My Day Was Terrible. Until It Wasn’t.

I started my Wednesday with a visit to the dentist. I like the dentist. I take very good care of my teeth, and I am going on vacation next week so it seemed like a great plan to have freshly cleaned and polished choppers to look good in all of my Instagram photos. Right? Seemed like a good idea at the time.

That wasn’t the only reason to plan an appointment for that morning, though.

I scheduled a 9AM at the dentist because I had a 1PM at the Johns Hopkins diagnostic breast imaging. People only get sent there if there is actually something to ‘diagnose.’ If there’s nothing diagnosable, you go instead to the office where they do ‘screening.’ Seems like a minor distinction in branding, but it’s not.

In 2018, I was living in Pittsburgh instead of where I live now, which is Baltimore, and I went to Magee Women’s Hospital for my routine mammogram. That test was scheduled for 1PM as well, but instead of a morning dental visit, I just went to work that day, then went to lunch and to the mammography office nested inside the women’s hospital.

It was the Friday of Labor Day Weekend, which I remember primarily because at the time I thought how fortunate I was that I would have a quick scan of thirty minutes or so and not go back to the office but instead start my long weekend. At the time, I was a high-performing…