LET SLEEPING CATS LIE

FEEDINGS: TAKES ABOUT 
TAKES ABOUT # OS EVERY # HOURS< SIMILACX
TAKES # 

The above was a frantic attempt to carry on with my job without a functioning keyboard. Ever wondered what it’s like to type with a stuck “shift” key? No, neither had I. Until about 9:30 on a Monday morning. And I can assure you, it is not enjoyable to try to troubleshoot this issue when in the middle of a patient visit, in mid sentence, when your job is to type as quickly and accurately as possible, while being as invisible, and professional, as you can be.

After a few minutes of a valiant effort at maintaining my cool, I shot my hand up in the air. The doctor turned and looked down at my schoolchild appearance, squatting on a little stool and peering up eagerly, waiting to be called on.

“Um, excuse me,” I said. “I have a problem.”

After running around the clinic for a few minutes, frantically asking if anyone had a computer they didn’t need, I re-emerged in the room and attempted to pick up where I had left off, while logging into someone else’s laptop, and putting pieces together as to the parts of the conversation I had missed.

I had a sneaking suspicion that the week was not going to be a smooth one.

I also wondered if I am death to keyboards, this being the new computer I had bought to replace the previous one that had also, oddly enough, gone kaput on me while I was in the middle of a patient visit while working as a scribe.

Is it Friday yet?

I tend to ask that question, as do many, I suppose. But my reason for asking it is not because Friday is the last day of the week; rather, it is because Friday is the day of the week when I get to do clinical work for the whole day. I do not hate scribing . . . but I do not exactly enjoy it, either.

But Friday—ahh, happy Friday, with all of its bodily fluids, and syringes, and stool samples, and . . . (what, you’re not convinced?) For whatever reason, at least in this season of the life I am living, I find clinical work insanely challenging . . . and utterly gratifying.

This week Friday was a doozy. We were pummeled on every angle, it seemed, by short-staffing issues, an apparently very ill city population of little ones, and unexpected emergencies. By 10:00, I realized I’d been working for over 2 hours already without having a chance to take a sip of my morning coffee. This, in my world, is not a minor detail. I also realized, however, that my working adrenaline had been so strong that I had felt caffeinated without a hint of >>>TO BE CONTINUED> MY SHIFT KEY JUST GOT STUCK AGAIN AFTER WE FIXED IT>
*PHOTO IS A SHOT OF OUR CAT PRETENDING SHE IS A PROPER FARM CAT AND NOT THE SPOILED PET WE KNOW HER TO ACTUALLY BE. PHOTO APPLIES TO THE CONTINUATION OF THIS BLOG POST >>>

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