Update on our Editor-in-Chief, Part II: The Empire Strikes Back

As of September 29, David Swindle is once again in the hospital.

Hello to our Substack and God of the Desert communities! David, our Editor-in-Chief and my fiancé, wanted you all to know that he is back in the hospital this weekend. He is experiencing a flare-up of the same condition that laid him especially low earlier this month, and it was determined that it was best to get him into the same facility where he stayed two weeks ago. He was admitted late on Thursday night.

We were very fortunate to have had much more control over the process this time. Still, even the best-intentioned healthcare is imperfect. Not every protocol makes perfect sense. Not every patient is treated with nuance, grace, and understanding. Not every staff member has given their entire being over to healing and light - after all, we're all only human!

This being so, the hospital is, unsurprisingly, not his favorite place to be. However, I am immensely grateful for the care David is receiving: he's being looked after and being helped. He is very eager to get back to work, and right now, we are cautiously expecting him home after a couple more days of observation. I'm trusting that the God of the Desert, who is also the God of the lakes and the cities and the mountains and the car dealerships and the bowling alleys and, yes, the hospitals, has placed Dave where he needs to be.

I should tell you, David wants me to shout from the tops of the Little San Bernardino Mountains that this is the reality of PTSD. He wants me to underscore the pain that this insufficiently-understood condition can cause both to sufferers and their loved ones. He wants me to use this episode as a platform to bring attention to the problems inherent in our healthcare system, especially when it comes to psychiatric conditions.

And I get that. I have a perfectly average, garden-variety case of major depressive disorder, myself. David's not wrong about the frustrating truth of who these conditions affect, and the ways that sufferers do and don't receive help. The struggle ends in tragedy for families across the world, every single day. I hope that PTSD in particular will, in the future, be the subject of study that leads to real change. Selfishly, I hope that future comes soon enough to affect me and my family.

But! As a relentlessly positive person - surprise, we can develop depression, too! - I am inclined to find the beauty that this episode brings to my attention. There is beauty in my love for David and my confidence in his healing. There's beauty in the strength of our family and friends as we come together to wish him well.

And I'd like to think that there's also beauty in what we're trying to build here. So much of our content has related to the major themes in our lives right now, but while I'm DJing, I'll be trying to find other things for us to talk about. Help me out! Leave me a comment, or a well wish for my dear Chief, and you can be sure I'll pass them along.

Be gentle with yourselves,

Sally Shideler

Managing Editor, God of the Desert Books

Chief Editor-in-Chief Wrangler