A historic hurricane slams into my old state days after a historic typhoon rages against my new one. In neither case am I directly affected, except for the matter of care — for earth that we have tried our best to destroy and disregard, for my friends in both places who are impacted, and for the strangers there who mean much to someone and to God.
The best kinds of friends are the ones who allow you to ramble on Voxer about the latest NBA headlines upon awakening, when it’ll take an hour or two for you to remember it’s their birthday and make it right. Humbled by and grateful for, always, all of the people who let me love them up close.
There will come a time when all three daughters and the husband will audition for the local Nutcracker, and they will make the cast and your heart will swell with pride to three times its normal size. That time has come.
Party dad, Mother Ginger dancer, Mother Ginger, and young Clara are coming to a dance stage in December. Everyone’s invited.
shared tonight at our Board of Directors meeting…
Soon after arriving to Homer, I set about the task of learning and memorizing South Peninsula Hospital’s core values. I felt overwhelmed by the cross-country move, but there was something comforting and grounding about aligning my daily practice to my new organization’s mission. Two years later, I still try to view and direct my work through the lens of our values. And so with that, I’d like to give you a glimpse into what I see each day, moments when our values shine brightly.
COMPASSION – Rhoda Ostman, Nutrition Services Manager, has been quietly having lunch with one of our beloved volunteers each day, ensuring that he has what he needs, both here and at home.
RESPECT – We relaxed our masking protocol earlier this week, and staff have been engaging in kind and thoughtful dialogue regarding. It’s been quite an emotional journey to reflect on how far we’ve come since March of 2020.
TRUST – Christine Anderson and Clay Eagerton, Informatics Nurses, set us up for a successful electronic medical record downtime last night. They rounded in all involved departments, often more than once, to answer questions and ensure staff felt ready and supported prior to the event.
TEAMWORK – For the last two weeks, our community’s needs have seemingly outpaced and outnumbered available staff and beds, but over the weekend, we reached a critical need. Within hours, half a dozen non-clinical staff, ranging from Human Resources to Billing to Security, showed up to help where they could. These people literally got our nursing staff through the night.
COMMITMENT – Peggy Frazier, Acute Care/ICU Coordinator, worked with staff from multiple departments to devise a plan for keeping a married couple together throughout their hospital stay. She refused to sacrifice their social and emotional needs while we cared for them medically. The couple was able to safely stay in one room together thanks to her creativity.
These examples are merely from the last week. These moments are why the staff show up each day, to promote community health and wellness with personalized and high-quality care. It’s my honor to celebrate them publicly when I see them. Thank you.
More exciting, perhaps, than my daughters auditioning for our town’s Nutcracker ballet tonight was that my husband auditioned for our town’s Nutcracker ballet tonight. Although he’s spent decades on stage as a musician, he’s never dabbled in dance or theater and his inner child has been looking forward to this since we attended the ballet last year. My favorite part of today: Chris driving all over town to secure a package of white t-shirts because he had to wear a white tee and black pants, per the packet…. only the packet was for the children, and Chris showed up to a gaggle of grown-ups in street clothes. He enjoyed himself nonetheless, and so we anxiously await the announcement of the cast list.
I sat with my team until well after end of day, agonizing and arguing and arranging just the right way to announce it to our hospital – we are relaxing masking restrictions in light of the CDC/CMS guidance released last week. It took us a long time to get here, and the truth is there is no such thing as just the right way. South Peninsula will be the first hospital in Alaska to set foot on uncharted territory. The first, on the last frontier, to attempt a normalization of that which can never be normal again. We will never be pre-pandemic, but we can take a step toward whole, and whole faces are a great start. At 5:48pm, the All Staff email is sent. Let’s do this.
What my husband and children did not tell me, while I was away, was that they went to the shelter to return the borrowed cat items from last weekend and came home with another cat. This one shared a home with ours before she was surrendered, and apparently we needed to do the right thing and give them a reunion. Are we cat people meow?
