Please note: This post reflects one person’s personal health experience and is not medical advice or personalized guidance. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider for your own health decisions.
It came to me during yin yoga — in the stillness, the way important things often do.
It was August of 2025. I was mid-session with Devi Daily Yoga, whose practice centers on long, still holds — poses you settle into and stay with, sometimes for several minutes at a time. Yin yoga asks you to slow down completely, to stretch and breathe and simply be present. In that stillness, with nowhere to be and nothing to do but breathe, a thought drifted in about a man I had never met, and a quiet sense that his story mattered.
He is connected to my family, so I reached out through my mom to ask if he and his wife would be willing to sit with me and share their experience. They said yes.
What I knew going in was small: he had been on the verge of retirement when life handed him something entirely different — a diagnosis that stopped everything and forced him to reimagine what came next. What I didn’t fully know yet was how much of their story was really about rural Maine healthcare access, and a system that doesn’t account for how far some people have to travel just to get answers.
This couple lives in rural Maine — and I know what that means. I’ve watched it up close. There’s a medical center in their town, which matters. But for anything specialized, the miles add up fast — and they add up in both directions. In this family’s case, a visit to the hematologist means at least 250 miles round trip. A consultation with a specialist in Boston is roughly 540 miles round trip. And appointments with their integrative medicine provider in Falmouth, Maine clock in at 320 miles round trip. These aren’t occasional inconveniences — they become the rhythm of your life when you’re managing something serious. Every appointment is a half-day or a full day, factoring in the drive, the wait, the appointment itself, and the drive home. In winter in Maine, that calculation gets harder and sometimes requires an overnight stay.
Their story touches on all of it: a diagnosis delivered in pieces, numbers no one thought to explain, a long drive toward Boston for answers, a brush with alternative medicine rooted in a family member’s experience on a battlefield far from home, and ultimately, the quiet recalibration of what daily life looks like when the future you planned is no longer the future you have.
One day he was planning his retirement. The next day he was forced into it.
It all started with a yearly exam and routine blood work. When the results came back, he was told his potassium was dangerously high. More tests followed, and they discovered that a lot more was going on.
His primary care doctor ran additional blood tests — ones that aren’t normally ordered — and found that his platelet count was extremely elevated. They were told the normal range is 150 to 450. His were at 770. The PCP scheduled him with a hematologist in Brewer, Maine, 250 miles round trip from home.
The specialist explained that a high platelet count can cause strokes or blood clots. The only medication available to bring the count down is Hydroxyurea, also known as Hydrea, which the doctor prescribed. He started taking it on May 1st. The doctor also ordered a bone marrow biopsy to get a clearer picture of what was happening.
When those results came in, he was referred to a cancer specialist in Boston — a 540-mile round trip. During that consultation, the specialist told him that in addition to the high platelets, he also carries chromosome 5 and TP53 mutations. He was instructed to stop taking Hydrea immediately — it could activate the TP53, which is associated with blood cancer — and that with chromosome 5, there is no cure for the type of blood cancer that could develop. His platelet count at that point was 772. The specialist said he wouldn’t be concerned until the count reached one million.
They left that appointment feeling relieved. They were only at 772 — one million felt like a long way off. They came home, carried on with their planned vacation, and just enjoyed life.
Then in January, another blood test. His wife had gone to church when their primary care doctor pulled her aside. She said she knew they had an appointment coming up the following week and didn’t want them to be blindsided — the numbers were up. His wife asked how high. She was told 992. His wife didn’t panic. She thought, that’s still far from one million. The doctor stopped her and said, “That is 992,000.”
Her heart dropped.
In the ten months they had been going through testing and appointments, not one doctor had ever told them that when they say 150, they mean 150,000. They were both shaken – and frustrated.
When they went to their appointment in Brewer that week, they told the specialist how upset they were. They explained that no one had ever clarified that blood counts are expressed in thousands, and that they couldn’t possibly be the only patients who had been kept in the dark. The specialist acknowledged it — yes, all blood counts are in the thousands — but that didn’t bring much comfort. How many other people are sitting in those same chairs, not knowing?
That week, they called their family together to explain what was really going on. His sister-in-law, who works in the medical field, was the one who put it plainly: with counts that high, he could clot or bleed out from an injury at work. It was the kind of clear-eyed perspective that could only come from someone who understood what the numbers actually meant. The next day, he gave his boss the news that he could no longer work. His boss was incredibly supportive. It wasn’t the retirement he had imagined — no timeline, no send-off on his own terms. It was a decision made not by choice, but by necessity, to keep himself safe.
When they began exploring alternatives to Hydroxyurea, the decision to try medical cannabis wasn’t made lightly — it was made from a place of personal witness. A family member who had been wounded in Iraq had found life-changing relief through medical marijuana, results that were hard to argue with. That experience gave them the courage to look into it seriously.
They turned to Dr. Dustin Sulak, D.O., of Integr8 Health in Falmouth, Maine — a 320-mile round trip from home. I’ll admit that when I heard his name, I lit up a little. I had photographed Dr. Sulak for his business portraits and product line, and knowing this couple had found their way to him felt like an unexpected and welcome connection. Dr. Sulak is an osteopathic physician, the founder of both Integr8 Health and Healer, and one of the leading voices in cannabinoid medicine in the country. He excels in treating patients whose conditions have not responded well through conventional medicine.
The treatment was working. His platelet numbers came down. But the side effects were taking their own toll — he was sleeping most of the day, unable to function at the capacity he was used to, with no quality of life to speak of. It was working on the numbers, but it wasn’t working for his life. So he made the decision to stop.
Once he stopped taking THC and CBD, his numbers began climbing again. His blood pressure went out of control, dizziness set in, and he simply didn’t feel right. When his count crossed one million, there was no longer a choice to make. He went back on the Hydrea and began testing every two weeks. His count came back down and at the time of meeting them was sitting at 513.
They don’t take life for granted anymore. They treasure each day and try to fill it with things they enjoy, rather than sitting around worrying.
What he most wants people to take away from all of this is simple: ask questions. Especially about your numbers. Be your own best advocate. Always bring someone with you to appointments — someone who can ask the questions you might forget and hear what you might miss. No question is a stupid question, because the answers can change everything about how you live and how you think.
He didn’t know that 150 meant 150,000. Now he does. And he wants to make sure you do too.
What stays with me after hearing their story. They had insurance and they have each other. They had a car and the means to make those drives — 242 miles to Brewer, 540 to Boston, 320 to Falmouth. No amount of advocating for yourself closes the gap if you can’t afford the gas, can’t miss work, or don’t have coverage that follows you across state lines. Their story is one of resilience, but it is also a reminder that access to care in this country is not equal — and that for every person who can make the drive, there are others who cannot.
This is not a problem unique to one family or one town. Ten out of Maine’s 24 rural hospitals are at risk of closing — 42 percent — with four listed at immediate risk of closure.
And yet, within all of that, there is gratitude. Having the means to access care, to make those drives, to have a sister-in-law in the medical field who cut through the uncertainty with clarity, and a primary care doctor who cared enough to seek his wife out and make sure they truly understood what those numbers meant — it didn’t make the diagnosis easier to live with. It didn’t return the retirement he had planned or erase the weight of what they now carry every day. But it gave them something not everyone gets: the full picture.
Information doesn’t remove what you are living with — but it changes how you live with it. It sharpens your awareness of what each day actually is. And for this couple, that awareness hasn’t translated into fear. It has translated into gratitude — a quiet, deliberate choice to recognize how lucky each ordinary day really is.
A note on process: I used AI as an editing partner on this piece — to help shape the language and structure. The story, the people, the photographs, and the reason this exists are entirely my own.
