The Road Goes On Forever

Yeah. It does.

No finish line. No triumphant final chapter. Just the same cracked asphalt stretching out ahead, narrowing into a thin gray thread until it disappears somewhere over the horizon—probably right around the bend where they keep all the answers, the closure, and the affordable health insurance.

Last week I officially entered the sacred phase of the anti-charlie campaign:

Wait. Look. See.

The medical world calls it “monitoring.”
I call it state-sponsored psychological torture.

We’re on the sacred 90-day cycle now:

Labs. Scan. Evaluate. Report. Repeat.

Like a deranged subscription service nobody asked for. Netflix at least has the decency to cancel shows before you get emotionally invested. This one just keeps renewing itself automatically.  And I think I know how this is going to play out.

First comes the scan.
Then comes A few days of dread—that exquisite limbo where your brain becomes a 24-hour doom factory, churning out worst-case scenarios with the enthusiasm of a caffeinated intern.

Then the results drop, and you get one of two outcomes:

1. “Nothing to see here, move along.”

2. “Oh shit… more tests. STAT.”

Both are terrible, just in different flavors.

Option One sounds good on paper, but it’s really just the universe saying, “Congratulations. You get to restart the waiting game.”
Like surviving a car wreck only to realize you’re still stuck in traffic.

Option Two at least has the decency to be honest. It’s panic with a purpose. It’s the hospital equivalent of, “Alright boys, load the rifles—we’re going back in.”

And honestly? Sometimes I wonder if that’s better.

Because “move along” isn’t peace. It’s not relief. It’s just a temporary ceasefire while you sit in the trench counting days like cigarettes.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a high-definition prostate MRI scheduled for March—because apparently the universe looked at my medical chart and said, “You know what this guy needs? A whole new subplot.”

The oncologist has pretty much dismissed the old “prostitute gland” as being involved.

Which is comforting.  In the same way it would be comforting if a man on a sinking ship said, “Relax, I’m pretty sure the iceberg wasn’t that bad.”

I wish I had his confidence. Truly. Must be nice to walk around with that kind of optimism, like a golden retriever in a lab coat.

Either way, one or the other has the capability to put a big red stamp on my life in the next few days.

So until then, I roam around here at the forest compound like some half-feral groundskeeper in exile. I take care of business, sure—but only the bare minimum. The essentials. The survival chores.

Because starting a long-term project right now feels like planting a garden on the deck of the Titanic.

Why build anything when you’re not sure if the next scan is going to come back with:

“Good news!”   or    “We’re gonna need to borrow you again for additional suffering.”

So I drift.  A man on a long road with no visible end, watching the horizon like it owes me money.

And it does.

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