I recently went out West to deliver a speech and decided to take the opportunity to go a few days early to visit some very dear friends.

Standing at the Toronto airport on Sunday waiting for my flight, I received an email from my girlfriend. The email started out with, “You are not going to believe this!”  From there it went on to tell me that she had been at the hospital all night with her husband as he was suffering from a massive headache that would not subside.  They had done a CAT scan, a spinal tap and were searching for a brain aneurism.  The hair on the back of my neck and arms stood straight up.  I frantically emailed her back, told her that if she needed me to stay in a hotel that night I would, but she quickly came back with a no and said that she or her daughter would pick me up at the airport.  I boarded the plane with no further contact and had the longest one-hour flight of my life to change planes in Ottawa.

As soon as I could possibly turn my cell phone back on, I frantically checked for an update and this is what I read. They were transferring him to another hospital to do another CAT scan, which to me meant things were not good.  I can honestly say I have never had such an excruciatingly long flight in my life as the one I boarded next.  Not being able to find out what was happening had me conjuring up different scenarios with none of them offering up a good outcome. Thoughts were flying through my head and I could not wait to land to find out more news.  Part of me desperately wanted the news and another part of me did not.

Thankfully, the outcome was better than I had hoped for as she had just dropped her husband off at home and was waiting outside of the airport for me.  What they found was a very serious sinus infection that had caused some unusual things to show up on the CAT scan. The diagnosis brought with it a heavy-duty antibiotic and an order to go home and get some rest.

As I mentioned earlier, there were lot of things that went through my head on that painfully long flight.  If this was you and the outcome was different, would you have been prepared?

Would you have:

• Recently reviewed and updated your will and pre-estate documents for financial and health matters?
• Made sure that everyone who needs to know you have a living will was aware of it and its location?
• Had a family discussion and a courageous conversation with the people in your life?

Thankfully, the outcome of this particular story was a good one, but that is not always the case.  These are typically not the types of things people think about when planning their vacation but they are just as important, if not more important, than your passport and travel documents.  To learn more about other things you might need to think about before your next trip or just everyday life please visit www.janeblaufus.com to order my book, WITH THE [STROKE] OF A PEN™, Claim your life and please join in the ‘Courageous Conversations’ by following me on Twitter @janeblaufus and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jeblaufus.