Thankful Thursday*

I answered my cell phone the other day and was surprised to hear my father's voice. 

It's not that I didn't know who was calling before I answered the phone -- the display clearly said "Mom & Dad" -- it's just that my father almost never calls me.  Sometimes he will drive my mom to the grocery store or the mall and sit in the truck and wait for her while she shops.  If he doesn't take the opportunity to catch a few winks, he might call me.  Of course that's assuming that my mom didn't take the cell phone into the store with her.

When my dad does call me, I have to fight back the tendency to jump to conclusions, ie. "why are you calling me; what's wrong; who died?"  I do have some history to support my anticipation of bad news, so I guess maybe my irrational thoughts aren't too out of line.

Anyway, thankfully, this time my father was not calling to give me bad news.  However, he also was not calling just because he missed me and wanted to catch up on what was going on with me and his grandkids.

No, my father had an agenda.  He was calling to keep me accountable.

Once I had seen the surgeon about having my gall bladder removed, I told my parents all about my trip to the emergency room and my doctor's appointment.  I decided that there was no need to tell them anything until I was sure I was going to have the surgery.  And then there was the added wrinkle and complication of needing to find a primary care physician to check me out before surgery -- as if the surgeon didn't remember any of the general medicine that he learned in medical school.  Arrrgh!  I had a hard enough time calling and making the appointment with the surgeon that the ER doctor referred me to.  Now I had to decide on a primary care doctor and schedule an appointment with him or her.

My typical response to situations I would prefer to not deal with is to ignore them and hope that they'll go away.  I didn't realize my dad was on to my tactics, but he was, and he was calling to see if I had found a primary care physician.

I am thankful that my dad loves me enough to keep me accountable.  He could have told my mom to call me.  He could have decided that by age 52 I'm old enough to take care of myself and follow through on what I know that I need to do.  But he didn't delegate and he didn't assume.  Instead he took the initiative to call and ask if I had found a doctor -- and when I said I hadn't, he strongly encouraged me to stop wasting time and make a decision.

I made an appointment with my new primary care physician the next day.
             

*Due to the incompetence of Blogger, Thankful Thursday is appearing this week on . . . Friday.  : /   I don't know what the issues were, but I hope that they get things fixed.  I really do expect more from Google.