October 29, 2023

I’ve been back for a week and you think life would be balancing itself out again, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way. First off, this was rehearsal week for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra chorus. This weekend’s Masterworks concert included the Faure Requiem. It’s not a difficult sing and, with the ASO chorus, the Samford University Chorus and the UAB Chorus all in the choral balcony at Jemison concert hall, my puny contributions weren’t going to amount to much at either sotto voce or full throttle. Two hundred voices is about as big as we get and when that many people belt out Dies Irae at fortissimo, it will make your hackles go up the way they should. I’ve now sung most of the big orchestral/choral Requiems. The one I’m missing is the Britten War Requiem which I imagine they’ll program some time in the next couple of years while I’m still an active singer. It did occupy every weeknight this past week on top of trying to catch up at work which made for some long days.

I am pretty much caught up at work. It took some doing on the VA side as I had several days of not being able to connect properly to the computer system from my home office. We all still have to work from home as they still have not completed the repairs to our building from the flood of several months ago. The rumor is that we will be back in place the second week of November but I learned long ago to distrust rumors in health care settings, especially when federal agencies are involved. I’ll be back at my desk when I’m back. I can’t say I particularly mind working from home as it’s only the paperwork part that has to be done here. My field visits continue as normal. The computer glitches did put me behind a couple of days but I think they’ve all been worked out. The magic solution was to carry my laptop into a VA facility and let it connect directly to their wi-fi. Apparently some needed patch or update sprang out of the ether and into its little electronic brain which could not be transmitted across my home network.

Reintroduction to UAB work life was a little smoother but it didn’t take long for the various pieces of the system to figure out I was back in the saddle and the inboxes, physical and electronic started to fill at a rapid pace. On line portal communication with ones provider, now an industry standard, is a mixed blessing. It really wasn’t used that much prior to the pandemic. The pandemic shifted everyone’s ability to visit healthcare in person and set up a reliance in patients on electronic communications systems – the ease with which this works from the patient end has changed behavior. In the past, patients and families would save up all their questions and concerns for the next appointment and they would come in and we would run their list. Most of the things on their list were usually not particularly worrisome but until there was the imprimatur of the doctor on the answer, it would be a concern. Now, as a question occurs, they fire off a portal message. I sometimes get three or four a week from the same household. Each one must be read triaged and. If it cannot be handled by staff through protocol, sent to me. I read them all – call sometimes, write answers (as succinctly as possible) sometimes, or give instructions to staff how to answer sometimes. It takes a while. The trouble is that most people seem to think that when they hit ‘send’, the message is downloaded into my brain automatically and that they should receive an instantaneous reply. And they send repeated messages when they don’t hear back right away. I will answer, but I may be busy with other patients, out in the field with the VA, or taking a bathroom break and will get to it when I get to it – which is often late in the day. As a tech savvier generation continues to age, this is only going to become more voluminous.

I have no artistic obligations set the next few weeks. This means I can finish reviewing the proof copy of Volume III of The Accidental Plague Diaries so we can announce a publication date. I’ll be glad that the project is done but in some ways, the writing of the books seems easier than the selling of the books. My publisher wants to see if we can move a few, now that the pandemic is starting to be visible in the rear view mirror of societal consciousness and we can read and think about it with less of an immediate negative emotional response. So, if any of you have connections in the book/literary world and want me to do a podcast, book discussion with a book club, interview, signing event, or anything else of the type, slip into my DMs as the kids say. Still don’t know what comes next.

Trying to track what’s happening with Covid in real time has become more and more difficult as fewer and fewer media outlets of any stripe are providing any coverage. I’m glad we all feel that the long nightmare is behind us but I remain unconvinced that we’ve heard the last of Covid. It continues to develop new variants. For the last couple of years, they’ve all been subspecies of omicron but that could change. The most recent variant, HV.1, is spreading rapidly as detected by wastewater surveillance. It doesn’t seem to be causing more virulent disease than other omicrons but every time a new variant emerges, the gods roll the dice and humanity will eventually fail its saving throw. The issue with HV.1 is that it seems to be pretty nimble at evading vaccination immunity from the older immunizations and boosters. The current booster, which became available in late September, seems to do pretty well against it but only about 3.5% of the US population that could benefit from it has gotten it. The expiration of the emergency has thrown back manufacture and distribution on the usual systems without governmental interference and they seem to be working as well as everything else in the health system. If we get a variant that causes really serious issues, we may only have weeks to get an updated vaccine in place and the politicization of immunizations will almost certainly prevent that from happening in our current political climate. People will get sick and die who need not. It’s all very depressing when I think about it too much.