A collection of living

Writing inspiration has been scarce the last while. It seems like I only wrote about work for the last four months and I thought it might be getting monotonous. My job is a major part of my life though, so it will probably continue to come up.

At the end of May I had a week of vacation at home. It was so wonderful to not have a schedule or any place to go! By the end of vacation, I was ready to quit my job and stay at home. However, working does bring a sense of satisfaction and expands my life. I've felt more appreciated at my job the last three years than any other job I've had. Pharmacy seems to be a good fit for me, although I'm still wondering if I want to stay in the same position for the rest of my career. 

During the week I was off I spent a lot of time working in my flower gardens. Digging up rocks for flower bed edging, mulching, and fertilizing plants in the warm sun was just what I needed after weeks of mask-wearing and being around sick people. I got a recipe from a friend for a most delicious drink that hit the spot on those hot days. The recipe comes from Southern Living. If you like tart, sweet, slightly fermented drinks, you'll probably enjoy this raspberry shrub. 

Here's my take on a book I read recently. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a work of speculative fiction about a flu-like plague that wipes out most of humanity. Some of the language used, like quarantine and unprecedented, was eerily like the times we've been living in. In the book, the world as we know it quickly becomes obsolete. Survivors rely on horses for transportation and hunt deer for food. People die from infected cuts and easily treatable diseases because there are no doctors or medicine. If you are a fearful person who worries about things like this happening, reading Station Eleven is probably not a good idea. Others I know would enjoy this book.

Since I can't seem to blog without mentioning my job, here's what's been going on at work. Our COVID numbers have steadily dropped off over the last few weeks. Now we're down to 3 or 4 positive patients, surgeries have resumed, and we're trying to get back to normal as much as possible. We still get our temperature taken every time we come to work and wear masks at all times. I think some of the changes we've seen because of COVID are here to stay, and we might never go back to life exactly how we knew it. It's likely there will be waves of this virus in the foreseeable future, and maybe times of quarantine again. Not to sound negative, but if we accept that's the way it will likely be, it might be easier to adapt.

Changes are happening in the pharmacy, too. A construction project has been in the works for the last several years, and after many delays, it finally started. The project has taken away our IV room and a large chunk of pharmacy space, and we all try to work around loud noise and blocked off areas. Our director and manager spent a huge amount of time figuring out how to operate in these circumstances. A space that was an office has been turned into a segregated compounding area, where we have a two foot hood to make any IV's that have to be made on demand or can't be ordered pre-made. There is also a fairly large freezer in this small space which stores all the IV's we normally batch but are now getting frozen pre-mixed. It puts off quite a lot of heat, combining with little ventilation and full sterile garb to create a toasty, slightly claustrophobic situation. There is a fully garbed person in the segregated compounding area (SCA) from approximately 5:00 am - 3:30 pm. I've been spending around four hours a day in there. After a whole week of that, I was SO ready for the weekend! I've had the luxury of more than one nap today, 😊 even though there's much I could be doing around the house.