Port Draw

My calendar is triple booked! I should be having a Public Services meeting, and I want to hear Northeastern Seminary's Vice President and Professor of Pastoral Ministries the Rev. Dr. Jack Connell speak at chapel today. I had also planned to work out at the Gulik Gym earlier now that I am finally getting over this cold.

But I do not work out. And I do not hear the Rev. Dr. or meet with my staff. Today I see Dr. Gerlach and then go for a port draw. Wednesday mornings are supposed to be my time off to do all this medical stuff. Wouldn't you think the library and the college could manage to book interesting stuff around my personal schedule?

The oncology nurse once told me I would grumble about having to come in for port draws, but until today, I was fine with it. Suddenly it begins to interfere with my life, my schedule, my plans. Can it be? Is it possible? Am I finally well enough to have returned to normal activity, the kind of normal where the medical stuff interferes? YES!!! It is true. I am exiting the Bexxar fog and becoming a non-patient, in more ways than one! Hurrah!

The nurse who drew my blood today has a son who attends Roberts. She saw my name tag (the one I forgot to take off) and asked where I work on campus. We compared acquaintances and found out that we intersect in several places. What fun to chat while she lay out the thousand tubes and antiscepticized my port, inserted the required sterile water, pulled out the blood, and cleansed it all nice and tidy.

She is considering Roberts' RN to BS program and I encourage her to do it. It's an excellent program and I know many of the instructors who are all wonderful. Well, perhaps it wasn't such an inconvenience to let go of other activities and come to the center once again. I met a delightful person, helped someone in a wheelchair get to where they needed to be, swore at a poky driver in the parking garage, bought a blueberry scone for a treat and got to be out in gorgeous weather.

Still, it would have been nice to have heard Jack. The call of the norm beckons me from the halls of the med center. I believe soon I will no longer respond to the med stuff, having become once again attuned to the heartbeat of everyday life.