M-A-Y-O

Every year the Mayo Clinic treats approximately 400 people who have Achalasia.

In 2015, I'll be one of them.

In early December, barring any crazy last-minute life changes, I'll get off the plane from a week-long business trip in Boston (where I will gluttonously consume oysters and lobster with wild abandon and also hang out with other really cool credit union party people)  and drive to Rochester, MN with my mom to go through a series of Upper GI tests, meetings with doctors, and get an overall better idea of what this condition is that exists within me. We'll determine if I should have another surgery; if I should just have a dilation; and/or what my next steps are in management.

Part of me is completely comfortable with what's going to happen. I know the tests they'll run. I'll hate them, but I know them. I'll probably cry. I'll probably drop the F-bomb on multiple occasions. I'll once again get really comfortable with hospital gowns. Hospital gowns are something that you can't really think too much about because if you do, you might prefer to just be naked.

Another part of me, the nerdy side, is stoked to science. What they find inside my body can be used towards research to help someone else with Achalasia. It can help me. I've pretty much decided that if this is the hand of cards I've been dealt, I'm going to play them for the win. In my eyes, the win is knowing someone else can be helped because of me.

There's a huge part of me that's thankful. Thankful that there is a place that exists closer to where I live now than where I lived 11 years ago at first diagnosis that specializes in the uniqueness that is my esophagus.


Then there's the fear of not knowing what's next or what they'll find. I like to think that my fear is the smallest part of me on this journey, but it isn't. I deal with the fear in big waves of self-pity once in a blue moon. I process, I cry, I get angry at the world, then I come to my senses and realize just how fortunate I am.

Now it's onto getting medical records sent to Mayo which is proving to be a stressful adventure in navigating every doctor's office interpretation of HIPPA. That's its own blog post!