Hello again!

[cjsmith]

It's been a long time. I really miss meaningful online social interaction, and That Other Site is just ticking me off once too many times today. (Let's not mention all the other reasons I, a person who looks female, might have an ever so slightly shortened fuse today.)

I'm going to try to be here more often. Hi, everyone. <3

Comments

[iridium]

Heya! I've been terrible about posting here, but am getting semi-regular about reading.

[cjsmith]

Hi! Good to see you! How has life been treating you lately? :)

[iridium]

Hahahahahahaha. Drowning in work in part due to lack of focus from reactivated PTSD, these last couple weeks. And in part because someone, somewhere made the decision that people should be able to contact their doctor with any kind of question / new and concerning symptom through "patient portal" email, phone, or showing up and dropping off forms without explanation...without making sure that doctors had dedicated time in their schedule to respond to these things. I do still firmly feel that I am doing the right thing and on a right path, but finding sustainability is hard.

Also I own a house now...in New Orleans, where the whole apocalyptic climate change thing is knocking on the door. Plan is to stay here and love the city and dance until either I'm gone or the city is.

Also still own a 33 y/o automobile as my primary means of transportation. Because...adventure? or unfortunately drastic capability for emotional attachment to objects. Perhaps both.

How about you? Things are sounding rough, from the bits that I can see.

[cjsmith]

Oh lordy. That first paragraph... Why is it that there are things deemed (by me or others) immensely important that cannot have any dedicated time? I too field massive amounts of client queries by email or phone daily. If I weren't doing that, I'd maybe get charts done on time, or leave on time, or...

And reactivated PTSD sounds like way too many people lately. I'm so sorry.

Congratulations on owning a house! I hope you get to stay there and love it for a long, long time.

Things here are changing fast. I'm in the Midlife Unraveling. Naively, I believed I had gotten off easy with a career change to vet med. SUCKA. Now I'm pretty sure the change was a bad idea (though I will never regret the learning and enrichment! and the people! and the time spent with the animals!) and I'm trying to figure out what else needs adjustment without looking too closely at the likely-terrifying answers.

[iridium]

Charts / etc - on our end of it all, I place most of the blame on insurance companies and the way that medical billing and payment works. For all the talk about "shifting to a focus on quality" or "value rather than volume" the heaviest emphasis is on getting as many patients in & out as possible and documenting just enough to qualify for billing (which is vastly different from functional documentation that allows for an understanding of the patient's conditions and care). Somehow the calls/emails/etc just got shoehorned on top of that, but because it's not billable, there is the minimum amount of dedicated time allowed to deal with it. *grr argh*.

And yiii, the midlife unraveling sounds really tough. I'm curious, and also happy to be a sounding board if that's a useful thing. I'm not quite at unraveling, but definitely at "well I made this huge professional redirect and now I need to figure out how to make it sustainable".