At the end of February, I had a Monday that gave me a month’s worth of grief. It started at the doctor and ended at the dentist. At the former, they found a suspicious spot on my temple. At the latter, I was looking at an extraction and three crowns. Skin cancer and tooth work meant a lot of people poking around on my head. With no wife to console me, I was on my own. So, off I went.

I tried getting an appointment with my local dermatologist and couldn’t get in until May. So, I called my old doctor in Houston, and she scheduled me two days later. Made the trip, got the biopsy, and it came back clean on the following Monday. The proposed dental work, meanwhile, seemed pretty far out so I got a second opinion from my old dentist in Houston. My local dentist wanted to pull a wisdom tooth himself, my old dentist said, get an oral surgeon. Also, he said I only needed two crowns, the third wasn’t a crisis. I got the tooth out on the 12th, and two crowns yesterday.

I’m talking about this, because a lot of people tend to put off going to doctor’s and dentists because they fear what they’ll hear. I understand. When I got the news back in February, it knocked me off my feed, depressed me (more than I already was), and I knew I was in for a semi-tough time. But I did it, and it’s done, and that nagging anxiety is past me, and I just need to heal. Now, I can get on with my spiritual quest and I have two less things to worry about. So, if something is bothering you, get it checked, waiting almost never pays. An early fix may be hard, but it beats a catastrophic failure later.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale