{"id":6296,"date":"2025-12-12T22:34:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T03:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=6296"},"modified":"2025-12-12T22:34:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T03:34:25","slug":"change-of-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=6296","title":{"rendered":"Change of Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

December 12, 2025<\/strong>
\nFriday<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you follow me on this Holidailes posting blitz, you might remember that yesterday<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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 . . .\u00a0 and anxiety about this that and nearly everything,” Now I’m ready to label it. It was a panic attack<\/a>. I had a panic attack.<\/p>\n

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<\/em><\/a>, 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<\/a> 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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Today I saw the episode of Friends<\/em> 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<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

I do. I have a pl<\/em>. In fact, that may become a permanent category. My Pl<\/em>. It starts now.<\/p>\n

See you tomorrow. You, my readers, are part of the pl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidailies-2025"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6298,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions\/6298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}