Gratitude Challenge Day 7

• weather alerts on my iPhone
• sirens
• smoke alarms
• fires, tornado, and lock down drills
• medicine
• doctors offices & visits
• email
• data 
• the news
• political officials
• my conscience 
• habits
• bills (and having to pay them) 
• gasoline
• rain
• iPhone battery
• Apple TV/wifi at school
• free speech 

Being sick is the worst. You can't think straight because your head is all fuzzy, and you're either hot or cold or achy or sleepy. Everything is harder to do when you're sick. Among those things, sitting in the doctor's waiting room when all you want to do is crawl into bed and fade back to wellness, is the worst. 

Last Spring, I got sick in the middle of a snow storm. My throat genuinely felt like it was coated in sandpaper, my head was pounding, and I didn't want to do anything but get some medicine and sleep it off. The catch, though, is that it had just snowed, and I couldn't drive anywhere.. including the doctor's office. 

For the first time, I realized that NOT sitting in the waiting room might be worse than sitting there. So, as annoying as those waiting rooms may be, with their germ-infested, uncomfortable chairs and sneezing kids, I'm thankful that I have access to and the ability to pay for healthcare, both when I'm sick and when I'm healthy.