Just in Time

It means one thing when you hear from a government procurement officer that “you made it just in time.”  Government RFPs have absolute hard and fast deadlines or the submissions are not accepted – even if just a minute late.  I’ve seen people crying in the hallway because their proposal was late – as if it were a life and death situation.

It means even more when you hear from a series of seven or eight doctors and nurses that “it’s a good thing you got here when you did” and “you made it just in time.”  That’s what I heard when I arrived at the emergency room on Sunday.  Turns out it was an actual life or death situation.

I had massive blood clots in my lungs.  I had been struggling for weeks with a cough and shortness of breath, among other things. Not knowing what was wrong or the severity of the situation, I tried powering through it, playing in baseball games, officiating football games and just living life as normal.

Finally, any exertion at all, even going up and down stairs, created breathing issues that could no longer be ignored. I went to the ER.  Four hours later, the clots were removed and I was able to breathe again. The science and technology available to medical pros is amazing.  I was awake for the entire 90-minute  procedure, actually watching the screens and conversing with some of the team during the procedure.

You don’t realize how serious the situation is until you hear the team of medical professionals commenting during the procedure about how they ”hadn’t seen anything quite as severe as this…”  “how this would make for good textbook content…” and  “…can’t believe you actually walked in here…”

Being able to tell this story is certainly better than not.