It happened so fast.

It’s all just flashes of images and feelings..... and I’m still trying to piece them together. The wall rushing up to my face without a chance to brace for impact, laying on the ground holding my head knowing I shouldn’t get up, feeling the blood flowing over my face and through my hair, calling out to reassure my wife to let her know I was okay (I wasn’t) and asking her to call 911.

And as I lay on the floor I was surprisingly calm and began going through a checklist assessing my situation. No I didn’t lose consciousness, yes I could feel my toes and hands, yes my head really hurt, and no I wasn’t going to move until EMS arrived.

And this continued as I was put on a stretcher and listened to the siren as the ambulance raced me to the emergency room. I remember being afraid of falling asleep and couldn’t stop thinking about the actress who hit her head skiing several years ago and chose to go home that night only to succumb to a closed skull injury several days later.

Thankfully within an hour, I was having a CAT scan and soon learned that there wasn’t any internal bleeding or swelling in my brain and that my neck was uninjured in the collision. Thank goodness I’ve got a hard head.

So as I laid on the gurney in the ER waiting for the plastic surgeon to arrive to do his work, my thoughts turned to new checklists, one practical and one theoretical.

I thought about how long I might be out of work, who would moderate the webinar I was scheduled to host in two days, what business obligations would I need to cancel or ask others to handle?

And then the rough thoughts came. If this had been worse would my family be able to make ends meet, how long would my company be able to continue without me, and had I taken steps to implement a continuity plan for events like this?

Thankfully I could answer most of these questions favorably but I realized that there were steps I had put off, rationalizing that I was too busy and I’d get to them when things calmed down.

As insurance professionals and advisors we spend so much time focusing on the needs of others. But we need to realize that we too have to take the time to address these risks to our own well-being, the people who depend on us, and the people we love.

So now I’m focusing on the gaps in my life plan to make sure everything will be okay. I hope you will too.

It can happen so fast.