In 2020, a good friend suggested that I start a blog to document the crazy shit that happens in my life. I’ve never thought my life was particularly interesting, but bizarre shit does tend to happen to me/around me. I like to think I put out good energy–I believe in karma, treating people the way you want to be treated, and being a good human in general. But chaos and general disorder tend to follow me like a dark, black cloud. And this work trip was no exception.
The last time I traveled for work was in February of 2020–just weeks before the world shut down. I haven’t had any desire to travel for work since then, because, in the time since then, I had a whole baby (who is now approaching 2 years old) and was happy to not have to leave him. But when my company recently offered me the opportunity to attend a conference of my choosing, since merit and salary increases were put on hold this year, I was excited to find a professional development opportunity.
I found a digital marketing conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, that piqued my interest–and, bonus, my best friend and his beautiful family also live in Charlotte. Win/win on all levels.
The conference itself was meh–the talk tracks were not entirely applicable to my career or what I wanted to learn more about. I did, however, learn quite a bit about Chat GPT and what it can do for content creation. My mind was blown by what I learned, and I am excited to continue to sharpen my skillset. On Day 1 of the conference, I was heading to the networking luncheon when I started to feel a little weird. My sides started to feel kind of crampy, and my upper back started to burn. I tried to shake it off, but the pain in my back got worse. Luckily the conference was at my hotel, so I went upstairs to my room to lie down to see if a little rest would help.
It did not. The back pain felt like spasms–I have only had this happen to me once before, about 4 weeks ago, and I ended up crying from the pain then, which if you know me, I don’t do. The pain was radiating down my shoulders, causing my arms and hands to shake as I was texting my best friend and his wife (both in the medical field), who suggested I go to urgent care. After a few hours of trying to ride it out, hoping it would just get better on its own, I finally caved and drove myself to Target to get ibuprofen. I could barely get myself out of the car. I got the medicine and limped to my car, took the meds, and waited for 30 mins in the AC. Nothing. No better. So I finally relented and drove myself to the urgent care.
Except, in typical Ally Mitchell fashion, things didn’t go as planned. The urgent care I was following Google Maps directions to was actually an emergency room at a huge health network in Charlotte. I drove around for 20 minutes, parked two separate times in parking garages, limped into the buildings only to find I was in the wrong place both times and ended up throwing up in the parking garage next to my car from the pain. I was in so much pain, I considered calling 911 to come drive my ass to the right place because I didn’t think I could drive around searching for the right building again.
I texted my friends, who suggested urgent care (a standalone building, not part of some enormous health network with a gazillion buildings and a huge campus). I drove the 14 minutes to the urgent care, and at this point, I was shaking and sweating from the pain. My back felt like it was on FIRE. I walked into urgent care, and there was a couple in front of me who took 20+ minutes to check in (no hate, I was just standing there praying to pass out at this point). 45 minutes later, the doctor saw me, said it sounds like a bad back spasm (no SHIT, but thank you), and prescribes me a muscle relaxer. The girl at the front desk said to give it an hour or so for the pharmacy to fill the prescription, so I headed to my friend’s house to cuddle with their 3 adorable kids and distract myself. It worked, but when I left around 8 pm, I was still in pretty significant pain. But the pharmacy was open until 10 pm, and the prescription should absolutely have been done by then.
I park in the parking garage (because we’re in the city here, there are no parking lots) and walked into the pharmacy…only to find the metal gate over the actual pharmacy pulled down, signaling that the pharmacy was very fucking closed. I fell into the trap of Google’s hour’s feature–where it states that the pharmacy is open until 10 pm but doesn’t specify that that only applies to the STORE. The pharmacy itself closes at 6 pm. Considering that I left the urgent care at 6:10 pm, I wouldn’t have gotten my medicine that night no matter what.
Now I’m panicked. I’m looking down the barrel of a long, LONG night with my back on fire and no relief. Trying not to panic, I back out of the parking garage…and being a suburban girl who does not use parking garages often, I don’t realize until too late that there is a second large concrete pillar to my left because I was in the last spot in the row, cut the wheel too hard, and scrape the entire front bumper of the driver’s side against said pillar. I just froze. My stomach SANK. I was 2 minutes from my hotel. I was so ready to be done with this day. I made it back to the hotel and was so upset, I forgot to even look at the front of the car for damage.
The next morning, after walking to the pharmacy when it opened at 10 AM (a full 16 hours after my trip to urgent care), I checked out the damage to the car—EEEK. Did I mention that I’ve never rented a car before? Did I mention that I declined the insurance coverage for my rental? Did I mention that my anxiety was so high at this point, still in back pain, that I effectively went numb and just mentally shrugged my shoulders because what the hell else could I do? What was done was done. Dwelling on it for the rest of my trip wouldn’t do me any good (yes, I wish I could apply this mentality to every aspect of my life, every single time I feel anxious because it was lovely to not be crippled with anxiety for the rest of the trip).
I finished out the conference (the first day, first session was by far the most applicable to my job and what I wanted to learn) and had dinner with my besties & bestie babies. Spending these 3 afternoons with my favorite people on earth, who I don’t get to see more than 1-2 times a year max, was so good for my heart & soul. SO good. I headed to the airport bright and early Wednesday morning so I could return my rental car and have plenty of time to find my way (my anxiety is quite debilitating with “new things” like this. Where do I drive to? How far is the walk from the rental garage to security? and the like).
Fun adulting fact that I just learned: sometimes, the credit card you used to book your rental car carries insurance for rental incidents. I never knew this, and let me tell you–it saved my ASS in this case.
Despite my raging anxiety and 3 wrong turns to return the rental car Wednesday morning, I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare (my husband still thinks the 2 hours before your flight arrival thing is a myth, but I would literally never test this). The gentleman at the car rental return was SO kind to me when I explained what happened. It’s amazing what a kind human can do to quell your anxiety.
I was waiting in line for the security check, and the fire alarm started to go off. As you can expect in an airport, it was VERY loud. People around me looked around, but no one was panicked, and no one who worked there seemed overly concerned, so I stayed the course. I got through security, and found my gate (does anyone else do this before you do anything else while traveling? I HAVE to find my gate to make sure it exists before I venture on for snacks or bathroom breaks, etc.) Gate confirmed, I headed to Starbucks for my well-deserved coffee and chocolate croissant (you have to say it with a French accent, even as you read this in your head).
As I’m standing in line waiting for my goodies, a man standing next to me who is wearing a security ID for the airport starts to show me his phone. I was weirded out for about 2 seconds, until I realized what he was showing me. He explained that a Delta flight that landed 30 minutes before had a landing gear failure, and that it landed nose down and skidded across the tarmac. As he’s showing me these photos, I realize this was the cause for the fire alarm. The pictures showed firefighters (I’m not sure if an actual fire took place), and they had to bus the passengers from the plane to the terminal.
“I’ve worked here for 20 years, and I’ve never seen this happen here,” the man said to me in amazement.
And all I could think was GET ME THE FUCK HOME, and I am not traveling for work anytime in the near future.