I'm Traveling
December 18, 2025
I’m in a Cléo from 5 to 7 series of moments, but actually it’s really Tosh: September to December. The medical world has its own clock, which has nothing to do with anyone else’s clock. On December 23, I will get a biopsy to find out what is wrong with me. I usually have a deep fear of medical procedures, but I’m looking at this as a Christmas present.
They confirmed that I have GERD, but it seems my GERD has unusual features. Instead of coughing up food or acid, I have violent, spasmodic coughing fits. This has been happening since October. Usually, spicy food can trigger issues, but over time, I’ve realized it’s not the food causing it, but my body position. After I eat, I have to sit up for three hours without lying down. I was losing weight quickly, as if I was pouring it down a drain.
The good news is that I finally gained weight by eating ice cream, peanut butter, and chicken dishes. Remember that when I’m healthy, I usually stick to vegan meals. Right now, my main problem is fatigue. I walk like an unhealthy senior and often feel dizzy, so I do everything I can to avoid falling.
It’s challenging to write because of the exhaustion. At times, it is difficult to read books. The book I’m reading now is a galley copy slated for publication in 2026. It’s excellent, but I’m having great difficulty focusing on the reading. The only thing I have no trouble with is watching endless reels on Instagram and TV. My friend Kimley gave us a gift subscription to Apple TV, and I watch programs on Netflix, and Apple pulls me in, and at times, I forget I’m sick. I only watch TV at night.
I have this issue: the coughing starts when I go to bed, so I avoid going to bed and sit on my couch, watching shows. Once I feel my stomach has settled, I go to bed.
At the moment, this is my existence.
Your post really moved me Tosh. That sense of living on a different clock—the medical clock—rings painfully true. Waiting, adapting, measuring days not by plans but by symptoms and procedures can feel like being quietly exiled from ordinary time. I admire the way you’re meeting December 23 with such clarity and even a wry grace, calling it a Christmas present. That kind of reframing takes courage.
So much of what you describe—the exhaustion, the dizziness, the careful choreography of eating, sitting, sleeping—feels familiar to me. My own health declined sharply after I was hit by a car while riding my bike five years ago. Since then, my body has never quite returned to the self I assumed was permanent. Balance, focus, stamina—things I once took for granted—now require calculation and restraint. Like you, I learned to organize my days around avoiding falls, managing energy, and accepting that I no longer have the strength to ride uphill on my own power (I bought an e-bike to compensate.)
That frustration—wanting to engage deeply with books or thought, but finding your body won’t cooperate—is its own quiet grief. And yet there’s also something human and sustaining in the small salvations: ice cream and peanut butter, a show that pulls you out of yourself, those moments when illness loosens its grip just enough to let you forget it’s there.
I’m really glad you found a way to stop the weight loss, and I hope the biopsy brings clarity, or at least a next step that feels less like free fall. Please know you’re not alone in this strange, narrowed existence. Many of us are learning, reluctantly and imperfectly, how to live inside altered bodies and altered time. I’m sending you steadiness, rest where you can find it, and the hope that this season—though it may be—will eventually give way to something gentler.
Hope you get good and useful results from the doc. Sending my best for your recovery,. R