Treadmill of Appointments
Bill Murray and his Groundhog Day movie captures the monotony of life with an illness that does not resolved. There is a repetition of medical appointments, the rhythm of scheduling, waiting rooms, intake forms, vitals, lab slips, follow ups, and the hope that this time something will be different, better, or there is some clarity for a prognosis and treatment plan. The calendar fills not with vacations or celebrations but with consultations and procedures, and life begins to organize itself around blood pressure readings and MyChart. Even when we have the opportunity for a vacation, it is the sunnier version of the same song beneath our skin. I have personally taken multiple vacations while ill and there is a cruel detachment from reality when this occurs, a visual tease of reality that I struggle to feel emotionally. There is a fatigue that comes from telling your story again and again, summarizing years of symptoms into a few efficient sentences while trying not to lose the existential weight of what it has cost you. And what is that cost, why it’s just your story, your hopes, and your dreams, at least the old ones. Over time the appointments can start to feel like a second job, one you never applied for, yet you keep showing up because showing up is an act of survival and stubborn faith. It is buying the medical lotto ticket for each copay, yet the outcome is far to similar to everyone else playing the lotto. And somewhere in the repetition there is also a resilience forming, a capacity to endure uncertainty, to advocate for your own body, and to keep building a life in the spaces between one appointment and the next. The previous sentence was easy to type, yet it can take years to live, as we transform through the transitional state of healthy, to ill, and ill with a meaning and identity we believe in. There is no fairy godmother in this story, at least not yet, but there is a narrator, which is you, crafting a story to enduring the repetition illness will being to our front door.
Dr. Jeffrey Bone