Work has been stressful. Not the patients, never the patients. In fact, the exam room has always been a refuge of sorts. Once I am at work, once I am in a room with a patient focusing on their complaints, all that is bad and stressful in my world falls away. It orients my world and puts it into perspective. No mater how bad I think I have it, someone always comes in and entrusts me with their fears and their pain. Even with my own recent medical issues, taking care of my patients has helped me keep perspective. But there have been obstacles between me and the caring for patients, obstruction to the exam room that had tainted my work and my world. I had wanted to avoid the dynamic, ignore the situation but it’s like a rotting potato in the pantry. It smells and it eventually spoils the whole bag. It can even make the onions sprout and soon the many things are wasted.
It’s fixed now. The bad, stinky, rotting potato is gone. And things in my world are better. It’s hard to tackle things when they get so far away from you. The energy and effort needed to restore and renew things can be daunting. The only option, if you want things back in their good graces, is to tackle it head on. And that’s what I did. The metaphor for all the recent badness at work can be seen in the fruits of my labor this morning…on this first day off of a long weekend. The low rider garden bed #1 is complete and the onion seeds are planted, three varieties.
