If you’re going through hell, keep going. — Winston Churchill

It all started on a random Tuesday. It was a completely normal day. My husband, Andy, went to work that morning, dropped our 4 year old off at preschool. The big kids went to school. Nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary. We had been bickering a bit the past week or so, as normal married couples do, he probably loaded the dishwasher wrong again and I got all pissy (I cannot be the only one who demands the dishwasher be loaded in the most space-efficient and wash-efficient way possible!?) Either way, he got home from work that Tuesday evening on March 26, 2019 and told me he didn’t feel well and went immediately upstairs to bed. I was a bit thrown off when he said this since he was completely fine when he left for work, but, whatever. He was going to be sick.

A thing you need to know about me — I am not what you would call empathetic in certain situations. I have a TON of empathy for a lot of things, but for adults who “claim” their sick, nope. None. Put on your big boy pants, throw some pills down your throat, be an adult and move on. That’s my exact thought process when I hear the phrase “I’m sick” muttered from the mouth of an adult. I’m not entirely sure why I feel this way? Maybe its because I don’t really get the luxury of laying in bed being “sick” for a few days (which sounds like a vacation to me!) I have to get things done, like care for the kids and make them food, pick them up from school, take them to practices and games, and do baths and put them to bed. All things I don’t just get to opt-out of because I’m “sick.” So, boo-hoo, you’re sick. So what, suck it up buttercup and do your part.

So you can imagine how I felt when he stayed in bed for a full 36 hours. Didn’t get up to eat, didn’t get up to check his phone, maybe got up to pee, but I never witnessed that.

I had just been given a HUGE opportunity with my company, to be included in what they were terming our #1 Priority (P1) item for the next quarter. They wanted ME to be a part of a 3 person team to help lead the effort to define, solve for and implement the strategy to address our P1 item. I had been positioning myself over the course of the past 4 years with my company to be ready for this amazing leadership opportunity once it happened … and it was finally happening! I was AMAZINGLY excited! I had FINALLY been given a seat at the table and all I needed to do was to seize the moment! Why am I telling you this? Because, as luck would have it, our little P1 3-person team had decided to do an in-person workshop (we all work remotely from our home offices, so actually seeing my colleagues in-person was a pretty rare occurance) where we could more effectively strategize on how we were going to approach the problem. We decided on 2 workshop locations, one in St. Louis (my home base) and one in San Francisco (the home base of one of the team members.) The St. Louis workshop was to be held on March 28th and the San Francisco workshop was the following week.

March 28th, a Thursday. I was having the team over to my house for the workshop. I NEEDED this to be a success. I could NOT have my “sick” husband disrupt this opportunity for me, and I told him so. Since I had not actually seen him in any form of an awake state since that Tues evening when he came home from work, I sent him a text message:

Don’t forget, tomorrow is the day I have one of my company executives and another very high level coworker coming over to work on this Account Success planning project. This is extremely important to me that everything go smoothly tomorrow. So if for some reason you are still feeling sick, I need you to put on your big boy pants, take some meds and deal with it. Ok?? Love u!

That’s what I said. That’s exactly what I sent. Looking back, I’m an asshole. But how was I to know?

Thursday morning came, and my husband finally got out of bed. He was hunched over, I knew immediately that something wasn’t quite right. But he looked at me as he was rolling out of bed and said that he had promised to help that day, regardless of being sick, so he was making good on that promise. He took our 4 year old to preschool and when he came back home, he told me that he was going to urgent care because something wasn’t right. Again, I was a bit peeved that he was making such a big deal about what I thought to be nothing, and I was also peeved because we had HDP (high-deductible plan) insurance and we would have to pay out of pocket this entire episode he was having. But, ughhh. Fine. Go to urgent care.