sick and not sick

Last week I went to the doctor for a bunch of things. None of them cancer related. How strange!
And now for something completely different? My doctor actually talked to me like he knew who I was. Since day 1 it was my family doctor who has taken better care of me than anyone else.
Today I have a terrible flu/cold bug, headache, body ache, nausea etc. I am whacked out on (pain and cold) meds and napping all the time. Remind you of anything? The funny thing is today( or maybe tomorrow, I have to look it up) is the first anniversary of my first chemo. The physical feeling of flu is actually quite similar to the symptoms of chemo. Gratefully, the horrible side effects are not here.

As you can imagine, trying to run the store while sick at home is not easy. I had to either close the store or call my assistant in from a day off. Luckily today my staff agreed to sacrifice his day off. We have never been able to afford to have an extra trained person on staff so if I am sick and my assistant is committed elsewhere we have to be closed. That is the only option. Tomorrow we'll have to see what happens.
The recession is hurting the store enough, we certainly cannot afford to close the store just for illness. We are lucky to still be open.
This week we get to work on a project planning our presence at the Busker festival. Unfortunately that is the same weekend I am hoping to attend the 20th class reunion of my college class at Middlebury College in Vermont. None of my classmates have seen me since my surgery and chemo. I really want to be there. Since we have no backup staff doing festivals at the best of times is not easy. We bring in at least 5 extra people to help us work the almost 30 hours that the festival needs to make it happen. We managed to get the store and all the festivals through last summer with me in chemo. I made an appearance at each festival when I was up to it and worked at the store for 2 days a week(most of you know this already). The idea of having me gone through one festival seems like no big deal, but my parter/ mentor Tim has always been at the festivals whether I was or not. Our original plan was to have Tim come to the reunion with me. Soooo, the idea of a festival without me or Tim there makes things much more complicated. I have decided that somehow or other we will get the store through the recession.
I am not sure how, but somehow I will get to my reunion and I am going to do everything I can to get Tim there too.
Let me know if you have any bright ideas about running the festival without the 2 senior staff in town.