Seasonal Anxiety

I confess that I'm starting this month with a vague feeling of unease which, perhaps surprisingly, has nothing to do with the election just a week away.

I will be going to Duke Medical Center to have my pulmonary function tested once again on the 23rd. Those visits always set my stress level on high--the drive, will we get there on time, will we have to wait so long in one place that Awesome Greg will become irritated and have to be restrained? (It could happen.) And of course, the procedures themselves. Except for the inevitable flu shot, nothing should hurt; it's all just so uncomfortable. I think breathing is best done under your own direction, without someone forcing you to plug your nose with a plastic clip, keep your lips sealed around a plastic tube, and shouting at you to "Breathe in...hold it...hold it...hold it..." and, just as your lungs start to explode a little bit, "Blow it out...keep blowing....keep blowing...keep blowing...!"

But this year, adding to the normal anxiety I always feel in the weeks before these medical tete-a-tetes is the fact that all of this testing will be done the day before Thanksgiving. Something about accommodating my desire to see both teams--Pulmonary and Transplant--on the same day.

I feel like after four years, they should know me pretty well, but I guess they haven't witnessed me in action the day before a big event. Nothing is ever done ahead of time. I save it all for the eleventh hour. And now my eleventh hour is going to be spent traipsing from waiting room to waiting room 50 miles away from home! Oh, and not to mention the traffic everywhere the day before a major holiday!

Well, holidays always bring stress. But they also bring fun and gratitude and a deep sense of satisfaction at the end of the day. No matter how our Thanksgiving turns out--even if it's just takeout from whatever place we can find open--it will be the day after my pulmonary function tests. Here's hoping that, once again, I will be feeling thankful for a still too healthy for transplant proclamation. Fingers crossed!