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Keeping Your Chin up in the Emergency Room
| Guest post by: Deborah Kimmett |
Article Overview: I got labelled urgent, which isn’t as fast as it sounds. I sat there so long that someone asked me if I was an organ donor.
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Free Download - FIVE WAYS TO GET YOUR SENSE OF HUMOUR BACK By Deborah Kimmett |
Keeping Your Chin up in the Emergency Room
On the sixth day of January this year, I had an epiphany. I decided to
be a better person. I decided to be a person who helps. I had just turned 50
and I thought, now that I am getting older, I had better start cramming for my
finals. Besides, I was sick of just writing a cheque for charity and buying
cheese from the school kids. I wanted hands-on helping. So I went to a local
café to ponder how I could save the world. I ordered fair trade coffee but the
barista told me they didn’t have any. So, I sat there drinking my $4 unfair
trade caramel macchiato and thinking about all the things I would do to help
the downtrodden when a guy sat down beside me. He started playing a very noisy
game on his cell phone. I tried to ignore him and focus on what Bono or Bob Geldof
would do in this situation. And then I got thinking, “Which one is cuter? Bob
or Bono? Bob? Bono?”
I thought of hot coffee. Hot men. Hot coffee. Hot men. And the guy kept
beeping his phone and I was getting ticked off, so I started doing a chant I learned
at Hot Yoga. I said Namaste. Bless him.
Beep.
Bless
him.
Beep.
BEEEEEEEEEEEP
him.
Beep.
Finally,
I turned to him and said, “Will you please SHUT UP! I am trying to be a
do-gooder.
No,
I didn’t really say that. After all, what if he didn’t like me? But I did start
to question how I would ever deal with warlords if I couldn’t handle a few
beeps from a cell phone.
I
This
existential pondering caused me to have a serious anxiety attack. No, I
have that backwards. I thought I was having a heart attack, called 911, and
when I got to the emergency room I saw the wait time, and then I had the anxiety attack. I got labelled urgent, which isn’t
as fast as it sounds. I sat there so long that someone asked me if I was an
organ donor. But that’s not my point. My point is that the heart of any
hospital is the volunteers (and maybe the cardiac surgeons).
This
is when I met Amiel, a blue-haired woman wheeling a silver coffee cart. Amiel
on Wheels. She was the quintessential volunteer. Over a couple of Peek Freans
and water passing for coffee, she informed me that she had joined the hospital
volunteer team in 1975. It was $2 a year and she only did it for the free
volunteer luncheon. Over her career as a volunteer, she said she’s come to love
helping others, but sadly, she confessed that she has seen many changes in
charity work over the years. It’s getting harder and harder to help people,
with more germs, more fears and more rules.
For
instance, with the new privacy act, she’s not allowed to tell anyone outside
the hospital who’s staying there. That’s crazy. Think about it. Why would an
85-year-old woman risk breaking a hip if she couldn’t bring back a little
gossip to the seniors’ centre?
I
don’t know if it was Amiel or the 40-per-cent oxygen I was huffing, but my
breathing settled and that’s when I had my second epiphany. I wasn’t supposed
to go to Africa. Sure, I was to think globally, but I had to act locally. I was
being called to be a hospital volunteer. Of course, I could never work in the
emergency ward, not where people are bleeding, or complaining, or throwing up
because puking makes me gag. And I’d never help with patients; I can’t sing
Christmas carols or sponge-bath dirty old men. No, I couldn’t do that, but I
could use my humour. I could be Patch Adams. I could make jokes in the coffee
room with the First Response Team. (Which are cuter: cops or First Response
guys?)
In
a flush of excitement, I announced my intentions to Amiel and in a second her
face turned to stone. She looked like I had just announced McCoy’s bus trip to
Branson, Missouri, had been cancelled. She hissed at me, “There is at least a
six-month waiting list.”
Six
months.
“Volunteering
is not just helping out, you know,” she declared. “We weed out the fickle ones.
The high-school kids who want a form signed. The cons doing community hours.”
“Amiel,
I haven’t done time,” I defended. “I live on Amherst Island.”
“How do you think they populated, Australia?” she retorted. “There’s due
process. We would have to get everybody a police check.”
“Amiel, they can do a cavity search for all I care. I haven’t been able to get
in to see a doctor in months.”
She
didn’t crack a smile.
I
could see she had never heard of Patch Adams.
“Look,
missy, this red apron is not given out to just anybody,” she said. Then she
sold me a 50-50 ticket and wandered off to spread her bad coffee and whitener
to other unsuspecting sick people.
I
checked myself out. As I was exiting, a very disturbed woman stormed past me
and the security guard picked her up and put her out on the sidewalk. All she
wanted was her meds. That woman might have been having a bad day, but one thing
is certain; she is more resourceful than I. She stood out in the ambulance bay
and took off all her clothes and, believe me, when you stand buck naked, that
gets you service at the hospital. In fact, they bring the drugs right out to
the street for you.
That’s
when I had my third epiphany.
It’s
as hard to get service as it is to give it.
I
went home, wrote a cheque to Bono and binged on the cheese order I had just
gotten delivered from the school kids.
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Article Tags: health care providers welllness humour
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About the Author: Deborah Kimmett RSS for Deborah's articles - Visit Deborah's website Click here to visit Deborah's website   Gossip is in the Ear of the Beholder TOP TIPS FOR SURVIVING IN BUSINESS Learning to Put Your Oxygen Mask on FIrst The Roles We Play at Work FIVE WAYS TO GET YOUR SENSE OF HUMOUR BACK |
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- Keeping up with your blog with a new post at least once a week should be atop every blogger's to-do list. The Google "Freshness" approach rewards new, original content.
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- Keeping a hyphen in domain is not bad and it does not affect on seo.You will get lots of sites with hyphen in domain that are ranking higher in google.The main factor is you must have the unique contents.
Re: What to do at the first roadblock?
- GT said,
I think seeing that the glass (i.e. market or opportunity) is only half full is a good mindset to have rather than looking at the sheer number of competitors.
I would have to agree. I think this is a great thing to think about in almost any situation, whether home or business. As I mentioned, attitude is 95% of the battle. Keeping it positive is the only way to get the things you really want in life. Helping others helps, too. See the quote in my signature.
Business or busy-ness !!
- Ideally your business is should be able to let go of you after breakeven and a reasonable period of time. Keeping you in chains would qualify it to be busy-ness rather than business.
Once set the business systems set should be able to run on auto pilot with you co-ordinating activity rather than you running the activity. If you are at ease with this thought - you could go ahead and think of the second in line.
Not too difficult though takes some tact and some practice before you could take the plunge....
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