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Let's Hear It For Nurses

 As I write this, it's Saturday morning. I'm watching a Premier League soccer game.  It has been twenty-four hours since I rolled into the recovery area of the hospital operation theater. Dr. Meyer and his pit crew, like beave of nurses and technicians, have repaired my hernia. By the way, one of the nurses referred to the nurses gathering around me, hooking me up to various contraptions and aiding the doctor in setting up his equipment as 'the pit crew.'

These people are talented, professional, and damn it, just plain nice. I asked my room nurse Tracy about the morale since COVID is beginning to slow down. She explained that they didn't see COVID patients in their department. (I had to take a COVID test to be operated on.) But it was apparent that many elective surgeries were being delayed by patients not wanting to go to the hospital for fear of contracting the virus. Tracy also pointed out they were getting an above-average amount of referrals from the ER. Unfortunately, these patients often were the ones avoiding surgery, and they waited too long. In some cases, it was a fatal decision.

As many of you remember, I was in rehab from November 2019 through March 2020 with an infection that required surgery to remove my artificial knee and adminstered intravenous antibiotic treatments. This was when I became a fan of medical staff people. Many of them work hard for little pay, and I can only imagine the hours of overtime and the grief these folks endured with COVID.  Many of these folks do what they do to comfort and care for the sick. Unfortunately, some people die, and for medical staff, it can feel like a failure. When there are a lot of people dying, it must be hell.

I thought I'd share one of my attempts at pencil sketching.




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