February:  Detection, diagnoses and enabling decisions

Something's wrong, somewhere. But you don’t really want to believe it. Because that would mean something you don’t really want to face. So, you try and find reasons, excuses, make allowances. But still, you see a doctor...

At least in our experience with Georgia, the decision to see a doctor was a given.

Sort of.

Georgia began to get frustrated with her current doctor at the local hospital, and started talking a lot about her former doctor, who was located in the city (Boston). After going 'round and 'round with her about going in to see her doctor, and even putting in calls to her doctor and the doctor's on-call backup (neither of which was returned), I did some digging and found Georgia's old doc was still practicing, part-time, at the hospital in Boston. We made an appointment, and Georgia was tickled that he remembered her and wanted to see her. (Tickled enough that she didn't get too upset that we made the appointment without involving her.)

That's right around the time that she made her first plummet and hit her first plateau. (At least, made a noticeable decline and hit a noticeable plateau – there were likely many minor ones that we'd missed along the way, before the various issues became blatant and unmistakable.)