Keeping my team awake
We’ve been busy medically around here for the last couple of days and nights. Following the protocol outlined by the resident student and then amplified and ventilated by two surgeons, our team is dripping drops and smearing salves and popping pills into me. Currently, there are 77 separate interventions, at a frequency of every 25 to 3o minutes (which makes me remember a great tune by Chicago, 25 or 6 to 4, buts that just the ramblings brought on by the varieties of cortisone. I think.
We’ve figured out that finding a decent alarm for that 30 minute rhythm during the night shift is tricky; I may dig out my Gralab timer. Along with the accuracy of electrical clockworks, the noise can wake one without difficulty. There’s the multiple alarm capability of the new PDA that lives here, but the volume can’t win out over the war that plays over and over on our living room wall when the guys are bored. There’s also the oven alarm, but if we start cooking wings every thirty minutes, the odour of barbecue will soon win out over everything else.
In a way, this is like training. Already, son #1 has put aside any thoughts of a medical career, and son #3 is with the game plan if he can stay home from school. Son #2 hasn’t been around very much; I think he’s on the reserve squad. The dog just wants more grapes. I’ve been warned to expect a daily visit to the hospital for the next few. Did you know how many other people in the world are sick? Scads and scads of ’em. I even ran into a former co-worker from the language school trenches at UPEI that I hadn’t seen in close to twenty years. He didn’t look sick, though, so there is little probable correlation.
