DAY 1: PILGRIMAGE TO SANTA ROSA

March 10, 2022 ~ Thursday

Days of preparation and a travel time of 14 hours. Exhausting, but let’s start with 12:30 am Eastern time on March 10, 2022. I went to sleep to wake up at 2:45 am.

My aim was to leave with a clean and tidy kitchen so Wayne could function while I was gone. He already takes care of his own breakfast of Familia Swiss Muesli Cereal (no added sugar) and a Chobani Greek Yogurt. He takes care of his own lunch. Either a peanut butter sandwich or pizza from the local one stop market. Usually the latter. For dinner I fix him an egg muffin and he dishes out his own ice cream. It is easy to satisfy his dietary needs! While I am gone, my guess is that he and the Basset Hounds will get more pizza ….

A pilgrimage is “any long journey, especially one undertaken as a quest or for a votive [desired] purpose.” Yup, that is exactly I am doing. My desired purpose it so do a 21-28 day medically supervise water only fast. My goal is to come out the other side sans the diabetic and high blood pressure medications and adopt a whole new lifestyle that includes a new way of eating. And the True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, CA, will help me to do exactly that!

My daughter, Danielle, traveled with me and she was basically the travel agent. She planned all the connections and I followed in her footsteps so I would not miss any of those connections. Travel was more onerous that I had anticipated not just for me but also for her. By the end of it we were utterly exhausted.

The travel connections going from the East Coast to the West Coast involve some serious time zone math. One of the hardest math equations in the world to master! You do not realize it until you have to work with a spinning planet and a plane which goes against that spinning. The itinerary went something like this:

EASTERN TIME ZONE: Left home at 3:15 am. The United Airlines plane took off from the Burlington, Vermont airport at 6:30 am. Flight time: 2 hours 11 minutes.

FLY OVER: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana.

CENTRAL TIME ZONE: Plane landed at 7:30 am in Chicago, Illinois. A rush to the next gate where that United Airlines plane took off at 8:30 am. Flight time: 4 hours 50 minutes.

FLY OVER: Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada.

PACIFIC TIME ZONE: Plane landed at 11:30 am. Caught the 12:30 pm Airport Express bus headed to Santa Rosa, California. Arrived at 2:30 pm. Order an Uber to drive us to the center. Arrived at 3pm.

We were ready to crawl into a bed and go to sleep but the day did not end there. The experience of the True North Health Center was just beginning and that journey begins with “intake” where I filled out paper work, answer questions, read and signed: the HIPPA Notice of Privacy Practices; Informed Consent for Chiropractic Treatment; Informed Consent; and Independent Practice Description and Policies for Anthony Streutker, MD, the doctor who will supervise my fasting.

Next, we got name tags, codes for getting in and out of the building, the all important Wi-Fi password and a tour of the facility. We saw the 24r hour buffet and dining area. The library and DVD collection. The court yard, main lobby and offices. Outside the main building there is a research center, doctor offices, massage and yoga building, and a small outside gym.

One of the key features of the fasting process is rest. So house keeping does all the laundry, cleaning, room care like extra blankets, pillows, and anything else we might need along those lines. The room is white, plain, clean and comfortable. There is a small safe for valuables and a sleep number bed. The phone in the room is a fully function phone with three special buttons for the front desk, housekeeping, and an emergency line that goes directly to the doctor.

Now we are not only exhausted but also overwhelmed with the rapid fire of information we had just been given. Luckily most of it is also in written form we we can read it later. So we had dinner, met one of our suite-mates, Karen, and crashed into bed. There was just one more thing ….. as I was about to fall asleep, my doctor called to let me know he was excited to meet me the next day at 9:00 am! How cool is that?