On Awkwardness

I will always be an awkward child at heart.  There was a golden window in childhood where I didn't know that I was.  I thought I was confident and outgoing and cutting edge.  But, as it turns out, when you go to an itty bitty church school in the rural outskirts of New Mexico where your class size is, um, 8.... your perceptions of your social abilities can be a tad bit skewed.  So I soon found myself at a "large" high school (class size 84!!!) where wearing a unique array of thrift store garb was not considered cutting edge so much as weird, and where being a star Bible Quizzer (that's right ya'll!) wasn't as much of a bragging right as I might have hoped. And there I learned the ugly truth. My older brother (who has never suffered from the plight of the awkward) tried the best he could.  His interventions ranged from subtle (brand name clothes left on my bed) to overt ("you're not actually going to wear that are you??") 

It took me about two years to finally adapt to this new social setting.  Slowly I learned to dress from the right stores. Figured out that the tightly combed back hair in a straight forward bun wasn't the way to roll in high school (weird, right?).  Transitioned my extra curriculars from memorizing large sections of the Bible to running track.  And finally, by my senior year, I reached the pinnacle of social success. The most popular boy in my class proclaimed me "actually pretty cool".  Doesn't get better than that, folks.

I wish I could say that my awkward tendencies disappeared at that point. But dodge them as I might, they always sneak up on me.  Just when I start to think I've outgrown it, left those knobby kneed days behind me, something happens that reminds me no matter where you go or how many years or kids you tag on, you're always you. Profound, I know.

In some ways, I'm thankful for my awkward years.  Maybe if I had been as cool as I wished when I wished it I would have gone on more dates.  And I'd probably have more baggage.  Maybe I would have gained a better fashion sense instead of wisdom.  Maybe I wouldn't have married my best friend who also spent some time acquainted with awkwardness.   I'm not sure how these tag along tendencies benefit me now, but I know that often times things that seem like a handicap can turn out being a grace.  Because where we are strong we are often proud, whereas our weaknesses teach us humility. And compassion.

Dying to be Satisfied

I read an interesting article the other day about a correlation between very high patient satisfaction scores and poor patient outcomes.  Meaning that there seems to be a link between people who rate their experience at a hospital as super great and things not going so great for them.  Sounds odd on the surface.  But the researchers conclusions had to do with the fact that what people want isn't always what is good for them, and if you give it to them anyways, they may be happy with you for it and pay the price.

For example.  Antibiotics don't treat viral infections. Like the majority of cases of bronchitis. But if you come to the ER and have even what sounds like it's most likely viral bronchitis, you're going home with a script for antibiotics. Why?  You came all that way, you waited in the waiting room, you told us in great detail how miserable you are, and you are not going to be happy with a doctor who tells you to keep on taking over the counters for symptom relief, which you were already doing before you incurred a 150$ ER copay.  And you will mark a low box for customer satisfaction, even though you were treated appropriately.  But if your doctor gives you a prescription, your trip feels vindicated. You have bronchitis for crying out loud and now you will finally be treated and cured with the magic pills. Oh, and get a yeast infection. Oh, and contribute to antibiotic resistant mega-bugs.  But you will be marking the high box for how satisfied you were with your care.

It makes me think a lot about parenting.  A parent's job is to teach a child what is good for them because they don't know it themselves yet.  The parents knows more about how the world really works and what their kid needs to do to survive and thrive.  If my kids were filling out surveys about how satisfied they are with my parenting, you can bet they'd be checking more top boxes if I pushed bedtime back, allowed some jelly beans for breakfast and oreos for lunch and made all milk the chocolate variety, and if I never made them share their toys or pick up after themselves.  And then they'd turn into tired, overweight, diabetic, entitled, lazy shmucks. But in the process of becoming such, their parent satisfaction scores would soar.  What if we allowed that to drive how we parent our kids?

Not that patients are like children.  But they come to medical professionals because we know stuff about medicine and the body that the average person doesn't know.  And we are responsible to use that knowledge to help people get what they really need - even when they are convinced it's something else.  Even when they storm that they are not getting the care they deserve because you won't treat something with a medicine that won't work anyway or expose them to radiation that they really don't need even though they think they do and will feel like you were very thorough for doing it.  Even when doing the right thing will result in people being less satisfied with you.  Because a lot of times that's the way it goes.  Take Good Friday.

The Eye Roll

Nurses and other healthcare workers experience some of the most ridiculous sides of the human beast.  Things that naturally provoke the single eyebrow arch and the "Are you kidding me?" stare.  Were we comedians and satirists, our flow of material would be steady.  But since we [generally] strive to at least project nonjudgmental concern, we have developed  a highly adapted skill.  The psychological eye roll.  While our face may be stoic and eyebrows knotted in perceptible concern, there are times our optic nerves are doing log rolls as we try suppress the reaction a confrontation with ridiculousness wants to make dance across our features.

Since the best treatment is prevention and education, let me share with you a few of the scenarios that were you to perform, would most certainly be evoking from your nurse or doctor the psychological eye roll.

1. If you are thirty and you are a man and your mama is hovering protectively over your gurney and alerting the nurse every time you get a new belly pain - eye roll.

2. Anyone who rates their pain above 10 on the 1-10 scale.  You only get get 10. You don't get 11. You don't get 14. And you certainly don't get 100.  As a co worker put it, Are you being lit on fire while someone simultaneously crushes your femurs? No? Then your pain isn't a 14/10. Eye roll.

3. If you collapse at the front desk and we rush you back to a room by a gurney where we discover your chief complaint is menstrual cramps.... eye roll.

4. Anyone in their 20s who "collapses" in the waiting room and does not also have an organ that just ruptured, significant blood loss, or a bone showing... eye roll.

5. An anguished cry for 'Help, help, somebody help me!' followed by a teary request for water, blankets, or pillows. Eye roll.

6. If you come in for a sprained ankle on a busy night and then angrily inform the staff that you could have died in the waiting room and no one would have known. Eeeeye roll.

7. You hurt your knee/ankle/wrist/pinky at the mall and can think of no other way to get treatment than to call an ambulance. Eye roll.

8. You did not put that lotion bottle in your own rectum, you somehow sat on it just wrong while claiming your God given right to walk around your own house naked! Chuckle. Then eye roll.

The list could go on, but I'll stop there. Try as I might to have only compassion and concern in my heart for all patients... Lord knows I'm only human. And every now and then my eyes must roll or my sanity surely will.

Tools and Treasures

I recently finished reading a short little book by a mom with a few more kids than me and a lot more wisdom.  In one chapter she talked about how God has given us our bodies as tools to be used not treasures to be forever preserved.  And it got me thinking about the other things in my life that are tools, but I treat as treasures.

For example.  I wish there wasn't a constant flow of food particles appearing on my floor.  I wish there wasn't milk drips and bugger smears on my couch.  I wish there wasn't mashed up goldfish and raisin carnage on the seats and floor of my car.  I wish my body could get more of the precious sleep (and exercise) that it so desperately needs.  But in order for those wishes to be granted, I'd have to sacrifice one very big thing.

My family.  I'm often frustrated that I can't have a house that's maintainable looking clean and orderly.  That my furniture has taken a toddler sized beating. That I have bags under my eyes.  And sometimes I take that out on my little family.  I forget that my house is just a tool. A place for us to stay and a backdrop for the things that really matter to happen. Like teaching and guiding and learning and loving.  I should keep it clean so that it's livable and enjoyable, but not stress out about it when it's just not possible.  Same with my car.  Same with my body. 

But instead I find myself often treating my tools as treasures and my treasures as inconveniences.  As things that mess up my tools.  How foolish.  When the time comes to give an account of my life I hope I can say that I spent myself on the things that should be treasured.  Not that I wasted it worshiping my tools.