As careful readers may have noticed, I have been feeling bad al summer- a sort of car-sick feeing that won’t go away. I was concerned enough about it that I actually figured out my health care arrangements, now that I am a Medicare enrollee.

I made the requisite appointments, was told by one specialist that he could rule out anything minor (“Nice bedside manner, Doc!) and sent me on to the Neurologist, a cheerful blonde woman whose training had been in Moscow. The appointment happened last week, and the miracles of modern medicine combined to give her the change to review the MRI scan of what is lodged in my head between my ears.

I was pretty knocked out that she could access the scan on her lap-top across town from the Virginia Hospital Center where the images resided. I had been in enough presence of mind to bring my latest blood work, and the Doc checked that and the can, did some minor palpitations of my extremities, and made the pronouncement that I had not suffered:

A. Stroke, micro or macro.
B. The onset of Multiple Sclerosis; or,
C. Parkinson’s Disease.

She did sign me up to at least nine sessions of Physical Therapy to see if they can shake loose whatever is stuck in my brain, so it was not unalloyed joy. She out me on another medication- the third, so far- but I felt like an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

Several pals have had run-ins with the health care system of late, and I don’t blame myself for feeling relieved. I still don’t know what it is, but it is very nice to know several things that whatever it is, it is not.

Anyway, there was a reunion of some shipmates happening out in Berea, Kentucky, home of the Historic Boone Tavern Hotel. I had regretfully cancelled my participation on the grounds that I didn’t think the eight-hour drive each way was something I could handle. Buoyed with the idea that I currently have no debilitating illness that the Doc can identify, I called my pal and told him if he would pick me up at the farm, I would be delighted to ride out and keep him company.

If I am going to be feeling mildly car-sick, I figured I may as well do it in the car, right?

It was a rollicking drive across the Shenandoah and the Great Smokies, and we yacked like magpies about our time in the Fleet for most of the 16 hours we were in his Explorer headed west and then again east. If you happen to be in Berea, Kentucky, I can enthusiastically endorse the Boone Tavern Hotel, a thoroughly old-school sort of institution with strange creakings-and-bumpings in the night, a charming décor and real keys, which I have not seen in ages, and a bright staff drawn from the ranks of the students next door at the college.

The place started as the guest-house for Berea College, an institution of higher learning with a distinguished history. It had been founded by Abolitionists in 1855 as a one-room schoolhouse for a mixed-race student body composed of white and black students. Ardent pro-slavery elements in the town forced the school out of the area in 1859, two years before the nation was split asunder. The school returned after the War Between the States. And apparently that is not over, either. We saw at least three enormous Rebel battleflags waving from tall poles in western Virginia and Tennessee.

They have been there ever since. It is very much worth a visit, but try to get here before eight-thirty in the evening, though. That is when the kitchen shuts down, and the bar as well. But a gem of a place, seriously, with very mice and friendly people.

The drive and the conversations were a blast, even if I didn’t feel anything like 100%.

Physical Therapy starts tomorrow. We will see how that goes.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com