Have you ever felt lucky?

Like any parent, I feel like I am constantly busy — going from one thing to the next all-day everyday. Imagine my surprise when I was sitting in my kids dentist office stressing about getting my oldest to school on time, when a text came across my phone. It was from a close family member who simply said, “I’m in the hospital. I’m okay. I’ve had a mild heart attack. The cellphone reception here stinks or I would have called.” I re-read the text one more time. Here I am stressing about getting my son to school and someone I dearly love had a heart attack. My stress moved from being concerned about getting my son to school and moved to checking on my family member. I tried calling, but as they told me the reception wasn’t great and I went to voicemail. I tried another member of the family and got up to speed on the situation from them. Everything was okay for the moment and there was nothing I could do to help. I switched back to stressing about getting my son to school. Later in the day, I reveled at my ability to compartmentalize the days stresses and get through it.

Later, when I finally was able to reach my family member, we discussed how she was doing, how things happened, who was with her, did she want me to come to her and I really wanted to hear ‘everything’s going to be okay.’ I couldn’t imagine losing this person at this point in my life. I’m not sure we’re ever prepared to lose a loved one. She was very lucky to be near an urgent care center who saw her and quickly guided her to a nearby hospital who admitted her. She was lucky to have friends nearby who could be there with her and help her. They ran numerous tests and couldn’t determine what triggered the event, she stopped showing symptoms and was eventually released. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky.

I struggled with what to tell my kids about the situation. It was serious and I thought they were old enough to handle it, but I also didn’t want them to worry. Thankfully I was able to share the news with them and reassure them that everything was going to be ‘okay’ or as okay as it can be. We were lucky what happened wasn’t more serious. They took it better than I thought. They were concerned, but once they saw I was okay about it (I’ll admit I was trying to come across as cool as a cucumber even though I wasn’t), they were okay about it as well.

Have you experienced a health scare in your family you feel lucky to have gotten through?