Easy for Peter’s surgeon to say he wanted to see him six weeks after the operation to repair his broken femur. Not so easy to make it happen. Just getting Peter from our apartment to our car was a major challenge. So I called in the co-captain of my get-well team, Peter’s cousin Andy, for moral support and to shepherd Peter if we couldn’t find parking.

Two hours before we planned to leave, I called the doctor’s office for advice about how to get wheelchair-bound Peter to his appointment. Much to my chagrin, I heard a recorded message: “You have reached…our office is closed.” Not possible I thought. I’ve got Andy lined up, we are psyched to go and I’ve got the day of our appointment wrong? Peter assured me that the office had confirmed the appointment. Stressful? You bet.

I called back an hour later and got a human voice who told me that the office hadn’t been closed. It had been “closed for lunch”. They had a new automated phone system that should have said “for lunch” but didn’t.

The good news is that with Andy’s help, we got there, parked, and got Peter to the doctor’s office on the  sixteenth floor. The better news is that his surgeon was pleased with Peter’s healing.

Six weeks from now, we do it again.