Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com

Hello, friends.

August. By the end of this month, back to the Day Job. The depression already lurks. Ah, well, I’ll always have my stories. That sounds like something my grandmother would’ve said, but she’d be referring to General Hospital, All My Children, and Santa Barbara and not tales of her own devising.

Anyway, I’m happy to announce that I’ve been invited to take part in the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival! It’ll be happening on October 17^th, 2026, at the Lawrence Public Library in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I’m excited because so many authors, editors, and people I admire will be there, as well as a few friends. Find out more here!

Welcome to the 184^th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and how health insurance companies can go fuck themselves. If you’re a reader who subscribes via Substack, my website, or Patreon, your encouragement helps motivate me. I’m not breaking any records but I’m thankful to have any audience.

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The Monster in the Closet is out now! Order it here!

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You could also read the first draft of Four Moons on Patreon. It’s a werewolf story and I think it’s fun. It is a first draft, though. If you’re interested, Patrons at the $5 tier and above have access but there is also a way to buy into the whole book for $13.99. You don’t have to be a long-term Patron for that second option.

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Editing continues on Four Moons, though not as much this week as in past weeks. It was a particular busy week getting ready for G’s surgery. She had an osteochondroma, a noncancerous bone tumor, on the back of her ankle that’s been bothering her since around Christmastime. She had surgery to have it removed this past Friday. She’s doing well but in the lead-up, I didn’t always have the time to edit.

I did make the time to work on Project: Memoir, though, adding about 5,000 words and bringing the total to 22,600 words. Things got a little emotional this week as I wrote about my older brothers from my father’s first marriage abandoning the family.

Last week, I mentioned that I post this newsletter to Substack, my website, and Patreon. It doesn’t really take me a long time to do the posting once the newsletter is written but I have to wonder if it’d be easier for you, the readers, if it was all in one place.

A few things about Project: Nightmares came to me this week and I took more notes and did more research. Driving for nearly four hours to and from the hospital from G’s surgery also allowed me to think a bunch about it. I’m about ready to jump in.

At odd moments, I’ve picked up the printed version of Project: Amusement Park that I made for Pamela to read and am, once again, surprised by how much I like this novel. That said, I found some mistakes in the first few pages that I’m embarrassed about. Especially since I sent queries to agents with those mistakes! Ugh. No matter how many times you go through, you still miss things. I guess that means another draft will be done. Which is fine, because I realized a small change I could make that can change how the book reads for the better.

I definitely have my work cut out for me in the near future.

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I’ve never written about it but I’ve never really kept it a secret, either. I’ve been taking Zepbound, a GLP-1 injectable, since June 2025. Part of it was for weight loss. I had gained a large amount of weight and it was beginning to affect me negatively. My mother had the same struggles. That was one reason, but not the only reason. The other reason was because of my Crohn’s disease.

It worked better for my Crohn’s disease than my Crohn’s medication worked.

And now Blue Cross Blue Shield is no longer covering it at all.

Within two weeks, my stomach began to notice.

It was my gastroenterologist who first recommended GLP-1s to me. He’d seen me gaining more and more weight the last five or so years but also knew that despite doing well on the massively expensive Stelara (which I just remembered I need to refill for this month!) that a combination of the insurance and other plans help with, which I wrote about here, he’d been reading about the positive side effects that some of the GLP-1s, especially Zepbound, had for patients with Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease, and had personally seen some of these positive side effects for some of his patients.

It took a few months of trying alternatives through the weight loss clinic until we decided to go to Zepbound. I wasn’t sure I wanted it but I thought the help to lose weight could be good and if it could maybe help my Crohn’s, even better.

I had no idea what would happen.

Yes, I lost weight. In about a year, I lost 30 pounds, which is good. Even better? For the first time since my pre-adolescence, I didn’t have stomach issues.

Crohn’s disease is a stomach disease in which there’s a hardening of the intestine which makes it difficult to absorb nutrients. With the “control” of my Stelara, I was still going to the bathroom between three to six times a day, often more, almost never less. It didn’t matter what I ate. As a matter of fact, sometimes the healthiest foods affected it worse than garbage food. Not to get too gross, but my stools were always wet, diarrhea or close to it.

With Zepbound, not only was my stomach feeling better but I was experiencing solid stools for the first time in decades. I would go one to three times a day, and usually on the lower end. Because my body wasn’t getting rid of the food as quickly, I was absorbing more of the nutrients.

Sure, I lost 30 pounds and stopped being pre-diabetic. Yes it helped my sleep apnea. Yes I felt better most of the time and slept better. As far as I’m concerned, though, those aren’t as important as the way it helped the Crohn’s Disease.

As the year past, my gastroenterologist said there was more and more evidence that some of the GLP-1s were just helping Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis but in some cases reversing it.

I’d suffered from Crohn’s disease for almost a decade before I was diagnosed at 23, and the way I was diagnosed was that my intestines ruptured and almost killed me. The symptoms that I’d had were ignored by a doctor and nearly killed me. Since 2000, I’ve managed the Crohn’s disease with various medications at various times. Stelara seemed to work best and even that had many limits. Zepbound, working with Stelara, really changed my life.

But all good things must come to an end, as the saying goes, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, a “not-for-profit” organization they like to remind the subscribers, decided to stop covering Zepbound and other GLP-1s with no exceptions.

My doctors tried. They showed all the benefits the medication had given me that included the Crohn’s disease as well as weight-loss-related benefits. Blue Cross said, “Nope.”

In a time when so much is going bad so quickly, this small thing really affects me. I cannot afford the price of Zepbound without insurance. As much as I’d like to be able to pay for it out of pocket, it’s just too much.

We all know that the health insurance companies are benefitting from us more than they’re helping. As long as the Dump Truck Regime stays in power, the fleecing will continue and worsen. We know they don’t care about anyone but themselves, but with each passing day I wait for more people to be pissed off about it to actually do something about it.

In the meantime, I’ll be returning to the bathroom more often, feeling less good, and will likely begin gaining the weight back even though I’ll try like hell not to. Again, I don’t particularly care about the weight loss, but I do care about not having to run to the bathroom and be in constant fear of waiting too long and shitting my pants or being caught off guard by diarrhea with the same result.

So, Blue Cross Blue Shield: Get stuffed. May you and your decision makers all get the lives you deserve.

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That’s this week’s newsletter. Thank you so much for subscribing, reading, and for your support. Be safe out there, friends.

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