Things I Think by Gary Tetz
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…
Now that vaccines really are imminent and long-term care staff and residents look to be first in line, you’re probably holding your breath, desperately longing for an answer to the most important question of all: What does Gary Tetz think I should do? That’s completely normal. I’m what the kids call an influencer, so it…
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!”
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.
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.
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.
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.
How fondly I remember the old days, pre-2020, when Googling “long-term care news” yielded different results
