A year of saying yes

Personal admin isn’t selfish. It’s responsible.

This is a story about women’s health, preventative care, and what finally made one woman in leadership start tracking her health. It begins (embarrassingly?) with a toenail…

I lived with toenail fungus for three years.

It started with athlete’s foot that would come and go. Eventually, the big toenail on my left foot — my “thumb toe,” as my kids used to call it — started looking bad. Not painful. Just annoying. Unsightly.

I told myself I should get it looked at. I made half-hearted attempts with antifungal creams. I stopped wearing open-toed shoes.

It was fine for most of the year, but I did miss flip-flops in the summer.

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Not just a toenail

Then one day, I realized it wasn’t just the toenail.

I was standing in my kitchen, trying to remember when I’d last had my annual physical, and the answer was: I couldn’t remember. When I finally checked my calendar, I discovered I was six months overdue. Which meant I’d also missed my mammogram.

My grandmother died of breast cancer when my mom was thirteen. That history lives in my body.

That was my wake-up call.

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What I was seeing around me

I knew I wasn’t alone. In my cohort of women in school leadership, colleagues were facing major health issues from years of neglecting preventative maintenance. Some were forced to take extended medical leaves. Others resigned.

I didn’t want that to be me.

My year of yes

I decided to have my own “year of yes.” Not the kind you hear about where people say yes to every social invitation or every item on a child’s birthday wish list. (Counterintuitively, this required saying no to other things.)

Mine was simpler: a year of saying yes to doctors’ appointments.

• Yes to scheduling them.

• Yes to going to them.

• Yes to the follow-ups.

I knew my own prefrontal cortex was not going to keep track of all the details. So I treated it like work. I opened a simple Google Doc and made it my personal health headquarters:

• Every provider’s name and contact info

• Every patient portal login

• Every appointment date and what happened

• Every follow-up that needed to happen next

I took notes during appointments, summarized them in the waiting room or the car, and wrote down next steps before I could forget them. I didn’t rely on my memory for anything.

What started as a year of yes turned into two and a half years. Partly because we moved, and I had to rebuild my whole medical ecosystem. And partly because that’s how many things had accumulated in a body that had reached its forties: mood swings, brain fog, skin spots, digestive issues, trouble sleeping.

But I kept at it.

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What changed

Over two years of steady follow-through:

• My toenail fungus is gone.

• My mood is stable.

• My digestion is predictable.

• I sleep well every night.

• I can think again.

These weren’t dramatic transformations. They were the quiet restoration of baseline functioning I’d forgotten was possible.

What took me so long?

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The admin of you

Family Admin is the labor that keeps a household afloat. Personal Admin is the labor that keeps you afloat.

Your annual physical. Your mammogram. Your dermatology screening. Your haircut. Your refill of the thing that helps you sleep.

If you don’t do it, nobody else will.

I used to see this as selfish. But now I see that that’s backwards.

Me being healthy is good for my kids, my family and my work.

When I am healthy, my leadership gets sharper. My decisions get clearer. My capacity expands.

Personal admin isn’t selfish. It’s responsible.

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So I’m wondering

• What might shift if you said yes — even once — to something your body has been whispering about?

• Are there appointments you’ve been putting off because everything else feels more urgent?

• Do you have a system for keeping track of your own medical care, or is it all in your head?

You don’t have to fix everything this year.

But maybe you pick one thing?

And say yes.

🕊️

SAM

New shoes!