There's my two full-time jobs . . . and my part-time job

Like most parents, I have two full-time jobs: the one that brings in the money and the one taking care of your child (or children).

I also have another part-time job: cancer treatment.

I counted the total number of appointments I had this year. It includes seeing my oncologist or his assistant, the zometa treatments, the dentist, the counselor, the acupuncturist, and a couple of appointments for Eddie.

Exactly how many appointments did I have this year? Drum roll, please:

77

Yes, seventy-seven appointments.

That's a lot better than last year, when I had 125 days where I had appointments.

But that means that I had appointments on 20% of the days in 2009. 20%.

If you consider that I have travel time and assume an average one-hour appointment, that means that 150 of my waking hours were spent going to medical appointments.

That's almost a month of work hours (40 hours a week x 4 weeks = 160).

Amazing, eh?

Medical Appointment Tally

From Jan 1 to March 31, a total of 90 days, I had 24 medical or acupuncture or counseling appointments on 22 days. About 24% of my days had at least one appointment.

From April 1 to April 26 (counting ahead to the week-end), I have had 6 appointments on 4 days, or about 15% of my days.

The percentage is improving.

If you recall, when I calculated my appointments for 2008, I only noted the total number of days for which I had appointments (125 days) and some days had multiple appointments, so I guess I didn't count the total number of appointments. But of the 366 (it was a leap year) days in the year, I had appointments on 125 of the days, for 34%.

My guess is that most people do not have medically-related appointments on 24% or 15% of their days. But it's a damn sight better than 34%!!

Here's to seeing that percentage decrease in the coming months! (And, I wonder why I can't work as fast as I want on my writing!)