so much for your plans…

My goal is to write two blogs every Friday: one for my medical website, and one for this website. Originally this was really easy, because I didn’t see patients on Fridays… so I’d wake up late, go to Barnes and Noble, and write my medical article with plenty of time afterwards to do business accounting and that sort of thing. Then I started getting busier, so I began to see patients for half the day on Fridays, and write my medical article the second half of the day. Then I also started writing these kind of general “life” blogs on Fridays. Now I’m lucky if I get done before dinner, but I still always get it all done. I don’t think I’ve missed a weekly medical blog since January 2012. I’m dedicated, what can I say. 

Then last week happened. It went something like this. 

Last Monday I went straight from work to a funeral — my close friends’ son tragically died of a drug overdose. As I was leaving to go to the meal afterwards, I got a text message from my mom, saying that she was in so much pain she couldn’t stand up. This was especially alarming coming from her, because my mom isn’t a complainer (at all). When I arrived, I did a quick abdominal exam, suspected appendicitis, and took her to the emergency room. 

We were in the waiting room for FOUR HOURS. (What in the world?!) While we waited, I treated her for the pain homeopathically, and my wonderful boyfriend brought her a pack of ice and some blankets for some makeshift hydrotherapy. Between doses, I responded to emails until like midnight (many of which said things along the lines of “I NEED YOU TO RESPOND TO THIS RIGHT NOW, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! WHY HAVEN’T YOU WRITTEN ME BACK YET?!” Love emails like that.) 

Around 3 am, we finally got the CT scans we needed, confirming the need for an appendectomy, and I emailed my brother in Philly to let him know what was happening. A sweet nurse saw me trying to stretch out on two plastic chairs and felt sorry for me, so he brought me a recliner at around 4.

My mom went into surgery that morning. Once my office opened, I had my office manager clear my schedule for the day. My amazing brother made plans to fly out that evening into Phoenix around midnight and drive to Tucson the following morning. 

The next day, my brother went to the hospital and I went to work. After work, my friend from England (whom I haven’t seen in eight years) flew in to Tucson. We were supposed to drive to San Diego together the next morning. Only…  my mom just got out of surgery, and her AC system busted, and I was selling my car and needed to get a bunch of recalls done on it first… and oh yeah, I signed a lease for a new office, and I needed to coordinate all the construction and get the networking systems set up (phone, fax, computer, printer, internet, all that). My brother is a technological genius, so had to take advantage of the fact that he was in town for all of that. 

So there was my dear British friend in the midst of all of this, hanging out with us under a fan because there was no AC (or “air con,” as she called it), waiting around in Tucson for an extra day because I couldn’t go with her, and she otherwise wouldn’t have seen me at all. So instead of driving to San Diego, I hosted an impromptu taco night in which my brother, my British friend, my boyfriend, and my former college roommate discussed movies and watched ridiculous YouTube videos. Meanwhile, my poor mom recuperated in the back bedroom and periodically shuffled around the hallway. (She’s such a trooper.) 

All that to say… I didn’t write blogs last week. For the first time in almost three years. …Oh well. 🙂