01 December 2006

Even and Odd





My son taught me how I could tell the difference between even and odd yesterday. He said that all I had to do was to count out little pirates and then combine them into pairs. If someone was left over, that meant the number was odd, but if everyone was in a pair, it was even. Why couldn't I have learned even and odd that way!?
I find that working in a modern hospital, there are medical challenges, and administrative challenges. I completely prefer the medical ones! I am far happier fighting through a long and difficult operation than I am spending the morning in meetings, like I did today. We have an opportunity to make our hospital better for children. At these meetings, I am surrounded by brilliant doctors from every imaginable specialty of care for children, and it is amazing that with all that brainpower, we still struggle to make progress. That's the kind of stuff they didn't teach me about in medical school.
So, as I was leaving a two hour meeting, I ran into the parent of one of my patients who was trying to get a test scheduled for her child. I took her straight to my friend on the inside, and helped her take care of it without waiting on hold or talking to a machine. It was the most usefull thing I got done all day!
B and I both have a fencing tournement coming up! Well, he's young, so it is no big deal. But my old joints have a hard enough time getting through a workout! I'll probably fall apart, but I'll let you know how it goes. Sometimes in practice I feel like Kramer in the Seinfeld episode when he was taking a karate class with a class of children over whom he towered. However, those youngsters are much faster than me so I think it evens it out!
Take care, be mellow, and love life!
C