This morning is like most mornings. I’m up at six o’clock, dress, wake the children, fix breakfast, drop kids at school and settle in at the Danville Urologic Clinic for my work as a physician. It is a clinic day filled with check-ups for peritoneal dialysis patients. Between patients while dictating the necessary progress note I look up. In the sweep of my vision I focus on the open door to the dirty linen room of the dialysis unit. It is a small white room with a utility sink, counter, cabinets, laundry hamper and stacked washer and dryer. With a pause of my gaze THE THOUGHT rushes in before logical reasoning can intervene. “I could do my laundry here in between seeing patients,” I muse. I have a flash vision of serenely removing warm towels from the basket and folding them while waiting for the next patient to be weighed-in. Then I am back to reality and the ridiculous idea makes me smile.
Even as I smile I know there is a cluster of my neurons devoted entirely to the smooth integration of my home and work life. I am open to the possibility that anyone I interact with during my work day has the potential to impact my at-home needs. My garden flourishes with seeds and slips donated from patients who have tended hundreds of gardens in their 80 years. Over lunch the clinic dietitian offers valuable advice on which low-fat ice cream tastes best. I overhear the nurses during a quiet moment discussing the current bargains at Value City. I save hours of shopping time by learning to go to Value City only on Thursday at 9:30 am after the truck with new merchandise has arrived, but before the crowds come.
Despite my best efforts to quash my background operations I cannot stop the data stream. I’ll be focused on that physical exam and be in the midst of identifying heart sounds and in a millisecond I have a dinner plan come and go-“taco salad…stop by the store…ground beef and taco cheese.” I’ll be flipping through the patient chart reviewing lab data and-zip- an important list item will flash across my consciousness-“Don’t forget to stop by the bookstore for the birthday present for Kirk’s party tomorrow.”
In the five minute walk from the hospital to the clinic I can plan an entire week including meal preparation.
Someday the intermesh of my lives will be complete. I will knock on the patient exam room door, enter and greet my next patient, “Hello, Mr. Jones. What can I do for you today? You have a sore toe? Take off your socks and shoes and let’s have a look. Tsk, tsk, tsk…those socks are pretty dirty. Here let me take them for you. I’m just putting in a load of whites. I’ll have those washed up and ready to go before the ink dries on that prescription!”