I Drove All the Way Here for This!

That’s what I told the endocrinologist yesterday when he said, “We’ll run a few tests the next time you’re in the area.” Dude! Dude. My husband and I cancelled all our summer plans and rearranged our lives to come here for this. For you! To Houston in the summer! Can’t you do them sooner?”

To catch you up, we arrived on Monday at the Escapees campground, which is as close to a home base as we get, seeing as how we belong to the Escapees program for its mail service. If you’ve ever received mail from me with a return address of Livingston, Texas, that’d be here.

It’s a huge RV park, not exactly resort-style, but we found a spot that suits our needs and we booked for a month. Our needs being full hook-ups, in the shade of a couple of large trees, and situated so Tracy can aim the Starlink receiver to an effective spot in the sky.

I like it because there are very few bozos like us here in this heat. Literally, there’s no one on either side of us or behind us. Not that I’m spending much time outside, with a real-feel of 108.

I know, cut to the chase about the doctor already. I’ll get there, but it’s a frustrating story and I have to work my way up to it.

So far here in Livingston, Tracy’s outfitted the trailer so as to stay as cool inside as he can swing it, with reflective, insulated paper taped ever-so-glamorously inside all the windows.

The resulting vibe is so much stranger than either of us anticipated. It feels like we’re in a tiny submarine way in the depths of the ocean. You can’t open the shades to look outside; you can’t open the ceiling vents or run the ceiling fans; there’s zero connection with the outside world at all. An ostrich could run by and we’d miss it. Which, you know, GAH. It certainly isn’t what Airstreams are designed for, I can tell you that.

What we’ll do inside for a month, I have no idea. Which leads me to yesterday’s big day of doctors’ appointments, which was a mixed up, muddled up, shook-up world of a day.

Totally good news: my orthopedist who did the ACL surgery says my knee is in good shape. The cadaver ACL (by now, my ACL) is fine, and I probably just pulled my quads the time I fell on my butt in Virginia and sprained my MCL the time I fell on my face in Louisiana. Both are healing on their own. The continued swelling at this stage (6 months post-surgery) isn’t unheard of, but if I can’t find an underlying cause with the other doctor, come back.

Drum roll, please, for the other doctor. That visit did not go well, and, now that I get to it, I don’t want to talk about it. Bottom line is I’m having a bunch of labs done on Friday morning, and if they’re negative, I’m going to my PCP next week to start from scratch. At least that’s what my several-page mindmap I drew up in the middle of the night points me to. There’s also a bubble on that map that says, “INSANE HYPOCHONDRIAC,” but my separate, insomnia-fueled yes/no decision tree doesn’t point to that, yet.

To keep myself from tilting the scales toward the insane end, I’ve taken up the idea of using this blog as fodder for a book. I’ve resisted that notion because I can guess how much work you have to do to prep a manuscript, find an agent, yadda yadda, or more so if you self-publish. I hate that kind of work; I used to do it for a living and am done. But damned if I really need some kind of intellectual endeavor right now, especially something I can do in the Deep Dark Night while Tracy sleeps. So, for right now at least, I’m writing a book.

My very first research step was to learn the Number One Rule to writing any kind of memoir-style/personal narrative piece of non-fiction, which is DO NOT RECYCLE YOUR BLOG. Well, poop.

Once I thought more about that strategy, I could see its pitfalls, which led me to a better plan. I started thinking about my blog as research notes for a book, and that’s when book ideas came out of my fingers faster than I could arrange them into an outline. Apparently, I’ve been thinking this way all along—somewhere in the back of my INSANE HYPOCHONDRIAC head—and all I needed to let it loose was to give myself permission.

According to my use of all caps here, I’m still stressed out from that doctor’s appointment, so I’m going to apply myself to a little book writing to escape from my own head. If I can pull that off, I’m saner than my decision-tree indicates.