A woman I had been nodding at for almost a year at my mother's assisted living facility sat down at my table in the family lounge last November.
She said: I can't do another Sunday in this room by myself. Is it alright if I sit at your table?
I said yes.
Two hours later, when she stood up to leave, she had said one sentence to me that has been with me every day since.
I am writing this letter because I had been carrying two people quietly for almost two years before that Sunday.
My eighty-four-year-old father, in his memory care room thirty-five minutes from my house.
And my sixty-three-year-old husband, in our living room.
That woman gave me back one of them.
My name is Diane.
I live outside Columbus.
My husband, Tom, worked in commercial insurance for thirty-three years.
We have been married thirty-one years.
We have two daughters, both grown, both within an hour of us.
My father, Walter, fell in his bathroom almost two years ago.
He has been at Maple Crest since then.
I visit on Sundays. Sometimes Thursdays.
He remembers some things and not others.
He is still my father, and the gap between mostly and entirely is the gap I have been quietly sitting with.
My husband, Tom, is sixty-three.
He is not on any prescription medications.
His doctor, Dr. Patel, had mentioned at his last three physicals that his liver enzymes had crept up a little each time.
Not alarming. Just creeping.
Dr. Patel had said they'd keep an eye on it, that it was probably the wine with dinner and the takeout on busy weeks catching up with him, and that he wanted to see him try cutting back before they talked about anything else.
That was the clinical version.
The version I lived with looked like this.
It looked like Tom's woodshop in the garage, untouched since spring, sawdust still sitting on the bench.
It looked like Tom in his recliner at four in the afternoon, asleep with the news on, in a way he had never been a man who napped.
It looked like our after-dinner walk, a mile around the block for fourteen years, shrinking to half a block and then the driveway and then nothing at all.
It looked like the dull way he'd press his side after a big dinner and call it nothing.
I had been telling myself it was his age.
I had been telling myself it was stress at work before he scaled back his hours.
I had been telling myself a lot of things.
That Sunday in November, I was in the family lounge at Maple Crest, waiting on a nurse to tell me when I could see my father, three coffees in, not in a good way.
A woman I'd seen in the hallway for a year sat down at the table beside mine.
She put her face in her hands for a second. Then she looked up.
I can't do another Sunday by myself in this room. Is it alright if I sit at your table?
I said yes.
Her name was Marlene. She went by Marlene.
She'd been visiting her mother at Maple Crest for two years. I told her about my father.
We sat there almost two hours.
I won't give you the whole conversation. It's the conversation two women in their late fifties have when they've both been quietly doing the same thing alone for too long.
About an hour in, she mentioned her husband, Walt, almost offhand.
She said: I'm tired in a way that worries me, because Walt is tired the same way. He's sixty-six. He's been slowing down for two years, and I can't afford to slow down at the same time, because there's nobody else for either of these people we're both caring for.
I told her about Tom. The woodshop. The recliner. The walk shrinking to nothing.
She listened. She nodded. Then she said something I've thought about every day since.
About eighteen months ago, I added one small thing to Walt's mornings. I read for almost a month before I added it. I called his doctor and his pharmacist before I added it. I want to be careful with you about what I say next, because Walt is one man, and you're looking at one man, and bodies are different.
But Walt has been more himself this past year and a half than he was the year before that.
She paused.
I didn't change anything else. I added one small thing to a long list of things he was already doing. I kept everything else exactly the same. I wouldn't want you to think I'm telling you a fireworks story. I'm telling you what happened in our house, alongside everything else.
I asked what she'd added.
She said it was a liposomal glutathione, a liquid you take in the morning. She said the brand was Qurella. She said she'd picked it after reading for weeks about why most glutathione supplements don't actually do anything, because regular capsules get broken down by stomach acid before they ever reach the bloodstream, and this one was wrapped in a way that protected it through digestion instead.
She said it the way a woman who's been carrying a load alone tells another woman who's been carrying a load alone what she's been doing.
She wasn't selling me anything. She was just telling me.
The nurse came about twenty minutes later. I went and sat with my father for an hour. I drove home thinking about Marlene the entire way, and most of that week, too.
I started reading.
I am, by temperament, a careful person. I don't add things to my body or my husband's without understanding them first.
I read about glutathione, the antioxidant the liver depends on most to process everything that runs through it, the wine, the takeout, the medications, the ordinary noise of being alive for sixty-some years.
I read about why most of it never makes it past the stomach in capsule form, and about the liposomal version Marlene mentioned, where the glutathione is wrapped in a layer that survives digestion intact.
I noticed the language being used by the careful corner of this conversation, the part not making outlandish promises.
Supports the body's natural detoxification.
Supports healthy liver function.
Supports the body's antioxidant defenses.
Not cures. Not reverses. Not replaces anything Dr. Patel might eventually want Tom on.
That was the right shape. That was the language I'd been hoping to find.
Before I added anything to what Tom was already doing, I called our pharmacist. I've used the same one for almost fifteen years. I told her Tom takes nothing but a multivitamin. She confirmed there was nothing to be concerned about at the dosage on the label, and told me to call back the moment Dr. Patel ever started him on anything, because that conversation would be different.
I called Dr. Patel's office too. The nurse called back the next day and said he thought it was a sensible thing to add, antioxidant support, nothing to interact with, and to mention it at Tom's next visit.
I want to say this plainly to anyone reading this letter. If your husband, your wife, your parent, or you yourself are on any prescription medication, please make that call before adding anything new. I would have called twice as fast if Tom had been on something already. So should you. The people who know the chart can tell you in two minutes whether something is safe to add. Those two minutes matter more than anything else in this letter.
That night I told Tom about Marlene, about the reading, about the calls I'd made. I told him I wanted him to try it, for me.
He looked at the bottle. He looked at me. Thirty-one years. He knows when I'm asking for something that matters.
Dr. Patel's office was alright with it?
They said it was sensible.
Alright. For you.
I put his drops next to his coffee every morning after that. He took them without much fuss.
The first two weeks, nothing in particular. I'd read enough to know bodies are different, that some people notice something in a week or two and some take much longer and some don't notice much at all. I was prepared for any of it.
What I noticed, I noticed slowly.
Around week five, on a Saturday, I heard the table saw running in the garage. He'd gone out to the woodshop without a word and stayed two hours. He came in for lunch with sawdust on his shirt and asked what we were having.
Around week nine, he was already on the sidewalk in his walking shoes when I came out the back door. Let's do the whole loop tonight, he said. We did. He didn't stop once.
About four months in, he asked if he could come with me to see my father on a Sunday. He hadn't come in over a year. He sat with my father for an hour, told him a story about our older daughter he hadn't heard, and my father, who forgets most things now, held Tom's hand at the end and called him by name.
I want to be careful with what I'm telling you. I'm not saying Qurella did any of that on its own. Tom had cut back on the wine that same stretch. He'd started sleeping better once the napping eased. There were several things shifting at once, the way there are when a person finally has someone helping carry the load. All I'm telling you is that he added one small thing to a list of things he was newly doing, and a stretch of months followed that looked nothing like the year before it. That's the honest version. I wouldn't give you a cleaner one.
Tom saw Dr. Patel about seven months after he started. He came home and told me Dr. Patel seemed pleased with how things were trending, and wanted to see him again in six months instead of three. He didn't bring up anything further. He hasn't brought it up in two visits now.
Marlene and I still see each other most Sundays at Maple Crest. We have coffee for fifteen minutes before we each go in. Tom has come with me five of the last eight Sundays. Twice he sat with Marlene's husband, Walt, in the lounge while she and I finished talking.
Two men who, two years ago, wouldn't have made that drive on a Sunday.
If you've been carrying a quiet question for a while about whether there's one small thing that might support what's already working in someone's body, here's what I'd say.
I don't know you, or your husband, or his bloodwork, or what his doctor has told him. Bodies are different. Some people notice something in a week or two. Some take longer. Some don't notice much at all. That's the honest version, and anyone offering you a cleaner one is selling you harder than I am.
Please call his pharmacist or his doctor before you add anything, especially if he's on any medication at all. That call is non-negotiable, and it takes less time than reading this letter has.
I'm leaving the link below if you want to read more about what Marlene told me. No pressure, no pitch. Just something I wish someone had told me before that Sunday in November.
https://tryqurella.com/products/qurella%E2%84%A2-liposomal-glutathione-drops
P.S. — The liposomal part matters more than people realize. Regular glutathione gets broken apart by stomach acid before it reaches the bloodstream. The liposomal layer protects it through digestion so more of it actually gets where it needs to go. That's the whole difference, and it's the reason Marlene chose it over the capsules she'd tried before.
P.P.S. — A few drops in the morning with his coffee. That's the whole routine. No powder, no second dose to remember. Tom keeps the bottle on the counter next to the coffee maker. I make the coffee. That's been the rhythm of our mornings for almost a year.
P.P.P.S. — I'll say it once more because I have to. Call his pharmacist or his doctor's office before adding anything new, especially if he's on a prescription. They have the whole picture in front of them. I have only written you a letter, and there's a difference.
P.P.P.P.S. — What Marlene said to me at that small table, that she couldn't afford to slow down at the same time Walt was, because there was no one else for either of them, is the sentence I keep coming back to. I'd been thinking those exact words about my own life for almost two years and had never once said them out loud. If you're carrying two people quietly the way I was, you're not imagining how heavy it's gotten. I hope you find your own Marlene. I hope, if you already have one, you let yourself sit down at her table.
— D.
