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The longer my mystery disease remains a mystery, the more annoying and intrusive the tests become as we keep trying to figure out what’s wrong. I’ll be out all day today for yet another one. I should be back Tuesday, but if not, I’ll be back on Wednesday for sure.

LATE AFTERNOON UPDATE: Well, everything went fine. Today’s festivities involved running a catheter up one of my veins into my heart to check out the pressure in various chambers. It turns out that my pressure is A-OK.

So we’re back where we started. After an astonishing battery of tests, we’ve concluded that my lung volume is excellent; I don’t suffer from asthma; I’m inhaling plenty of oxygen; exhaling plenty of CO2; my blood is fully oxygenated; I have no blood clots; no interstitial damage; and no apparent inflammation; there are no holes in my heart; nor any shunts; my ejection volume is terrific; and my arteries—much to my surprise—appear to be as wide open as the Amazon river.

In other words, I’m getting loads of oxygen, and my heart is distributing it properly to the rest of my body. I am the picture of cardiopulmonary health.

Except that I have a hard time breathing.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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