My medical chart, depending on the doctors office I’m in, is usually quite impressive. I’ve had more surgeries than I care to count, I’m tired of explaining my funky bone disease to every X-ray tech on the planet. That would be osteoencondromatosis in the 4th and 5th proximal phalange on each hand… But to be honest surgery never bothered me, until I had kids.

Kids change more than just your day to day life, they add an extra level of responsibility to everything you do, and are involved in. I used to frequent the operating room for tons of different reasons, but since 5 years ago there have only been two. And each time I got a panic attack right before it. I kept thinking, would this be the last time my kids saw their father? Would this be the last family dinner we had together.

Both times I knew enough to not mention these thoughts to my wife, why worry her even more than she already was? But this time I talked about it to her right afterwards, and I saw a sadness in her eyes.

There is more at stake now, there are people counting on me. And it’s terrifying, after I got into the car accident last month, my son had tears in his eyes when he walked in to see me. I’m supposed to be the strong one, supposed to be the provider. And this vulnerability is something I hope doesn’t come back for a good while.