Friday, February 17, 2006

Points of order...

First...i'm nearly healthy again! I don't have much energy left yet but i managed to make it through two days with only a single dose of day time cold medicine each day and last night no night time cold meds. Yeah!

Second, to all of you for your great comments yesterday. I didn't expect the response I got from what I thought was a simple post. Thank you for all the great insight and wonderful comments. Just to clarify though, I'm not a doc. I'm a physician assistant, fortunate to practice in a state where there isn't much difference between docs and PAs so I get do quite a bit.

Lastly...what I really want to post about. SELF ABSORPTION

When i get sick I become easily irritated and very hypersensitive to things around me. Things I would normally not think twice about irk me. When I notice these things I start to ponder them. So you get to listen to what I have come up with.

Ever notice how Self-absorbed we have become as a society? I'm not talking about arrogance. I'm talking about the rush everyone seems to be in and the lack of attention people pay to their surroundings. This has led me to be mucho frustrated in the last couple weeks since my temper was short to start with. I have shouted "IDIOT!" numerous times while driving, "umphed" loudly in hallways/doorways, and rolled my eyes not so subtly more than once.

Example: Walking in the mall today, you would not believe how many people just cut in front of others in wide, spacious hallways. It is 20 below zero here today so not that many people were out and about. But in the rush to get to here there or the other place, I had several people just flat out step in my path without evening realizing it to say excuse me.

Example: I park in a parking ramp. It's a 7 level building with two types of parking; always open and not always open. There are a limited number of spaces that must remain unoccupied from 1:00-1:30 pm in order to allow the late shift workers to have spaces available to them. These are on the first three levels. in the morning, people will putz there way past these spaces knowing full well they can't park there. Annoying...But even more annoying. At 6:50 AM when the largest number of people are arriving in the ramp there will be without fail one person on level 4 or 5 that decides to stop and wait for someone getting off the night shift to back out of a spot completely oblivious to the 20 cars backed up behind them! Focused on their own need to park, they "forget" others are jamming up behind them all the way to the entrance.

Example: Another work place example. We have an employee cafeteria in the basement level of our building. There are peak hours and in health care "lunch" is sometimes optional so you grab it when you can grab it. There is a stair case or an elevator. I use the staircase because my office is on the first floor. There are four doors involved in getting from that level to the cafeteria. On the way up, with your hands full of food two of the doors are easily pushed forward with your hip. However, the top two doors have a handle which you must grasp and pull towards you. I can not believe how many people will push through those doors from the other side with their head down, not paying attention to the poor soul standing just about to grab the handle with one hand while precipitously balancing food containers in the other on the other side. I have nearly had my nose broke by this type more than once, let alone found my beverage sloshing down my front as I spin out of their way.

Example: Elevators come up and go down. When one stops there is a two way flow of traffic. Get on, get off. People DO NOT wait to go in an orderly fashion. More than once I have been about to step around the opening door to get off and had an eager beaver plow into me trying to get out. Please wait the nanosecond it takes to see if anyone is moving in front of you to get on or off.

last example: driving. where to begin...in the age of cell phones, pagers, shuttling kids, get there, get there, get there faster all courtesy has been lost on freeways, sidestreets and backroads. We got 7-10 inches of snow in the area yesterday so road conditions are dicey to say the least. Stopping and going take more effort. But without fail today as I was running errands I had to slam my gears down to avoid hitting the breaks because people pulled out with bad timing or this that or the other thing. That's just one small driving example, that in itself could be a whole other post.

Now, I'm not admitting to being guilt free of this. Just last week when I was first starting to get sick I had to go to the grocery store. i was uber tired, cranky and just wanted to get my cold meds and leave. I was pulling up in front of the grocery store, saw a couple about to cross at the crosswalk and I just cruised through it. The man made some obscene gesture, I mumbled I'm sorry under my breath knowing that I had committed one of my own pet peeves but I just didn't care because I felt so bad and only had me in mind.

my point is this...take the time to be cognizant of one's surroundings. Notice where you are in space. Pause long enough to "think" about what your actions might be doing to others. Try to slow the bustle and be aware.

Happy TGIF!

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