Dear everyone,
Wow, support for this computer program is ending in the
middle of next week. Hope I don’t have
any problems - - the solution probably being the purchase of a new computer
(this one is 8 years old).
Work is getting pretty close to normal. I’d say we are at about 90% of our previous
volume. We still lost about two months
of income in the late spring. We are
about to stop using our crappy hospital IT system, and move onto EPIC on Monday, which will be a great
improvement. EPIC also has an associated
Pathology Information System that will be on line in December, which I will
have to learn for no great use, because the remaining partners have decided
that they have excess personnel, so they only want to hire me for locum tenens
work to cover any long vacations for Wesley Samore, my replacement. They’ll
look at the work volume again in June.
At least they will cover my malpractice insurance for next year. My opinion?
I think they are losing out on a bargain. The people who have the most to gain are the
current partners, who will recoup my salary - - and they have the least to
lose, since most of them spend their time doing cytopathology. It’s the
yet-to-be partnered who will have to shoulder my surgical pathology work load,
which is significant - - I sign out the highest volume of surgical work by
far. I may end up being too ‘busy’ to
cover Wesley’s vacations. The cost of
eating my malpractice coverage is minimal for them.
Anyway, my biggest issue is psychological, since I hadn’t
expected to be off 100% of my time, and with Covid, it’s hard to figure out what
I will be doing with my time. I would
like to check out the Chicago Food Depository, take some classes, etc. but who
knows what the state of quarantine will be.
I’m writing this letter a day earlier than usual since I
will be a bit busy tomorrow. I will have
an aikido weapons class from 12 -3. We’ll
be in the backyard of an elementary school in Worth, wearing masks and keeping
our distance. We did this a couple of
weeks ago, and it worked out pretty well. Then, afterwards, Cindy and I will
join Gail and Andy for dinner at Roger’s.
We saw Roger last Saturday with Aaron and Jacob; they both seemed fine,
but Roger was a bit out of it. His sleep
schedule is irregular - - he naps frequently (every 1-2 hour or more), and is
up in the middle of the night demanding food.
We are going ahead with Cindy’s application for Italian
citizenship. The paperwork on her
grandparents is a mess - - riddled with inaccuracies and mistakes (including
people’s names, dates, locations). Some
is easily explained by clerks not understanding a heavy Italian accent, while
others make us scratch our head. Because her grandfather thought he’d been
naturalized along with his mother, he reported himself as so in census, voter
registration, etc. The US Government never questioned him until the last year
of his 99, when he tried to be admitted into an assisted living facility that
rejected him as a non-citizen because there was no record of his being naturalized.
This conflicting information means she has to go through her grandmother’s
line, and the case must be presented in Italian court. It is probably going to
take about 30 months to find out if she can achieve this goal, and there is no
guarantee that it will work. It’s not
super cheap either. But after the insane
happenings this week - -the conspiracy to kidnap the Governor of Michigan, Our
Fearless Leader’s super-spreader event, his steroid crazed twitters (and his
bungled debate), the likely successful attempt to ram a far right wing
religious zealot on the Supreme Court - - I would feel better if I knew my
children would have an increased ability to escape this environment.
Media wise, Schitt’s Creek is on Netflix now, and we have
been savoring them slowly. I got the 3rd
season of The Wire out of the library (I wonder when Lovecraft Country will
make its way there). I have read some good books lately, including The
City We Became, The
Last Human, The
Only Good Indians, and Station Eleven. By the way, we are planning a zoom book
discussion of Station Eleven. So far I
think the date and time are Sunday, November 1st at 2:30 Central Time
(the day we ‘fall back’ to standard time) - - email me or Ariana if you’re
interested.
Love, H.
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