December 12, 2025
Friday

If you follow me on this Holidailes posting blitz, you might remember that yesterday I teased readers with a promise to continue exploring the “useless objects” I discovered in a list from a 2009 Holidailes piece. If this is the first time you’ve stumbled in here, you might go read that for some context, or not.

I did hint at this yesterday. “It [December 11] would turn out to be a day of sharp back pain after a period of quiet and a day of miscommunication with a health care provider . . .  and anxiety about this that and nearly everything,” Now I’m ready to label it. It was a panic attack. I had a panic attack.

It happened as I got into my car to drive about 3 miles from a bookstore (where I’d spent $85 on stuff I didn’t really need, except maybe the December 2025 issue of Poetry, which cost only $6.95). I was on my way to a previously scheduled appointment with my primary care provider, a Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner I’ve been seeing for more than ten years. (Note that this classification of nursing personnel is among those the current US administration has deemed no longer a profession. But I digress.) The basic reason for the session was to assess my progress on the litany of woes that bedevil my hormone system: high cholesterol, high sugar levels leading to Type II diabetes, depression and anxiety meds, thyroid function meds. In addition, though, I wanted to talk to her about how best to revamp the ways I handle the mobility challenges I face, the brain fog, the added stress of grief.

So as I got into the car and reached to pull on my seat belt, a sharp pain tore like a bullet through my back, I felt like I was no longer in my body, and the seat belt seemed like a tourniquet. In short, I lost track of myself. I cried out (no one could hear me) and remained emotionally paralyzed for a good ten minutes. In my car, taking up a handicap parking space someone else might have needed, weeping as the temperature in the cabin continued to drop.

When I arrived at the medical office, I was refused service because I was late, and told I would have to reschedule. For May. I broke down. I cried, to no avail. (Understand that while the medical care being provided by my traditional practitioners remains top-notch, the administrative system that has gobbled them up appears to have no soul, only policies. An aide taking my history once told me to talk faster because I was wasting appointment time.)

Mostly, this was my fault. I had binged on sugar over two days of holiday gatherings, though I know how detrimental that is. It was a cascading stream of poor choices that took over my body and brain so that those entities had to do what was necessary to save my life — stop me in my tracks, send me home to rehydrate and lie quietly. It has helped.

Today I saw the episode of Friends in which Phoebe, Monica, and Rachel grovel in the weariness of what they see as their failure to achieve anything. “I don’t have a plan!” Rachel exclaims. To which Phoebe responds, “I don’t even have a pl.”

I do. I have a pl. In fact, that may become a permanent category. My Pl. It starts now.

See you tomorrow. You, my readers, are part of the pl.

Thank you.