A Different Kind of Nashville Blues: When Healthcare Calls You to the Music City
When Your Suitcase Tells a Different Story Than Vacation Dreams
I wrote this during a medical trip to Nashville in February, but it took me months to find the courage to share it. Now that I'm back in the city, it feels like the right time...
My suitcase knows the difference between fantasy and reality. If this were a vacation to Nashville, my packing list would read like a country music dream:
Favorite dark-wash jeans, ready for a night out
That soft cream sweater I've been saving for something special
New cowboy boots waiting for their first line dance on Broadway
Tickets to hear Jenn Bostic tucked in my purse
An Opryland Resort itinerary full of possibilities
Trolley tour tickets because I want to hear all the stories this city holds
A bottle of local wine and artisan chocolates because vacation means treating yourself
Let's be honest - those cowboy boots would've given me blisters anyway. At least my compression socks are broken in.
But this isn't a vacation. This is another medical trip in a long journey to name the disease that has hijacked my body. RSV may have forced a reschedule of surgeries, but the quest for answers and other assistance can't wait.
My actual packing list reads like a mobile medical unit, now with additional respiratory support:
CPAP machine in its padded case, along with all the necessary supplies
Nebulizer machine for when breathing needs extra help
TENS unit with extra electrode pads
Medical monitoring equipment: thermometer, pulse oximeter, each with backup batteries
A new addition of prescribed cough suppressants - a necessity after weeks of violent coughing from RSV
A supply of catheters because bodies don't take vacations from betrayal (although that would be a nice travel package - '7 Days of Normal Bladder Function, All-Inclusive!')
Three different pillows, each tagged for its specific pain-relief purpose
Medications sorted into morning, afternoon, and evening doses, with extras in case of delays
Alcohol pads, bandages, medical tape - a small pharmacy of necessities
Thermacare heat wraps for the car ride because hours of sitting demand preparation
Heating pad with the longest cord I could find
Ice bag that's seen more use than any piece of luggage
Travel foam roller because neuromuscular issues don't understand the concept of being away from home
Therapy journal, its pages heavy with the weight of unspoken fears and carefully documented symptoms
The comfortable clothes I pack aren't chosen for style:
Yoga pants with the softest waistband
Well-worn leggings that don't fight against swelling
Pajamas that feel like a gentle hug
This is Nashville through a different lens, viewed through the hazy window of chronic illness and systemic barriers.
Between appointments, I find myself in the Children's Hospital food court, where a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone serves as both lunch and comfort while I scroll through patient portal updates and emails about cancelled NIH webinars. The cheerful animal murals on the wall feel like they belong to a different reality than my medical charts and the growing list of unanswered questions about my condition.
This is how you navigate Nashville with chronic illness - measuring distances not in tourist attractions but in medical halls and survival algorithms. The Grilled Cheeserie, famous for their melted masterpieces, is a 3-minute drive from my specialist's office - a calculation I've made with precision. But chronic illness math is complex: that 3-minute drive equals 15 minutes with parking, plus 5 minutes to gather energy to walk inside, multiplied by the probability of nausea from morning medications, plus 60 minutes of a wildly elevated heart rate after I eat, divided by the likelihood of my afternoon appointment running late. I do this mathematics of survival daily: if the morning procedures run on schedule (they won't), if the medication doesn't make me too nauseous (it might), if my energy holds out and my heart rate is manageable (it's anybody's guess), if no more rare disease research gets frozen by political gridlock... maybe, just maybe, I can taste a slice of normal Nashville life between medical moments.
By the time evening arrives, these calculations and compromises have taken their toll. At night, while the city pulses with music and laughter, I sit cross-legged on my hotel bed, organizing tomorrow's clothes and medications. My journal lies open beside me, waiting for me to process the day's emotional landmines: the dismissive comment from a nurse who doesn't understand complex cases, the grief of another de-funded medical program, the constant calculations of how much to share with friends and family without overwhelming them. My therapist calls these feelings "perfectly normal responses to abnormal circumstances," but here in the quiet of a hotel room, normal feels like a foreign country.
Through my window, the Parthenon glows against the Tennessee sky, its columns illuminated like something from another world. I find myself wondering if the ancient Greeks had a goddess for medical travelers - someone to watch over those of us navigating the labyrinth of modern healthcare while trying to keep our spirits intact. My TENS unit buzzes quietly, electrodes placed carefully between ice packs and heat wraps, while I type out messages to my fellow chronic illness warriors: the only people who truly understand how it feels to be homesick for the healthy version of yourself.
Nashville is Music City, and although this isn’t a vacation for me, it is a symphony of medical machinery, a rhythm of appointments and adaptations, and a chorus of systemic challenges. My suitcase tells this story - not of escape or adventure, but of necessity and survival in a healthcare landscape that often feels like a maze with moving walls. There's no souvenir shop for what I'm collecting here: test results, treatment plans, small victories measured in response to medication, and the growing realization that advocacy and compassion are as crucial as medicine.
Sometimes, between the beeping of machines and the shuffle of medical papers, between journaling and system navigation, I catch a glimpse of that other Nashville, the one where people come to dream. It’s there in the way the morning light shines through the weeping willow tree in the park across from my hotel, in the distant strain of a street musician’s guitar while a budding songwriter pens the perfect chorus line, and in the simple pleasure of an ice cream cone between serious conversations. Different paths through the same city, each with its own kind of music-even if mine is accompanied by the persistent undertone of a system in need of healing itself.
I remind myself that managing to show up here with a suitcase full of medical supplies and a heart full of complicated emotions is its own kind of triumph. While guitar and banjo music drift up from the lobby below, I trace the daisy pattern on the quilt my best friend made me, feeling energized and hopeful by the bright-colored fabric. Each stitch is a whispered reminder that though this path is mine alone to walk, love travels with me. I do not shoulder the weight in solitude.
