I am halfway through my vacation and am finally feeling up to writing. It's been really nice so far. Lots of sleep, snuggling, swimming, cooking, puzzling, reading. Lots of just staring at the horizon and wondering how in the hell I got to 39 years of age so quickly. And plenty of wondering if I've done enough to show for that number.
Significantly, I am taking a break from the other 11 months. I am taking a break from:
* my alarm clock
* constant fatigue
* ungrateful patients who make me work for free until 11 AM (which is when I actually start getting paid for what I do)
* difficult airways and back-to-back epidural placements
* surgeons with endless add-ons
* nurses who think room air contains adequate oxygen for desaturating patients or announce loudly that if they were "anesthesia" they'd throw their bodies in front of the OR door rather than let a particular complicated patient be brought to the operating room or think they know better than the rest of us how to handle acute crises.
* 2 AM pages I get because someone else forgot to put the right orders for a patient.
* the feeling I get in my own neighborhood that I, or rather we, live there but don't quite belong.
* the constant anxiety I feel that I'm not doing enough, in both quantity and quality, at work and at home.
All those moments are in the past and exactly 305 miles away. Now I am in a time and space of healing and rest. I'm eating food from the sea and local gardens. I'll listen to waves crash, sea grass rustle and the constant chatter of my children. Now I'll inhale the scent of the ocean, salty and fishy and soothing, and just be.
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