I am kinda proud of myself. On Sunday I learned that my sister was taken to hospital with pneumonia, so I wanted to go visit her ASAP. Problem is: it's a 6 hour/550 km drive in total, and the furthest I had been by car since 2010 was about 50km.

Lots of stress before taking off, not sure if it would work, making contingency plans for when it would become unbearable. Anxiety stepped in. Felt cramps as soon as I took off. Bugger, having to feel this for 6 hours more is going to be torture.

But as is so often the case, anticipated pain is 100 times worse than actual pain. After 30 minutes or so, I felt I was actually OK. I also felt - weird - that I deserved to be capable of doing this, of responding to an emergency. From that point on it actually went smoothly, despite torrential rain and some snow. I mentally changed the travel into a trip, rather than a chore/torture. Feet stopped feeling like they were poured in concrete. They "shut up", and I reached my destination without any hiccups or discomfort.

Spent 3 hours in the hospital, sister is through the worst and is on the mend already, and drove back without any pain at all. I guess I'll never understand the mind tricks PN can play, and how I can influence that.

All this happened on day 1412 - yesterday - and gave me confidence for the future.