Maskless with an infant for the first time since COVID

Work has picked up the pace

And I, with no mask on my face,

In a very short while

I got an infant to smile

When my head came into their space.

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1 year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  I followed 3 years Community Health Center work with more travel and adventures in temporary positions in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  2019 included hospitalist work in my home town and rural medicine in northern British Columbia.  Since the pandemic started, I did 10 months of telemedicine in my basement, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in southeast Iowa, visited family, attended funerals, and worked as a contractor for the Veterans Administration in South Dakota. I currently hold a part-time position in northwest Iowa, reasonably close to home.

My pace of work picked up this week, and I attended 10 patients today, the youngest less than 6 months old. 

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, I looked at an infant without my mask.  It was a joy to use my entire face to smile at a baby who grinned in response, from face to toes.

I used Google Images educationally to explain an earache, a backache, a shoulder injury, and an eye problem. 

The passing months bring more repeat business.  I usually don’t recognize names because I work skillfully and hard to forget them as soon as possible (in order to safeguard privacy).  Because the mask mandate just lifted, I don’t recognize faces, either. 

Fortunately, I make good notes. 

As this continuity of care stretches on I get to see the Parkinsonian patients wake up and the depressed patients come around.  I also see the alcoholics and tobacco addicts struggle.  I frequently remind the staff that perfect people don’t come to see us or work with us.  I push myself harder than anyone away from judging the patients; my reward when I walk out of the clinic is more energy, and incrementally more success with the patients. 

At the end of the day, I went cycling.  I forgot my bike shoes at home, or maybe I figured the weather would be too cold.  But we had temps in the 70s, I have my bicycling shorts and my pump.  My work boots would not clip into my cleats, but that didn’t stop me from going out into a 30 MPH hot south wind, struggling in 2^nd gear for two miles before turning around and rocketing back in top gear.

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My intended return to northern British Columbia hit the snags of multiple committees needing to sequentially approve my reappointment.  I asked for a time frame, and the bureaucracy would give me no more precise an answer than “several months.” 

To use an analogy from fishing, I put my lines back in the water.

While I review nibbles from sites in North Dakota, Alaska, and Pittsburgh, I took the certainty of extending my current position by 6 weeks, through to the end of the year.