Things I Think by Gary Tetz
I fancy myself a brave and intrepid hiker, and a couple weeks ago chose a particularly daunting trail that was rumored to lead to some of the best possible views of Mount Hood, the 11,249-foot peak that towers over Portland, OR. The trailhead was enveloped in fog when I arrived, but with a 3,000-foot elevation…
While walking reluctantly into our place of long-term care employment yesterday, a colleague and I started talking sarcastically about how delighted we were to be alive and at work. We didn’t mean a word of it, and there was a lot of laughter and eye-rolling as we mockingly added items to our verbal gratefulness list. …
Well, here we go again. Within long-term care especially, the shock and discouragement of the delta variant and the havoc it’s wreaking on those we care for and work beside is pervasive and demoralizing. Just before writing this, I made the mistake of logging on to Facebook, and the insanity the vaccines and mask mandates…
Though Genesis HealthCare is making vaccinations for long-term care workers mandatory, I’m not so foolish as to reveal my own true feelings about the requirement. I fear the warring ghosts of liberty and communal responsibility would visit me late at night, reading hauntingly from the comment section below this post. On some issues, I’m more…
I’m a slow and resistant student in the classroom of life. And perhaps the truth I face most reluctantly is how unwelcome and painful challenges teach lessons that I probably wouldn’t learn any other way. If you’re like me, at your lowest moments you’ve felt the intense desire to slap anyone who waltzes in, puts…
There’s a hopeful phrase we started hearing a lot from long-term care leaders, residents and staff when the vaccines first arrived—“a light at the end of the tunnel.” Invariably some wise-guy or gal would pipe up with, “Yeah, let’s hope it’s not a train.” Fast-forward to one of my first road trips in a post-lockdown…
One thing the pandemic has done is put everything in perspective. When 97.2% of long-term care news over the past 18 months has been about the horrors of COVID-19, it’s a breath of fresh air to instead see a headline about the horrors of obstructive sleep apnea. It’s not good news, of course, just less…
One of many puzzling memories from my childhood is witnessing my father’s failed attempt late one dark Canadian night to convince an unwilling horse to walk up a rickety ramp into the back of our pickup truck. Tugging from the front didn’t work. Prodding from the back was equally ineffective. Multiple people pulling and pushing…
I don’t want to put a hex on the situation with a premature celebration, but the downward trajectory of the pandemic makes it appear that long-term care people can finally perhaps maybe start discretely considering the conceivable possibility of potentially mulling over the notion of feasibly working someday in a facility without wearing a mask. …
Now that the pandemic is easing, one of my best ideas is probably never going to get the chance it deserves. It involves using the power of natural law to make sure an unvaccinated long-term care resident can’t come to harm from being in close proximity with an unvaccinated guest. When that vaccine-hesitant visitor arrives…
Self-compassion isn’t something I do very well. That’s probably because I was born in Canada, and when the doctor slapped my wrinkled baby butt, I said, “Sorry!” instead of crying. While American children started the school day reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, we stood with our hands over our hearts and chanted, “For the rest…
Has the “fog of late pandemic” hit you? Even if it has, you’re above it.
One thing I’ve learned in my mostly unsuccessful lifelong quest to get enough sleep is that nothing helps more than feeling under pressure to do so. So learning in McKnight’s that extra sleep reduced healthcare workers’ risk of getting COVID-19 was just the incentive I needed. Actually, not. Medical research over the past decade or…
So, how are you coping, compared to the other pandemics you’ve had to contend with?
After mocking wearers of Apple watches not so long ago, citing an annoying interaction that took place in a nursing home lobby, I finally got one myself. I realize this makes me a hypocrite, and I’m completely okay with that. Like Frodo Baggins before me, I’ve now become obsessed with the rings. If you don’t…
Should we follow “the Golden Rule” and treat others the way we would want to be treated? In a word, no.
“Almost done,” the doctor assured me, as she aimed her laser at my right eye. Then over the next 20 minutes, she said it several more times. By then I knew it was all a cruel deception, meant to distract me from the fact that a white-hot beam of light was pummeling one of my…
I always thought it was only good for destroying the world, but now I’m here to boldly predict that social media will ultimately save us. After the horrors we’ve been through these past few years with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, you probably didn’t see that hypothesis coming. But here’s how it’s going to happen: by…
This is a good time to focus on something undeniably positive that’s happening in our own profession.
It’s just a box. Not that different from the one that will probably show up on your doorstep or mine today, maybe stuffed with holiday gifts or toilet paper. So why am I feeling a little choked up standing here staring at it? This wave of sudden emotion makes no sense. Usually I associate a…
