Over the past few weeks, I’ve begun settling into a routine at the office. Arriving sometime before my first appointment, I spend a half-hour or so decontaminating the building with bleach and alcohol and a hospital-grade disinfectant that I still have a few precious ounces of. I ran out of rubbing alcohol and am now using grain alcohol (CDC approved), so by the time I’m done, the place smells like a frat party that was held at a YMCA swimming pool.
I was vaguely amused when I arrived in the morning at the Litchfield Wine Cellar and asked the fellow behind their sporty outdoor counter for the biggest bottle of the highest proof grain alcohol that he had. He smiled, raised one eyebrow and said, “It’s come to that, eh?” and then I realized what this purchase must look like. There was no backing away from this one, so I fell back on my spiritual training to address it. “We all have to do what we are called to do by our inner nature,” I said, as sagely as I could.
I’ve reduced the number of patients I’m seeing as I’ve sent Giselle to work at home for the duration, and it takes a good 15 minutes to properly disinfect each treatment room after I’m done with it. Only one patient is allowed in the building at a time to minimize cross contamination. With Dave Pavlick, the clinical social worker in one of the offices only popping his head in a couple days a week, and Kate Sobotka closed down for the duration, that leaves me a fair amount of spare time to ramble around the empty building by myself and contemplate things.
Also having laid off the woman who cleans the office for the duration, it is now up to me to handle the things she normally did – vacuum the carpets, empty the trash, clean the bathroom – and to be honest, I find this task, in combination with my pursuit of disinfecting perfection, to be refreshing. My approach to my practice is generally highly cerebral and emotional. I obsess over patient care, wondering if and how I should alter their treatment plans to maximize effectiveness. I review literature, reading up on the research that are foremost in my mind or practice. I analyze my interactions with patients, to make sure they are getting the education and information they need.
The constant cleaning brings me back down to earth. I don’t just own the practice, I also own this toilet bowl, and I need to clean that sucker out. And mop the floor. And wipe down the doors and window sills. And with each task, I’m finding that I get a closer connection to what this practice really is, as opposed to what I imagine it to be or what I want it to be.
And trust me, I take the toilet bowl stuff pretty seriously. Once, when I was working for the AMC Trail Crew in the White Mountains, I was sent to a campsite deep in the woods with winch and cable. My task was to winch up a 50-gallon drum that served as the receptacle for a one-hole privy, cap it, and with the help of any unlucky nearby hikers, ferry it up to a nearby treeless peak and call for a helicopter to hook it up and fly it out to...somewhere. I didn’t know and didn’t care.
Of course, half-way up the hole, the damn drum got caught and I had to climb down to it and unsnag things. That resulted in the predictable spillage, and made the subsequent conscription of hiker help more difficult.
Eventually the task was done, I arrived back at home base and hosed myself down before approaching anyone I knew.
The point being, though, that we all have to take out the shit from time to time, internally as well as externally. And I am using this chance to get a new perspective on my practice. Sooner or later, we will collectively take our fingers off the pause button, and I want the new normal to be different from the old normal. Even though it may have been working pretty good, as was my practice, there is still enormous improvement to be made in our society, in our government, and perhaps most importantly, in how we relate to one another.
The time will come. Use this time now, no matter how difficult, to learn and to grow (and keep in mind the most important lessons are also the most painful ones), so that when the future is upon you, it is a healthy future that you envisioned with your current mindfulness.
That sounds a little too otherworldly precious, so let me put it another way: Life may really, really suck right now, but do what you can to stagger through it and learn your lesson so you don’t screw things up again. Got it?
Have a great day.