WHEN MURPHY HITS HARDER
Two weeks ago, Murphy hit me with the double punch of losing a nanny and infesting the house with caterpillars. The update on that story is that our home has moths from all the caterpillars we did not get out in time. That was the hardest I've been hit up until last week, when Murphy came in guns blazing.
The week started great with an impromptu trip up to the mountains to go wedding venue shopping with my parents, sister, and future brother-in-law. Generally speaking, if my husband is away, I am looking for any opportunity to travel as well. It makes the countdown go much faster. My son and I drive up to the mountains on Monday and spend all day Tuesday venue shopping (I think we've found the place). Tuesday night, we got a text from my nana that my grandpa was going into the hospital with a low pulse and a heart block.
This was obviously concerning. It was worrying enough that my dad immediately left the next morning to go to the hospital. We decided to finish our venue shopping on Wednesday before heading to the hospital since there wasn't any news yet, and my sister's wedding was four months away, so she really needed a venue. Things went from not great to truly terrible on Wednesday. We really thought that Grandpa wasn't going to make it.
After a restless night, Grandpa headed into surgery, and my dad told me to go back home. I was still five hours from home and needed to be back on Friday since my husband was coming home for the weekend with a friend we hadn't seen in almost a year. Grandpa was already in surgery when I got to the hospital Thursday morning, and the reality was that the earliest they would consider waking him up would be late that evening. I didn't want to leave, but it was the right call.
I got about two hours down the road before I needed to pull off for gas. While I was stopped in the left turn lane, a car slammed into the back of mine. This led to hours of dealing with police statements, EMS (since my toddler was in the backseat), a significant wait at the ER, and a lot of tears. After four hours of waiting in the emergency room, I decided to leave. We knew it would still be hours before we could see anyone and my son was acting like his usual self. Plus, it is tough to corral a toddler in an emergency room, especially when I didn't want him getting near anyone who was sick. I was still in pain, but I decided to deal with it the following day, especially since being in pain after getting rear-ended wasn't necessarily a cause for concern.
I made it back home and went to the ER the following morning since my back was still hurting. Fun fact: at least in Georgia, with Tricare (although it sounded like it was true across the board), you cannot go to urgent care and use health insurance for an injury related to a car accident. You must either go to an emergency room or use health/injury coverage on car insurance to pay for it. Luckily, I got taken back pretty quickly on Friday, and while my injuries seem muscular in nature, they ordered an X-ray to be sure. Well, I nearly passed out during the X-ray process, which led to a whole battery of tests, including a CT scan, EKG, and lots of blood work. Thankfully, everything came back normal, and I was sent home.
That was one hell of a week. And it probably tops the list as one of the worst weeks in my life. This has by far been the hardest TDY that I've gone through during my five years as a military spouse (and it's still not over). Because of last week, my blog posts did not go up. My series on maintaining our motivations and discipline did not make the website, and I failed to practice the very principles that I am trying to teach.
Missing my posts last week absolutely makes sense. I was not in the right headspace to do my writing. I almost lost my grandpa on Wednesday when that post was due, and I was reeling from the effects of a car accident on Friday. It's ok that I missed last week, but that also doesn't mean it was the only outcome. If I had stayed on top of my workload by having a week or so of additional posts done in advance, maintaining my commitment to my blog and my dreams would not have been an issue.
I put myself in a situation where life could catch me off guard, and I wasn't prepared to react. Life is always going to happen. Murphy's law seems to attack the hardest when our spouses are gone, but life happens regardless. We've had car accidents before. We've had sick family members, and we've lost family members before. Life is hard, and it throws difficult things at us. We will never be prepared for everything, but there are often things that we can do to be more ready for the punches that come our way. Using my time to better prepare for the days when emergencies will come is just one of the things that I can start working on today.