My Middle Name Means "Grace"

You might be #blessed, if you have time between a Zoom meeting and your next patient for a snack, and your clinic has not only ice cream in the break room freezer but multiple toppings (featured here: peanut butter brittle and chocolate sprinkles; in the cupboard: 2.25 jars of caramel sauce). My clinical load is currently light, as I am still building up my panel. The few patients I see are a mix of new people establishing care with me and my colleagues' patients who need an ED or hospital followup, have an acute complaint, or want medications re-prescribed.

What with various hiccups in my on-boarding--from being allowed to bill in the electronic medical record to getting insurance for Dear Husband--it's been a somewhat anticlimactic start to my attendinghood. Thank goodness my colleagues have been kind and welcoming, and only one patient has wondered whether I'm a trainee so far.

I'm still spending significant time every day studying for my second, pediatric board exam in the middle of October. One of the question writers' favorite genres is "guess this child's age based on what she can/not do." I wrote a spoof:

A patient wakes up at 11am and spends an hour on her phone. She changes her pajamas before eating leftover potstickers and an ice cream sandwich at 2pm. She thinks about contacting the DMV to renew her license but does not. She watches 11.35 hours of Netflix before falling asleep on the couch. How old is this patient?

A. 16, not quite an adult
B. 36, adults well
C. 46, should know better
D. 76, doesn't care

The answer is, E. All of the above. We're in the middle of a pandemic, and most people are doing the best they can, so maybe change out of your judge-y pajamas and extend a little more grace to yourself and the people around you.

True story: I've mean meditating so much on this that if I were to get my first tattoo, I have been considering the word "grace" in script on the back of my right hand, so that I would literally be offering grace to everyone I meet. Except, I couldn't go to an ink parlor right now (see: COVID). And, who shakes hands now these days anyway? (See: COVID.)