Day two of pain rehab. Still Keeping it Together While Falling Apart.

After thirty-four surgeries, I’ve developed certain expectations of medical buildings. You walk in, someone finds a part that isn’t working, and you leave a little lighter. Mayo Clinic’s Pain Rehabilitation Center is a different animal entirely: sixteen appointments, and the plan is to take nothing out and put nothing in. Except maybe information and good vibes. Radical stuff.

Day one was mostly me unloading six decades of medical history onto the staff — who are wonderful, by the way, and who wrote it all down without once visibly flinching. That alone tells you they’ve seen things.

The program is teaching me to manage a nervous system that’s been stuck on high alert for years. There’s homework. There are worksheets. After 32 years of assigning homework, I can now report the view from the other side of the desk: the teachers were right, and it is for your own good, and I still don’t want to do it.

Here’s the part I love: every evening, I’m writing the book’s final chapter — from inside the final chapter. The capstone of Keeping It Together While Falling Apart is happening in real time, in Rochester, with worksheets.

And the GoFundMe is live. It launched Monday, the same day I walked into Mayo, and it funds the professional edit, cover design, and everything else this manuscript needs before it reaches readers:

https://gofund.me/5fe89f6d7

Donating helps. Sharing helps just as much. And I’ll keep the dispatches coming — fourteen appointments to go.

Thanks for tuning in.

Terry