Snow and Cancelled Appointments

Chances are if you are living in the northeast and had a doctor’s appointment today, you were out of luck and it was cancelled. This is exactly what happened to me. I kept holding on hope that the blizzard wouldn’t be that severe or that by some miracle it would still happen. Unfortunately the call came early in the morning that all outpatient appointments were cancelled. Now if my appointment was about a cold or a minor issue or likely any other followup I have ever had, I would have been slightly annoyed but moved right on along. Recently I have been struggling a lot with the lack of control I have due to gastroparesis and my lovely bunch of conditions. Which is true of chronic illness in general, you can plan all you want but we all know our bodies do what they want, flare when they want, and live a life not restrained by rules. It can be hard to deal with at times and feel like your illnesses are winning and that you have no control. I was beyond exciting that I had control of one tiny thing: the timing of the wean off pantoprazole. Granted it had to be within a certain time frame of starting and ultimately my GI decides how that is going down. But I know my body and what it needs. From what I saw the first few days in each step of the taper process are the worst. As a result I thought I was winning at life when I realized if I made the appointment for the start of spring break I would have a good 5 days to adjust. The next step in tapering would start the day after an exam giving me the least stressful part of the unit to adjust again. But that would be too amazing. So of course the blizzard hits the day of this appointment, not the day after or before but the day of. I was beyond upset because as we know with specialists, the wait is usually at least 2 weeks. For someone who has been dealing with side effects daily, I was using March 14th as a finish line to help me push past the pain. So remember it isn’t always overreacting over an appointment. These appointments with specialists are things we have waited months for and may now have to wait a few more weeks for. If you are in the same situation know you can do it and the next one will come soon!