Dear Fellow Rotarians,

     After spending the day in the ER on Friday, I got to the see the Emergency expansion that Sue Anderson, CEO & President of Marian Regional Medical Center, had spoken about to our Club on March 12th. When Sue mentioned the need for expansion, I didn’t realize they could work so quickly! New rooms at the far end of the ER wing miraculously appeared and were already in action ready for use. I was one of the first to try out the new beds. They are pretty nice.

     I had been fighting a sore throat and body ache for nearly two weeks. I was living on Advil to get me through each day… until Thursday night when I couldn’t sleep at all and the Advil stopped working. The lump in my throat had become an entire frog. I went to Urgent Care Friday morning and they sent me to the ER recommending that the abscess in my throat be drained. After a dose of IV steroids and antibiotics at the ER, I couldn’t believe how horrible I had felt for the last two weeks didn’t actually stop to listen to what my body had been trying to tell me.

     The whole episode took me back to something I heard last year at the EntreLeadership conference I attended in San Antonio. One of the speakers said, “If it seems weird, it’s because it’s IS weird.” Every day, we have an opportunity to lean in, step up and do our part to make the world a little bit better than we left it. That means we need to learn to trust ourselves more than anything. We can worry a little bit less about what people will think, how things might appear, or who it’s going to inconvenience. There will always be those people—.

Be good to yourself!     Trust yourself!     Be all in!

See you tomorrow … and in the meantime, Dare to be EXTRAordinary!