I have been very anxious about the situation with COVID-19, and also Mr. PiN has some (badly timed) health issues, which have me worried too.
Last Wednesday, I read some advice: when feeling overwhelmed and uprooted, pick just one thing to do. This way you have a goal each day, and a good chance at accomplishing it.
So, on Wednesday I worked on culling books from my science fiction and fantasy collection. This collection is not on the bookshelf that I have been trying to clear for the last year (and a bit). These books are on built-in bookshelves that aren’t going anywhere. However, there are too many books for the shelves; since we moved in, each shelf has two rows of books, the first blocking the second row.
For the past year, this has seemed like an overwhelming task. How could I go through over 250 books, many of which I have owned for more than 25 years, and pick some to discard. I have avoiding tackling these shelves for months.
It turns out once I decided to do it, I killed it. Asking myself: would I read this book if I were quarantined in the house for the next 2-4 weeks? gives some pretty clear answers. In one afternoon, I culled about 64 books (2.5 grocery bags) with very little pain.
The bigger issue will be deciding when it is safe to find them new homes.
This Saturday, I tackled a smaller area: my collection of freebies sent by charities. You know the stuff–address labels, note pads, greeting cards. This is all sent whether you want it or not, as a “thank you” for supporting the cause (or a way to guilt you into donating because they sent you something).
I can’t believe how painfully long it took my to go through a Starbucks bag’s worth of stuff. I threw out Christmas seals from 2013, a pocket calendar from 2014, and half the address labels. My mom likes the note pads, and actually seems to have run out of them at her home. Once I feel comfortable that I’m not sending germ-infested papers to her and my dad, off they go.
I even, finally, sorted the greeting cards by event. In the last year, I have actually wanted to find birthday cards and, sadly, condolence cards, but couldn’t pull an appropriate card with its envelope in a reasonable period of time. Hopefully, that’s all taken care of now, as I don’t think I will be browsing the greeting card aisle at the local pharmacy for a while.
Sunday was a good day: exercise, and chess with a nephew via Facetime.
I think the hard thing today is writing this post. My thoughts chase each other like hyperactive puppies, and lining them up in order to write is pretty challenging.
You might ask, what about Thursday and Friday?
My hard thing, on those days, was just going to work.
I am a little ashamed by how scared I am to go to the hospital. I look at the doctors going in to work in the ER in NYC, the ICU doctors in Seattle, and I think: I have it so easy.
Right now, my job consists of spending most of my day alone in my office, seeing people via telehealth, or talking to them on the phone, and signing orders. No febrile and hypoxic patients ready to pass on this new coronavirus.
And yet, I am going into a hospital where we have active cases. I touch things (door knobs, elevator buttons) and wonder if I need to wash my hands, again. Maybe a second time.
If I get sick, I am in a higher risk group, though of course that doesn’t doom me to the ICU and the ventilator. It just gives me a 5-8x higher risk, as far as I can tell. Still, not odds I am anxious to face.
At the same time that I am ashamed of how safe my job is, I know that I am due to be called in to work the in-patient side at around the time we can expect a surge of COVID-19 patients. If I don’t get called in sooner to replace physicians who are quarantined, or out sick. Soon enough, I will be dealing with the risk of catching coronavirus daily.
Tomorrow is a work day, and my task will be to go into work. I am looking forward to my next non-clinical day, when I get to stay home; I’m hoping my hardest task that day will be sorting through some old papers.
How are you holding up? Is it business as usual? Or are you, too, finding your thoughts scattered by this pandemic?
I’m in a similar boat.
Sorting books, doing online courses, trying to hold my family together. I admire the courage of the “front-line” doctors.
I’m able to do some Tele-Health visits but nothing like my normal work-life.
I could afford a 40% pay cut if needed, but I worry about the financial health of my colleagues.
Thank you for stopping by, Wealthy Doc. I hope you stay safe (and healthy) during all this craziness. Right now my salary is being maintained, but my work load is definitely not supporting it. I suspect clinic will become extremely busy once this pandemic passes.