Paul Revere rides again
Where is Paul Revere when we need him? It seems like he should be racing through every hamlet and long-term care facility in America shrieking, “The vaccine is coming! The vaccine is coming!”
Things I Think by Gary Tetz
A bear of very little brain
I can’t tell you the peace I feel from setting aside the unknowns of the election and the incomprehensible intricacies of delivering vaccines to long-term care facilities to consider our economic future.
You’ve got a friend
Sometimes I have to stretch to recite something joyful to share from the past week, as is requested at one of our regular work meetings. But this week, the task was easy.
Get up, Bambi
At this point, we dare not muse aloud about what else could possibly go wrong in 2020. It’s no longer about the second shoe dropping. We appear to be dealing with an evil centipede who still has at least 98 more.
What the fires can’t destroy
With a pandemic continuing unabated, and now hurricanes, floods and wildfires ravaging large swaths of the nation, I don’t know how many more apocalyptic horsemen the long-term care profession is slated to face or can withstand.
It’s raining chocolate — hallelujah!
How fondly I remember the old days, pre-2020, when Googling “long-term care news” yielded different results
Waiting for the ice cream truck
There aren’t enough covers to pull over my head anymore.
Finding joy in the grueling now
Finding joy in the difference you make is perhaps all the inspiration any of us needs.
Exhale, with love
How are those masks working out for you? My glasses are as perpetually fogged as a car windshield after prom, and I do enjoy sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher.
Quoth the Raven
I consider it an ominous omen. Yesterday on my walk, I was attacked by a crow — three times. Or it might have been a raven. I can’t tell the difference.
Bad news for bald administrators
It turns out there might be one type of administrator who is more personally susceptible to this vile virus now plaguing humanity than any other.
The incredible shrinking brain
For those of you seeking a different coping path through this pandemic, might I suggest walking, gardening, swimming or dancing. I say this because a new preliminary study suggests that people who do those things regularly have bigger brains.
Masks change everything
Now that small respiratory droplets created by human speech have been found to hang out in the air for more than eight minutes, requiring masks in long-term care and any other setting where people congregate seems like a no-brainer.
Coping with COVID-19, the beard and Chuck Norris
While long-term care workers I’ve interviewed have been grateful and positive during the COVID-19 pandemic, my coping mechanisms could be considered somewhat less constructive and helpful.
Time to end this handshake insanity
To shake someone’s hand is to say, “I don’t know much about you, but I choose to embrace every bad hygienic choice you’ve made today.”
Courage is contagious
Facility staff have no idea if catching COVID-19 will be merely an annoyance or a life-threatening battle, a parking ticket or a death sentence. But still, they go.
Bad news on the doorstep
Compared to shoppers tearing apart a pallet of toilet paper, our facility staff have been Buddhas in scrubs during the recent pandemic. But even they aren’t the most inspiring out of all of this.
Face touching for dummies
Can you remember a public health directive than “don’t touch your face” that’s ever been more simple, clear and science-based, yet more difficult to execute? I can’t.
Love in the air
Love was in the air this Valentine’s Day, and in the days before and after. Let me tell you the ways.
Tempets in a typo
Sometimes a writer has to take a principled stand no matter how oxymoronic that might sound. That’s why today, without fear of reprisal, I want to talk about typos.
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