Wildfire Day 9 (June 27, 2025): The Forsyth Fire and France Canyon Fire are now at more than 42,000 acres. Containment remains low. It will be hotter and windier this weekend. The CO2 levels in our house are rising despite running our air filter nonstop. In one update, the team managing the Forsyth Fire said it could potentially make its way to and cross the highway that runs right next to our home, but nothing like that has happened. They also talked about monsoon rains being on the way, but that’s not what the forecast reflects.

Meanwhile, our governor is asking Utahns to pray and fast for rain the way the Mormon settlers did when they were sent to this part of the state. That’s where we’re at, folks, here in Sunny Southern Utah. Praying and fasting and blasting our precious water at fires.

Oh, and fireworks are still legal, even in this extreme drought, and July 4 is quickly approaching. What could go wrong? Maybe nothing if we pray and fast hard enough.

—

Wildfire Day 11 (June 29, 2025): The level of CO2 inside our home continues to build up. I slept most of the day yesterday and feel lightheaded and spacey today. Too much dead tree in my lungs. Too much dead everything. I can’t imagine how wildlife and livestock feel or folks who have to be outside to work. Forsyth is still minimally contained. And growing. France Canyon is minimally contained and growing. Another day. Another breath. Another acre. Another asphyxiation. How much smoke can air suspend? More, it seems. Even more.

—

Wildfire Day 15, Entry 1 (July 3, 2025): Notes in the form of an expedition journal. CO2 level in home, 675ppm down from 980ppm. Air monitor flashes green rather than orange as I pass by it in the dark. The house fan is set to on for the next five days. New MERV 13 filters are on the way. The latest migraine, which started 3 days ago, persists. Throbbing, throbbing. How is it possible for an entire body to throb? The backs of the arms. The feet. Not just the head, which is both crushing and throbbing at once like a walnut in a nutcracker being squeezed then released, squeezed then released, never quite cracked.

My 14g immunoglobulin infusion yesterday didn’t help, though its secondary benefit is reducing inflammation. The 6mm needles felt like dull knives at every entry point. They left my arms swollen and bruised.

Sensing my movements, my fitness-tracking watch has woken itself up. It’s like an externalized inner compass helping me navigate every sleeping and waking moment. It buzzed when I received an email just now, at 2:37 a.m., from Lit Mag News, which I never read. I don’t know how that relates to health. My fitness-tracking watch is one of those things that does everything, a real Swiss army knife for whatever this is I’m doing. Living, I guess. Surviving. Checking email from my wrist at 2:37 a.m. because it makes my forearm vibrate like a new-fangled type of paresthesia.

We’ve been told to stay inside. We’ve been told to vacate the national parks and the state parks and the reservoirs in the area. We’ve been told to drive carefully if we have to go out because wildfire smoke is limiting visibility. The closest one, the Forsyth Fire, is 13,419 acres and 42% contained.

My last TSH level was 27mIU/L, 54 times what it should be for continued suppression of my thyroid cancer, and 9 times higher than the upper limit of normal. Anything outside 0.5–3mIU/L threatens my mental health. Anything north of 1.5mIU/L is generally suboptimal and works against my overall health and wellness. My endocrinologist switched me from the liquid form of thyroid replacement back to the pill I used to take, but at a much higher dose than I’ve ever taken before. I maintained my TSH levels on 94mcg of thyroid replacement in pill form for years. She prescribed 137mcg because that’s what I was taking in the liquid form that I appear to not have been absorbing well. It required ratcheting up every few months over the course of 3 years, which is how I got to such a high dose compared with the pill form I’d been taking.

I started taking the new prescription 8 days ago, which was 8 days into the wildfire. I’m hungry all the time. I’m eating right now. Almonds, a Munk bar, Oikos yogurt. Whatever I can lay my hands on in the dark. This seems to please the migraine. Less throbbing. A semi-reprieve. I laid my hands on two Tylenol and took them, even though they never seem to do anything. I laid my hands on a cold migraine head thing I keep in the refrigerator, though it only offers temporary relief, perhaps more of a distraction than anything else.

I log everything I eat in Cronometer, my master data center for the health metrics I track. The watch data ends up in there, too. Typically, this data characterizes my health. The past week, it’s characterized by my lack of health. Too much food. Not enough nutrients. Too much pain. Not enough movement. Sleep broken by pain. Pain breaking body. Body breaking down the way wood is broken down by fire.

I’m 334 calories into my midnight grazing, and I’m still hungry. I expect my hair to start falling out next, another side effect of too much thyroid replacement. I’ll call the endocrinologist later today about cutting this dose down and working up to the right replacement level. I won’t be able to travel until my TSH levels are stable. I really want to go to Oklahoma in August. I don’t have much time to get this sorted out.

The new therapist who does parts work using the Internal Family Systems framework tried to tell me two weeks ago, during another migraine, that I needed to ask my migraine what it wanted. A migraine is not a part. This is not what IFS is and not how it should be used. Framing every chronic health issue as a “part” we need to talk to and make friends with is a form of gaslighting. It’s dismissive and dangerous. I’m not going to go looking for a part that caused my genetic immunodeficiency or a part that caused my cancer. That approach is just another way to deny the realities of patients’, especially chronically ill female-bodied patients’, lives. Physical illnesses are not all in our heads or caused by what’s in our heads. Psychology needs to stay in its lane, just as medicine needs to stay in its lane.

CO2 levels are rising in the home. 713ppm. Still in the green zone. It’s because I’m sitting here breathing. Pulse rate 96 beats per minute. Watch has reported no recent body responses, meaning stress is somehow in check. Throbbing 70% better than it was when I woke up. Hydration level good. Still hungry. Can’t fix that. I’m going back to bed.

It occurs to me that this may be an apocalypse journal, not a wildfire journal. So be it. Maybe someday soon, the smoke will clear and I’ll be able to go outside. Maybe not.

—

Wildfire Day 15 Entry 2 (July 3, 2025): Notes in the form of an expedition journal. CO2 level in home, 702ppm. Air monitor flashing green. We forgot to keep the MERV 13 filtration going continuously over the weekend, and our CO2 levels reached bearly 1,000ppm, well into the orange zone. Those were the days when I was coughing. My asthma is better today, so the filtration must be working.

I have a Salonpas pain patch meant for backs affixed to my forehead. It’s not really helping my migraine, but it’s not not helping, either. I might combine it with the cold migraine head thing later. Right now, I’m eating and eating and eating because I continue to feel like I haven’t eaten in days, despite having last eaten at 3 a.m. I’m going to start drinking olive oil by the quarter cup if nothing else is satiating.

I’m going back on the liquid version of my thyroid replacement medicine. My symptoms are all consistent with thyroid hormone overreplacement, and they correspond with my change to the pill form of the medication eight days ago. Plus, my heart rate is up, my blood pressure is up, and I’m sweating excessively and incessantly.

It’s also possible that I’m reacting to the binders and other inactive ingredients used in the pill form of the medication. That’s part of why my doctor switched me to the liquid form in the first place. I tend to discount problems associated with inactive ingredients, but there’s ample evidence that they can cause issues.

People are out walking around in our community as if there’s no wildfire, no problem at all with the air quality. They’re waving, getting their steps in. You can smell and taste the air, just like in the inversions that happen in the northern part of Utah. Smoke. Gasoline. Cigarettes. Perfume. There’s an inversion advisory here because of the wildfire. We haven’t had an inversion in this part of the state since we moved down this way in 2020, in large part to get out of the inversions up north.

When I woke up with my head throbbing after getting in 2 more hours of sleep for a total of 6 hours with a corresponding sleep score of 68, I did what I always do. I turned on the little song that plays continuously from my alarm. It’s a sweet, lilting tune I started playing after my friend Dottie, who was a chihuahua, died. I played it every day in her honor while I was mourning, then I just kept playing it. This morning, it made me feel like I was in Bo Burnham’s Inside, a sweet theme song accompanying my pain, this wildfire, the terror burning through the country. The song felt like: “Look, here we go again. Doing this shit again. Another day of shit again. This shitty song again. This bullshit life again. This Every Thing — Again.”

Tra-la-la.

CO2ppm unknown. Device won’t update. 3,100 steps so far today. Resting heart rate 72 beats per minute, well above average. Current heart rate 95 beats per minute. Way too high for just sitting around. Blood oxygen 96%. Below average. Stress management score 76. Average.

Remind me to tell you about my dreams.

—

Wildfire Day 15, Entry 3 (July 3, 2025): Sun enters our home after sixteen days of wildfire smoke, which meant no clouds, no laccolith, no horses in the distance, no goldfinches flying clean through the air, and no Sun.

On this day of all days, Sun returns and says, Here I am, like nothing happened.

On this day, Sun comes in and sets my body clocks to hope the way my father’s son once did, years ago. I thought he was the son of the Sun, but only my mother was celestial. My father’s son was just my father’s son.

How dare it. How dare Sun come here and wind me up, send me out into this world whose plumage is smeared with batrachotoxin.

How dare it let me stroke such toxic beauty before I even realize what I’ve done.

—

Wildfire Day 16 (July 4, 2025): Notes in the form of an expedition journal. CO2 level in home, 709ppm. Air monitor green. Trending downward from its peak. No update on Forsyth. Acres burned still listed as 13,597. Containment still listed at 46%. Sky hazy. Haven’t been outside yet so no report on how difficult it is to breathe.

Resting heart rate the same as yesterday: 72 beats per minute, which is higher than normal. Sleep score 78. Stress management score up to 81 from 76 yesterday. Good. Body responses so far today, meaning indicators of stress: 9 minutes starting at 5:52 a.m. That was just me standing up when I got out of bed, my postural orthostatic tachycardia kicking in.

Migraine has resolved. Body pain is diminished this morning. Switching back to the liquid form of my thyroid medication seems to correspond with the resolution of or improvement in my symptoms. It will take time for my body to fully right itself.

56 minutes REM sleep. I hour 27 minutes deep sleep. Sleeping heart rate 70 beats per minutes. Too high. No dreams to report. Maybe something about a cookie or a gold coin. Or maybe it was an Oklahoma tax token from The Great Depression.

Soon, we will be able to open all the windows. The air will be clear, but I fear it will be full of hate, which moves invisibly on invisible currents. Or, these days, on currents we are all starting to see.

—