The other day, I was listening to a podcast by Rachel Hollis about goal setting as it relates to running a business. In it, she walked the listener through how, at the end of year, she sits down with her calendar and goes through it day-by-day to tally up how she spends her time so she can use that information to set goals for the next year.

Now, I realize this concept really is totally unrelated to raising a differently-abled child, BUT as I listened to the podcast, the nerd inside me came out and thought: gosh, wouldn’t it be interesting if I could see how we spend our time over the course of a year supporting Solly’s medical and therapy needs? Fortunately, Solly is the son of a Mama who is a type A, project-manager-in-a-previous-life, geek who lives by and documents everything on a Google calendar. In my opinion, there is really no other way to keep track of the craziness that is Solly’s life.

So, late last week, I opened up my 2018 Google calendar and went through the entire darn thing and made notes of every single appointment. Here’s what I came up with:

Therapy Appointments
Aquatic Therapy: 36
Hippotherapy: 62
Speech Therapy: 50
Feeding Therapy: 32
Physical Therapy: 3 (this one is traditional PT, which we just started in December)
Occupational Therapy: 43
Anat Baniel Method Lessons: 30

Medical Appointments
Developmental Optometry: 6
Chiropractor: 34
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: 40
Orthopedic: 2
Equipment: 14
Dentist: 1
Stem Cells: 2
Neurology: 2
MRI: 1
Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation: 1

Intensive Therapy
NAPA Center – 2 Intensives (60 hours total)
Full Circle Therapy – 2 Intensives (24 hours total)
Virginia Tech – 1 Intensive (120 hours total)

If you do the math, that’s 359 combined medical and therapy appointments over the course of a year, plus 5 intensive therapies that total 204 hours. In other words, that’s a lot of appointments.

I haven’t quite figured out if I’ll use this information to guide anything we do in 2019. In any case, it’s nice to know that the fine lines forming on my face, the extra gray hairs I’m finding on my head, and the extra bags under my eyes aren’t unwarranted and, in fact, they’re all there for a good reason: giving Solly every opportunity to develop and live as independently as possible.