The Start of a New Journey

So, here’s the deal. The medical issues I keep indirectly referring to are consuming my time and attention. I don’t know how serious they are exactly, because I’m in the middle of an absurdly frustrating runaround involving three hard-to-contact medical offices. And it’s Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend.

What I Know

I had an MRI while at Watkins Glen, New York, and I’m waiting for those results. I’ve also gotten a call back from a potential new endocrinologist in Richmond, but dammed if I missed it because I was in the bathroom at one the many breweries we’ve been visiting to help distract from all this uncertainty. So, I still don’t know anything about our travel plans.

I do know that:

A) If there is nothing showing on the MRI (I had my pituitary scanned), then I have a long path ahead to find out what exactly is keeping my body from making crucial hormones.

B) If there is something there, I have a long path ahead to diagnose it and to deal with it and its cause and effects.

Either way, I have a medical journey to take.

Blogging About It

As I’ve been breaking this news to friends bit by bit, I’ve learned amazingly helpful info. Plus, the feeling of sharing intimate details has been important to me. That’s how I process info: talk about it, listen to others, write about it.

I don’t know if I’ll regret my decision to blog about this, but already I’ve had some funny healthcare moments that I thought would translate here. For example, have you ever ridden a freight elevator to your MRI machine? Story coming.

GDTRx

I came up with the idea of a special tag for these posts about medical issues during a typical warm and funny text exchange with Shana and Marcus. A few moments:

See how friends make everything better?

(In case you didn’t follow that, Marcus suggested GDTRx, Shana typed out how to pronounce it, we all laughed because she sounded like a pirate, and thus a name is born.)

🏴‍☠️ GDTRx 🦜

Here’s another name idea. You know I borrowed my blog’s name from the traditional song:

Going Down the Road Feeling Bad

When the Grateful Dead played it and fans wrote it on bootleg tapes, they’d write GDTRFB, which is why I’ve got this adhesive on the back of the Airstream.

I could use the spin-off:

Going Down the Road Feeling Better 

Which I admit is still a mouthful.

But, heck, better and bad are two sides of the same coin, and I expect to feel both for quite a while to come. GDTRFB does apply in all situations.

I love texting with Shana and Marcus though, and that reminds me how important staying connected to friends is, especially during times like this, so I’m going with GDTRx. Let this be the start of a new journey.