It's 8 o'clock or so and I'm in the office listening to a song, Luminate, by Projections. It's a new office, the fourth I've had in my four and half years at this hospital. The place has a faint musty odor which is actually quite new: It's mouse powder, laid down along with some mouse traps by service response, or whatever they are called. Well, it is an old hospital and it's the pathology department which is never a high priority anywhere, and there is a lot of construction going on around here. Buildings (tall, bold, rectangular sheets of glass reaching into the Boston sky) surround this hospital now. Plus, it's freezing outside, so maybe that explains the need for mouse powder. Anyway, I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned until everything was spotless, right after I moved into this new office and it at least looks clean. I joked with one of the senior doctors that I should get a bonus for rehabbing old offices around the department.
One of my colleagues stopped by yesterday and complemented my office plants. It's a very crowded space which I try to keep minimalist (better to concentrate), but I do have a small bamboo sitting in a blue-green pot on the top of a bookshelf and a potted primrose whose yellow blooms are gently fading, in a friendly keep-me-company fashion, but whose leaves are a robust leafy green.
The number of cases I have to see (well, everyone has to see) has exploded recently. The hospital is pursuing a growth strategy, which is smart and exactly what I'd do if I was in charge, but the growing pains are hard, aren't they? I am going through my cases now (well, not at this exact moment) and organizing them in three 'piles' for tomorrow's work day. The first are cases awaiting additional studies, the second are fresh cases that are ready to review tomorrow, and the third are cases I've looked at already but need a second look. My paranoia cases, I call them, which makes the residents and fellows laugh. I'm pretty sure all pathologists do this. Wake up in the middle of the night, thinking, I should look at that case again before I release the report! Be patient, my dear patients. You may become impatient waiting for your results (and I sympathize completely and sorry for the silliness of the sentence), but at this particular point I am your advocate. You want me to look again, trust me. By the way, I stole the 'I am your advocate line' from a new colleague of mine and she is absolutely correct. That's the way to look at it, isn't it?
Sigh. It's the usual craziness and I'm not sure how much longer my path will intersect with the paths around here, but for the duration, I do my best. Okay, now it's Happy Mondays streaming through the computer (Dennis and Lois), so time to sign off and finish sorting. Take care, blog friends.
*Tatyana, out in cyberspace, I promise to provide some links to the songs when I get a chance. I remember you requested that, before.
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