So yesterday was my day of hapless mess-ups and feeling bad about how disorganized I feel. Right after I posted, “Chaos“, I had more. I realized that I’d forgotten about another patient appointment that I’d neglected to cancel for my sick day. Luckily, I realized this fact 45 minutes before the actual appointment time. I jumped into the car wearing jeans and no make up and got to the appointment about 30 minutes early to regroup. At least I had showered that day and was wearing clean clothes, which had not been true the prior two days since I was convalescing with my cold.
Do you know how I forgot these two appointments? Remember when I went all Golem after losing my my schedule for a single day because my smartphone got wet? But in that day, I scheduled several appointments, which I had to record elsewhere while my phone was drying out on its little bed of rice. When my phone came back to life, I know I went through my notes to make sure that all of the new appointments were recorded on my now alive phone. Since checking this again, I discovered that I did update my schedule correctly every day between 1/14 and 3/11 (the date of my surgery) except for one date. Yes, that date would be 1/14, the day I tried to take off as a sick day.
I’ve decided that all cancer patients deserve a personal assistant to help them maintain their schedules, especially if they are the schedule keepers at home and at work.
As you know, I was pretty bummed and overwhelmed yesterday. But I rallied. Tomorrow is another day. This morning, two families showed up to see me at 9:30 am! My schedule indicated that one family had arrived 24 hours early for their appointment. I felt terrible. I figured it was my fault since I have been so discombobulated. I apologized. Fortunately, the mom knows about my health status so she didn’t yell at me or anything. I was very apologetic. They are coming back tomorrow.
I knew that the appointment had been scheduled by email. I wanted to see if I had made the error, in which case I would discount my fees for this family.
To my astonishment, I saw that I had sent not one but two emails saying that the appointment was for tomorrow and I also confirmed that this was the date the mom had requested for the appointment.
Phew! It is a little lame to be so happy about this. But I will take whatever slice of sanity I can get.
My Eyes Are Up Here 
Yea! Things are looking up…way up.
Thanks, Mom!
My clients email me, text, and FB message me, so I have gotten into the habit of keeping all messages until the date of the appointment has happened. This has saved my bacon a number of times, so it sounds like you’re more on top of things than your realize. But it’s always hard to tell the other people, “Nope, this one’s on you.” Sorry you had to deal with this, but I know your patients (& their parents) appreciate all you do for them.
Don’t be so hard on yourself Elizabeth, juggling everything without cancer and all it entails is hard enough these days. When you layer over the cancer chaos its not surprising things might go a little wayward now and then. The important thing is you’re still in control and you’re still on top of all this in spite of smart phone malfunction and families who arrive on the wrong day. Sanity isn’t something that’s escaped you even if it might feel that way sometimes.
Thanks!
Well said, Tracy.