It’s always nice to go on vacation. I love seeing my family, taking “family pictures” with 10/13 of them, and getting one more test out of the way.
However, no good deed goes unpunished (not sure if that’s even applicable… I may not even understand that phrase), but the point is that I got back to work this week. Without getting into the numbers, I worked a TON. Not that it was all paperwork and minutia designed by some pencil-pusher to make my life miserable. I got to do things that I’ve never done before, and was allowed to do most of the surgeries I participated in. And honestly, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have done it any differently… Not sure if it’s possible to write a more cryptic paragraph than the one I just did, but you get what you get…
Being back at work, I realize that there are a lot of different characters in the hospital. I form opinions about them quickly, usually based on very short interactions. Who knows, maybe they aren’t really characters at all. Maybe it's just that my interactions with them are limited so I only have enough time to notice their character flaws. Take me, for instance, I wouldn’t ever call myself patient. However, the people who interact with me on a limited basis may never see that occasionally, I’m... ummm... more patient?... I think this applies to more than just the hospital...
Take for instance the annual softball game that we played this week against the surgery residents at the hospital on the other side of the town. Granted it was a limited interaction, but when you show up for a “fun” softball game against the cross-town rivals, you expect it to be a pretty laid-back atmosphere. You think to yourself, how seriously can antibiotic-joke-telling-out-of-shape nerds take an athletic event? You throw on an old t-shirt, some gym shorts and running shoes. You drive across town, show up a few minutes late, find your team already engaged in the consumption of pre-game “adult beverages.” You smile, tell a few jokes, and look across the diamond to see what the other team is working with. Across the diamond, you see multiple players with sweat bands on both arms, high knee baseball socks, batting gloves on both hands, and cleats (like this). Again, it’s a limited interaction but you can’t help but draw conclusions from it... including, but not limited to, “Man! Someone is taking this more serious than we are!!”
Well, let's just say that at the end of the seven innings it made our 10-6 winner that much sweeter...
