I know that when I get a call from an unfamiliar phone number with a Florida area code, the news is not likely going to be good.

The news delivered when I answered was that my mother was in the hospital, taken there by ambulance the previous day (or night, the caller wasn’t sure). Mom had not been feeling well for over a month, complaining of abdominal pain that got worse when she ate, so bad in fact that she stopped eating solid foods altogether. Rounds of tests revealed nothing, and she continued to be told by her doctors (primary, gastroenterologist) that there was nothing wrong and she should just try to eat. She was living on Ensure (my recommendation when I found out she wasn’t eating at all). My mom isn’t someone who is willingly going to go to the hospital, so the pain must have been really, really bad.

Everything comes to a screeching halt at that point. I was on my way in to work, which didn’t seem to matter now that I had to figure out how I was going to get down to Florida. Oh, and that was the week of yet-another-snowstorm, which was descending upon the Boston area that evening; there was no way I was going to get a flight out that day. Or night. Or the next day. Or the day after. It was four days after I received the news that I was finally able to get down there.

During a crisis I apparently go into “do mode”, planning and executing as my brain floods with information. Fly down; rent car; where is the house key? Pack bag: warm-weather clothes, bring a sweater, one pair of shoes should be enough, you’re not going anywhere fancy, just to and from a hospital for hopefully not very long. The plan was to be there about a week, assuming Mom would be discharged soon after I got down there, and I could get her settled in back home before I headed back. I could work remotely for the few days that overlapped. I had a plan, and it was all going to be okay.

I had a plan, that much was true. But as they say, and then the plan met the enemy…