MyTurn/YourTurn: What happens to a day deferred?

MyTurn: Life can be chugging right along full speed ahead, but then suddenly you find yourself at a complete and sudden stop. Nothing slams on the brakes quite so well as unexpected illness. This happened in our family late Thursday and early Friday when my wife went from thinking that she had a “stomach bug” to worrying that she was experiencing appendicitis. While our two little ones slept, we went from confirming her symptoms with some research online to trying to arrange for child care for the day. Once we got our kids taken care of and I arranged lesson plans for a substitute teacher, we were off to the emergency room.

It’s amazing how your knowledge and awareness of the outside world just sort of stops when things like that happen.  Occasionally, I would glance at my watch and think about what I’d be doing on a “normal” day.  There’s nothing normal about helping your wife change into an emergency room hospital gown.  All that velcro and the weird ties that don’t seem to match up in the proper places.  Bless her heart, any slight movement she made resulted in a velcro “ripping” sound and that thing sort of falling off.  It was like she was doing some sort of ER strip tease.

Soon enough, a surgery was scheduled for her appendix to come out.  Sitting in the surgery waiting room, I wanted to feel a bonded with my fellow man as we all sat there united in our worry and concern for our loved ones.  Instead it was like being confined to some sort of existential prison. I found myself annoyed at their piercing ringtone volumes, banal conversations,  and even one guy’s snoring.

I was paused. I was stuck.  I was frozen there in that room waiting for an answer. Meanwhile, someone was at school going through my daily routine.  They were seeing all the kids I usually see, hearing all the dismissal bells that I usually hear, eating lunch in the short amount of time that I usually eat lunch.  Any time I’d think about that, it all seemed very insignificant compared to my concern for my wife.  My concern, in turn, seemed sort of trivial when compared to the family whose loved one was in their seventh hour of surgery.

In the end, everything was fine for us.  After an overnight stay in the hospital, my wife is home now.  Our kids will return tomorrow and I’ll go back to work on Monday, starting another week of “ordinary” time.  Until something extraordinary happens.

YourTurn:  Describe a time when your normal routine was unexpectedly put on hold. What happened and how did you react?

What is MyTurn/YourTurn?

Photo courtesy of Celine on Flickr