stay COVID-free in a Southern state that does not mask and has a meager vaccination rate. Unfortunately, South Carolina is now being overwhelmed by the Delta variant and a newly uncovered and unnamed SC variant. Nevertheless, we are relieved we both are vaccinated (with Pfizer). As things began to ease last May, we thought we would enjoy a sunny, outdoorsy, and mellow summer. Here in SC, our summer routine usually consists of a morning walk on a nearby ocean beach, only a 20-min drive away, followed by a quick swim before spending the remainder of the day in the office. Regrettably, we had no downtime and have had only two beach visits all year due to health issues!
Briefly, in early June, I had facial and optical shingles that were quite painful and exhausting. Then, I danced with shingles near my spine again in early August. After facing five shingle episodes already during my lifetime, I received the new Shingles vaccine in September. It wiped me out again. My reaction lasted at least 10-days and felt 10x worse than the Covid vaccine!
In my other update to y’all, I mentioned that Arnie had surgery in February for prostate cancer, and he was finally feeling more himself in May. But just as I began to see my way clear (literally) in June, Arnie suddenly had extensive abdominal pain and could barely walk. He spent his June 20th Father’s Day in the ER with scans, etc., and his Doc confirmed the next day that Arnie had a massive hernia and needed surgery asap. It turns out that 10 to 20% of prostate surgery patients get hernias, and unfortunately, Arnie was one of those. Arnie’s recovery from his July 1st hernia repair began beautifully, and we had a ‘chillaxin’ 4th of July weekend. Unfortunately, the pain was worse than ever, and he had to be admitted to the hospital on July 19th with a > 102.3 fever. Docs had put him on antibiotics for what they thought was an infection or even an allergic reaction to the hernia mesh.
I was scared. I had never seen Arnie so sick during our 42-years of marriage, even when he had viral pericarditis [a viral inflammation around the heart] in 2003. Our trauma RN daughter Elida, the doctor, and I conferenced at 7 a.m., and the Doc set up hospital admission asap. Not an easy thing to do here locally because unvaccinated Delta variant covid patients so prevalent throughout the deep south filled most of the South Carolina hospital beds. By the time Arnie was admitted, he had broken out in a deep rash spanning head to toe. It turns out he had a life-threatening drug reaction to the antibiotics. The surgery the following morning showed that all his pain was due to a hematoma, which the docs were quickly able to wash out. There was no infection at any of the prior surgery sites! Yay! And, he was so well cared for!
Recovery has taken time. And, after Arnie’s hospital stay, we both were ill and quarantined, believing it was breakthrough COVID. Luckily, we both tested negative two times a week apart. But, it turned out that we had RSV (respiratory syncytial virus, usually a winter-time cold-type virus that hit the southern states very hard this summer. RSV can cause severe lung and bronchial issues in babies, toddlers, and those over 65. And Arnie’s bout caused bronchitis.
We are very thankful for the incredible care teams we both have. They continue to sustain us during all this mess! But, damn, we have been so careful. Always masking and only out in public for doctors’ offices and the grocery store because the Delta variant is rampant here, and vaccinations are only 51%.
Thus our almost 4-month silence, we have had no bandwidth left for anything other than taking care of each other. We have survived our illnesses, are cooking healthy vegan meals – necessary for Arnie’s recovery from prostate surgery – and working together to get well physically. So as we catch up on work, we promise to be more responsive to calls, deadlines, and emails! We assume y’all know that the nuclear work we do daily is not easy.
