$35 Million

Fred and Sheba woke me at 4:15 yesterday. I ignored them until 5:00, then I got up and fed everyone and lit the fire. Then I made a corn salsa recipe that struck me as interesting and potentially fun to make and eat. It is fucking delicious! I am loving cooking savory dishes. It’s just as much fun and baking sweets.

I watched some videos of people making Gyro sandwiches. You mix meats and spices, roll the mixture into a thin layer between sheets of parchment paper, and then you roll it up in one sheet of parchment and put it in the oven. Then you unroll it once cooked, mix it with onion, yogurt, cilantro and spices, and yum! You have a delicious sandwich. That’s what I want to make next.

Just past 9:00, we went to meet our friends to walk our dogs. It was just Regina, Nola, me and two doggers walking on a wonderfully mild morning. When I got home, I got started on making the sauce for the fish that I love so, so much. But it turned out much, much differently than last time. I reckon I made an error last time and got better results than I did by carefully following the recipe.

I chatted with Dr. Dorscheid at 13:00. In May of 2022, my lung capacity was 101%. (How one gets a percentage higher than 100 is a mystery to me.) In July of 2024, my capacity was 83%. This past December, after only four shots of Tezspire, my capacity was at 96%! Soon, the Tezspire will have me back at my former levels, and then I’ll be weaned off my puffers—if not completely, at least partially. But I will take Tezspire for the rest of my life.

And get this: Dr. Dorscheid’s asthma clinic has 650 patients on Tezspire. We 650 people take a minimum of 1 shot per month. Some take two shots, but if we just assume all 650 take one shot, that’s yields a total of 7,800 doses of Tezspire per year for Dr. D’s patients. Each shot costs $4,500, and 7,800 shots each ar $4,500 means AstraZeneca is making $35 million every year just from one doctor’s patients!

After chatting with Dr. D., I Zoomed with Aidan. We talk every Wednesday at 14:00, and he had lots of good news about incoming grants. SPACE, well Aidan, is on a roll. He is a powerful grant writer, and he is passionate about his work. I asked him about his future, and he told me he wants to work for SPACE his entire working life.

After my call with Aidan, I went shopping so that I could try making the sauce again, and last night was the usual.

This morning, I’d finished making the second batch of sauce for tonight’s dinner by 6:30. I have a busy day ahead of me, cleaning up, doing more cooking, and setting the table. Now that I have a tolerable sauce, I feel much more relaxed about tonight.

It rained last night, and it’s still raining, but it’s light rain. Sheba knows. She’s been up for two hours and has not asked to go out. I imagine that she knows the sound of rain. We’ll hope for breaks in the weather to walk today. There is naught but rain in the forecast for the coming week, but it’s also going to be a very mild week.