A Locum’s ScrapBook: Stasis is NOT Paralysis!
Editor’s Note:
Well it has been about five weeks now since I pumped my last case down somewhere in Kentucky. One of the things that you have to consider where your locum’s perfusionist is that when companies are forced to downsize due to staffing issues or reductions, chances are your contracts won’t hold up and that you may be spending some time at home or out of work- in this case both.
I am not the kind of person to just sit around on the sidelines when there is so much chaos in the world. My skill set expands beyond perfusion, having surgical skills, first assisting skills, having been lead corpsman at the Naval Hospital in the Philippines, and having worked at various medical clinics during my medical career. However, these are times when the greatest skills and assets that we have we derive from the nursing community, first responders, ER personnel, and the newest subset of the first responder task force – those that provide us with food whether by delivery or taking serious risks working at a retail grocery store and so forth.
Today I find myself in an uncommon position, basically being overqualified to deliver services to anyone based on fact that we are doing primarily non=elective cases, open-heart surgery numbers have substantially reduced, and ECMO is basically a drop in the bucket when looking at the overwhelming numbers of patients that we are confronting us.
So I wait, consolidate my life at home with my family being very grateful to even have a family that is pretty much healthy and very much happy.
The title of this post “Stasis does not Equal Paralysis” – represents how I feel at this very moment while I am biding my time for my number to be called so I can make myself available to help and assist in these hours of our greatest need. I firmly believe that once the initial wave of Covid 19 wave sweeps past us, there will be a tremendous backlog of open-heart surgery cases that have been put on hold but will clearly need their surgeries- sooner than later. They too have been in stasis, these patients with heart conditions that may be exacerbated by frustration and stress not only from waiting but the uncertainty that comes with it.
So by the grace of God I take these moments that have been given to us and relish the amount of time I have been given to spend with my family as a father and a husband. Below are some pictures of our life as we suck the very marrow out of everything that comes our way, before we to may have to confront this tremendous onslaught to us as human beings, we as a society, and our total global community structure.
I want to thank the Specialty Care team for their concern and assistance, Perfusion.Com (Iris and Bryan) for all they do, and Chet Czaplicka (Comprehensive Care) for his encouragement and steadiness.
It’s impressive that all of our major contract groups are united in this effort!!!
Peace!
Frank
