Sometimes you drive to North Carolina excited to teach at SAFF, with a car full of fiber and a shopping list buring hole in your pocket.

You spend part of a day setting your classroom up, and then head to downtown Asheville to prowl around. Then a call comes that throws a proverbial monkey wrench into the works.

My daughter, Isobel called earlier in the day to say she thought she had kidney stones and was at the hospital. That made me twitchy, but I didn't consider it an emergency. Then she called crying saying they found a cyst the size of a softball on her ovary and were considering emergency surgery. That is an emergency.

I rushed back to my classroom and packed it. Thank goodness Beth was driving! I told the wonderful folks at SAFF what was going on, and their universal answer was "Go! We'll figure it out".

I went, and it was one of the longest drives of my life. They didn't do surgery, but the doctors are not ruling it out. For now her doctor is trying to shrink the cyst with drugs. I was so grateful I could be here for the doctor appointments and to take care of her.

Isobel is uncomfortable and is in some pain (she does have kidney stones too), but it's the waiting that's the hardest, especially since she can't dive or train until the cyst shrinks.

Thank you to everyone at SAFF, and to my students for understanding. Thank you to everyone who reached out to me to share their cyst story or send love.