August 4, 2023

I came home from work today around 4:30. Laid down on the bed intending to take the weight off my feet for a few minutes and woke up several hours later. I guess it’s the end of another work week full of the usual craziness of aging adults and their families, to be made even more fun this week as it’s my weekend on call. Things dealt with over the last few work days include a sixty something alcoholic in a shot house full of drifters who can no longer walk, a demented older woman who decided the best way to greet her sitters was with a hammer, a family who are demanding that we find some way to care for their bed bound dying relative other than through hospice services, and a chronic pain patient with whom I had the same lengthy conversation I have every six months or so on why increasing opioids to narcotizing levels is a really bad idea when you’re in your late eighties. It never ends. In some ways it feels like it’s gathering steam and rushing at us faster and faster. I don’t know if that’s the changes in mental and physical health courtesy of the pandemic or if my rather deep well of patience is finally starting to run dry. We shall see.

Speaking of the pandemic. Here’s the latest. It’s not easy to find good data these days what with the end of the emergency and the dissolution of central public health data collection back to the patchwork of fifty states 3,000 counties and 350 cities that make up the country. From what I have been able to piece together, the number of Covid cases has roughly doubled over the last month and seems to be on the increase. The most reliable testing these days is wastewater surveillance which can be done passively on populations and it seems to bear this out. Rates seem to be a bit higher in the southern US than the northern, likely due to the hot weather and people indoors in poorly ventilated public spaces trying to escape from the excessive heat. The good news is that even though the number of cases seems to be increasing substantially (and I hear of a friend testing positive pretty much on a daily basis), the number of hospitalizations for Covid and Covid complications hasn’t gone up significantly. The wall of immunizations and natural immunity from prior infection seems to be holding for now. Will it continue to hold? Who knows. I keep getting asked if another booster is warranted. The latest is that a fall booster is reasonable for those in older age groups or with immunocompromise. Not because there are nasty new variants making the rounds, but because the effectiveness of the vaccine seems to wane some with time and giving it a boost seems to help with overall protection. I’m currently planning on getting a boost in September for myself but I am watching various medical news sites to see if there’s better or updated information before I make a final decision.

One week, will it never be right? This time next week A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be up in front of its first paying audience. It’s coming together and there are some very good things starting to happen on stage and most of the cast are bringing their full energies to the proceedings. There are a few who need to spend the next few days with their noses buried in their books and a few others who need to get a little less distracted in rehearsal by non-show related things but that’s typical. I can see the show I want an audience to see coming to life within all of the extraneous issues we’ve had to deal with (injuries and illnesses, tech issues, missing pieces) and ultimately it’s going to be comic romp that it needs to be and which I think is close to Shakespeare’s original intent. He didn’t write it as a high falutin comedy of manners for the court, he wrote it as jolly good time for the groundlings. Next week will be the last few chances to bake the souffle and hope that it doesn’t fall flat when it gets pulled out of the oven.

I’m trying not to read too much into the political news of the moment. It’s become clear that a portion of the population has decided to reject science, rational thought, critical reasoning, and basic morality for some sort of primitive tribalism whose tenets and creed depend on the whims of a very small number of people with very high public profiles. They can continue to take over the various political apparatuses that make the country function but, when in the locales they do succeed in imposing their worst instincts, they start driving the educated and rational away, I wonder who they think are going to provide their medical services, run their power grids, keep their banking system operational and all of those other things that depend on science and reason. Faith can only take you so far. The exodus has begun from the universities and medical systems and other highly skilled employment disciplines of Florida and Texas. I wonder who they think they’re going to find to replace them? Given other actions, immigrants are out…

I’ve been asked to appear in a play late this month. I would usually say yest without hesitation but this one opens only two weeks after Midsummer and I don’t think I have enough time to learn the role what with everything going on at work. My sixty plus year old brain just doesn’t learn and retain lines as easily as it once did. I’ll have to take a look at it. If the line count isn’t too heavy and the blocking is relatively simple I just might manage it. Another one of those we shall sees. There seem to be a lot of those this evening.

I feel somnolence coming on again. I think it’s time for a handful of peanut M&Ms and some bad television. If I let myself sleep in tomorrow morning I may be back up to fighting strength. God knows when I’ll get the 19 progress notes unfinished from this week done but that’s an issue for another day.