Just your typical week in Minnesota...

Well friends, I’ve been here in my “home away from home” since Sunday night and you can all rest assured that I am up to my usual shenanigans.

Ya know, 5 appointments have turned into 12 and a blizzard showed up last night.

Typical.

Following an hour-long appointment with my internist and 2 rounds of blood work on Monday, I enjoyed a lovely little anesthesia-induced nap on Tuesday during my feeding tube change…which turned out to be fortuitous rest for Wednesday’s marathon.

I was supposed to just meet with the neurologist yesterday, but during the appointment he scheduled me for 3 additional appointments and 1 additional test. These all magically appeared on my schedule as occurring on December 24^th and January 4^th. Funny, because my tail feathers plan on being firmly planted on my outgoing jet this Saturday.

The Mayo Clinic has this fabulous system of being a “checker.” It’s basically the same thing as flying standby in an airport. You show up, beg your sob story, waggle your very best puppy dog eyes…and hope for the best. You stare into your tiny pink pager, willing it via telepathic communication to start buzzing and reveal that someone has mercifully canceled his/her appointment (or that the cookies you slid across the desk really did the trick…shhhh).

Yesterday, I managed to get into 2 appointments and 1 procedure that are supposed to be for next week. Score!

I met with the neurologist, swallowing specialist and speech pathologist, did a repeat swallowing study (they really need to invent barium holiday cookies) and got more blood drawn. Just another day on the red carpet?

I could bore you to tears with all of the minute details, but the outcome of all of the appointments was pretty much the same. Everyone sees what I am talking about in terms of decline of fine-motor control, speech distortion, inability to project my voice, sing or swallow solid food, and so on…but no one can figure out why.

To be honest, I really wasn’t at all surprised. The power of an out-of-control virus is an unknown entity and there may be many more unexplained symptoms in my future. My goal of this trip to Mayo is to figure out how to navigate moving forward. How do I know when to call the doctor or when to just know that the “viral carnage” has found a new location? I’m not interested in taking fistfuls of pills every day and strongly believe in the body’s ability to heal…I’m just looking for some guidance on how to facilitate that process. Besides the obvious increase in frozen yogurt consumption, because clearly that is the necessary elixir of life. Duh.

Side note: The frozen yogurt shop here has mint for the holidays. Best. Discovery. Ever.

My neurologist wants to run a few more tests over the next few days (and hopefully not  on January 4^th) and assuming those all come back negative, we will move forward. Today I will hang out in a tiny tube (MRI) for a few hours and fingers/toes/all body parts crossed, I will meet with the neuro-ophthalmologist before I leave on Saturday as well. Perhaps I need to start baking…who can resist warm cookies?

Fear not though, the excitement is not over. Tomorrow morning, I will meet with my immunologist…who gets the lucky job of figuring out why I still break out in hives and sneeze a minimum of 300 times daily.

Obvious answer? Forget more cowbell, we need more fro yo.