I Scheduled All My Appointments (and Then Cancelled All My Appointments)

This week I did something I'd been meaning to do for months: I sat down, opened my calendar, and scheduled everything — the annual GYN visit, thyroid bloodwork, the follow-up I'd been quietly avoiding. It felt genuinely good, like the responsible adult version of a gold star.

And then my kid got the stomach bug.

Which triggered the kind of scheduling jenga that only working moms truly understand: the one where pulling out a single block brings the whole week down with it. The GYN had to go because someone had to stay home with a sick seven-year-old, and that someone was me. The bloodwork required fasting, which required planning, which required a version of my week that simply did not exist. And somewhere in the chaos, my pharmacy filled a prescription I actually needed with the wrong dosage, which — truly, a nice touch.

This is the administrative tax nobody mentions when they say "prioritize your health," as if the hardest part is deciding to do it. A 2024 Deloitte survey found that half of women skip or delay medical care in a given year, and are 35% more likely to do so than men... which tracks. We're not skipping it because we don't care; we're skipping it because we're the ones holding the bowl.

I did make it to therapy, though, and given the week I just described, that felt like exactly the right appointment to keep.