My mom had a prescheduled minor surgery set for 6/11, 2 days after my grand opening.

It was already very stressful knowing this as my mom’s health is not very good due to 17 years of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and she is on a ton of medicine. I was worried since we first found out she needed this surgery months before.

I wanted it no where no the opening for obvious reasons, but my opening was pushed out longer than I thought it would and the two collided.

My mom’s surgery was to remove a kidney stone. It was supposed to be an outpatient procedure, with her home that day.

I met up with my dad, her caregiver and case manager at the hospital in the waiting room while my mom was in surgery. The doctor had apparently already come out and said surgery went well as I got a text saying that. Some relief.

Then we were told we could go see her in recovery.

That is when everything turned and it was one of the most traumatic moments I have experienced.

I will spare all of the details because my family reads my blog, but from the moment we saw my mom, things weren’t right. Her whole body was shaking and everyone (nurses, case manager, me) were trying to give her the PD meds hoping that would help, but she couldn’t swallow. The fear on her face this whole time was intense. She was still groggy from the anesthesia too. Then she had a temperature. Then apparently someone yelled Sepsis (i didn’t hear but my dad did), and a team of nurses rushed to her.

All of this happened within like 30 minutes. Since we were in recovery, I was trying to comfort her, make sure nurses were helping, trying to figure out what was happening, and running in and out of the room to catch my breathe. I couldn’t watch. She was struggling and I felt helpless. My dad was doing the same. We didn’t know what was happening.

We kept saying she needs her Parkinson’s meds, and now they were telling us that’s the least of their concerns. Holy f*ck! What does that mean???

I stepped out of the recovery room when the team of nurses/doctors rushed to her. I could barely breathe. I was freaking out. I called my sister to tell her and she thought everything was fine because of the text we got just an hour before saying the surgery went fine.

I told her it changed. Things went bad in recovery.

I honestly didn’t know what sepsis was or how serious it can be or I probably would’ve completely lost it.

The doctor that performed the surgery came down and said she will likely be ok. Surgery still went well but this is just a rare thing that can sometimes happen. Somewhat comforting but not really.

We were told they were moving her to ICU. So we all went to ICU.

Sepsis is a full body infection that kills many people as organs shut down, but they caught it so early in her case, that they were able to give her strong antibiotics right away which is probably what saved her – the speed of the diagnosis and response.

She was in ICU for 3 days and completely out of it for most of that time. Doctors said that is normal with this infection and would likely go away once the antibiotics kicked in, in 48 hours. It was so scary to see.

And there are so many layers to this. No one in ICU knew my mom or her medicine routine for PD and more. They change 12 hours. But they learned as best they could.

The next big issue became her blood pressure as it was very low, almost dangerously low. On the 2nd day, they had to insert a line in her neck to give the medicine, but it worked.

The saving grace is my Aunt Sue was actually just a few hours away and she came and stayed for 4 days as we figured this out, which helped give my dad breaks from the hospital.

My mom was in ICU for 3 days and the hospital for 10 nights total. This was supposed to be an outpatient surgery. Craziness.

Remember, Yoga-urt opened 3 days before this happened and I was so exhausted from the opening push. Echo Park needed so much attention from me, but my mom needed it more. I drove an hour to see my mom almost every other day while she was in the hospital. I felt pulled in both directions.

Echo Park was understaffed from the beginning because 2 people quit – 1 found another job before we opened and the other found it too hard with her other job. Plus people were calling in sick a lot. And i didn’t have time to interview with all the running around.

It was a very difficult and emotional few weeks. I didn’t get a chance to enjoy the opening weeks because I almost lost my mom.

The good news is my mom has regained most of her strength back, but she wasn’t in great shape to start with due to 17 years PD and horrible and frequent off-times.

But she made it through this ordeal and we are figuring it out as we go.

We had our Grand Opening the following weekend but lots in between too.

I took the first part of that Monday easy trying to recoup from the big push. But there was still lots of media/PR stuff to deal with and prepping for all of our events before the opening.

We were closed on Monday and Tuesday, and then we opened for half a day on Wednesday.

Then on Thursday, we had our influencer/media night. Lots of prepping for that all day. It was another big opportunity to show Yoga-urt off. It went well overall.

And on Friday, I had invited all of our neighboring business owners and their employees in the area to come to Yoga-urt for a free mini. I did this at the Glendale location too. It’s a great way to introduce everyone to it.

All of this kept me busy all week. My dad asked why we weren’t open more days and the l answer really was that it was just too much for me. The new team members were still learning what to do so I would have to be there, and I had so much to do to prep for these events and the grand opening, I thought best to focus on that. Making money or my sanity? I chose my sanity that week.

And then it was our Grand Opening! It’s all a bit of a blur but it went well. A lot of people came but it was manageable. It was nice to see lots of familiar faces and so friends and family that stopped by.

The days were long but very rewarding. I could see that this is going to work. The store needed some tweaks and adjustments, but it works. We have the space, the equipment, the people to make this the functional store it needed to be 🙂

That doesn’t mean there weren’t issues. Two people called in sick…yes on opening weekend. Super stressful but we managed.

But oh my god was I exhausted after that weekend. It was 12 days of nonstop crazy to get to this point and now we did it. The store was officially open but that’s not the end of my struggle. More to come…

Throwing it back to our opening in Echo Park!

Last I wrote about it was how devastated I was by not passing health inspection in time to open for Memorial Day Weekend. I was so upset. My goal after the holiday was to sit at the health department until I got them to agree to come back out. And they did that Wednesday and we passed.

There was much relief but also anger that it took so long. And then thinking about all I had to do was overwhelming – so it was time to get to work.

Not only were we doing our soft opening starting on Saturday, June 1st, but the day before, Mercy for Animals was filming a video at the Echo Park store and there was also an event that I had agreed to be a part of on that Saturday! Who does an event the same day as their day 1 soft opening? Just me. I’m the crazy one!

On Thursday, we brought half the Glendale store to echo park. It was ridiculous but we did it. Had to get Echo Park looking like a functional place right away for the video. And then on Friday, we filmed the video. Thankfully I’m friends with the lead video person so it wasn’t completely intimidating but still had to make sure I spoke clearly and intelligently and everything looked good.

After the video, I had to prep for both our opening and the event. I had our soft opening start at 3pm so that I could get back from the event on time.

Was racing over there around 2:30pm and it was pretty emotional. I was excited, exhausted, and nervous.

And then we opened. So different than Glendale. I actually knew what I was doing. There were some issues with where to have the line and things like that, but overall things went well that weekend. Lots of regulars. Lots of new people.

It was a very exhausting weekend of barely any sleep, but it felt good and was such a relief to finally be open. To finally be making money. And to finally getting the chance to introduce Yoga-urt to new people!

There’s been no time to catch my breathe. I have so much to write about and so little time.

Here is the quick summary and hopefully over the next few weeks I can dive into each one.

Grand Opening was crazy but good. Exhausted from big 2 week push for opening. Two days later, my mom had a minor pre-scheduled surgery, almost died from sepsis, (was in ICU for 3 days and hospital for 10 days), My laptop was stolen out of my car so I was computer-less for about 2 weeks, we’ve been understaffed in Echo Park from the beginning with people calling in sick right and left, my family is a bit of a mess with my mom’s medical situation, 5 out of 8 of my cashiers/servers asked for the same week off in Glendale during 4th of July (with people calling in sick at both stores), popping lots of popcorn for our Blue Warrior/Cracker Jacks flavor, and all the regular business owner juggling. Plus one really AWESOME special order of pints that I can’t talk about.

I feel like I haven’t slept in 6 weeks.

Now we gear up for Yoga-urt’s 4th Anniversary on July 20/21.

And then, hopefully some normalcy and some sleep!

More to come!