2026: The Year of Maintenance, A Medical Rest Stop

2026: The Year of Maintenance, A Medical Rest Stop

By: By a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

Dear Henry,

The new year is going to be a medical rest stop. Not a collapse, but a long season of repairs. My hip has been slow to recover, and the old accident continues to bark through new aches and pains. Once again, the dental situation has erupted into something resembling a construction project. And now there is a new medical term on the chart: Graves’ disease, which may have been a hidden cofactor in the recent cascade.

It would be easy to call this aging or falling apart and retreat to the sofa, but I’m choosing another word: maintenance. Our lives are measured in miles, and I have traveled quite far. You don’t sell a car because it needs new tires; you replace the tires and keep going.

Some of this rest stop will necessarily be spent in medical facilities, an experience best described as a blend of bureaucracy, bright lights, and people who want to solve everything by handing you a prescription printout. We’ve built a culture that asks doctors to fix problems born from sitting, scrolling, eating poorly, and not sleeping, and then we act shocked when they can’t. The system is strained on both sides, and I don’t pretend to have a clean solution.

Of course, a medical rest stop also stirs old terrain. Medical rooms are not neutral for me; they are bright, chemical, noisy spaces that smell and sound like the worst nights of my life. And while I may appear calm, my cardiovascular system often responds like a deer that just heard gunfire.

I have found myself infuriated by how little room the system makes for sensory trauma. We designed hospitals that overwhelm every sense, then blame patients when their nervous systems revolt.

All things considered, I am healthy. Mentally sound. Capable. Possibly the sanest person in any waiting room I sit in. I know movement matters. I know water and sleep matter. I know trauma isn’t theatrical, it’s cellular. And I am willing to do the tedious, unglamorous work that half the country avoids.

So this year will not be about decline.

It will be about rest and rebuilding.

And about refusing to let anyone rush this rest stop along. 

I am entitled to be treated as the person I am.

Yours, unbowed,

a.d. elliott

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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