I think half my staff is out sick. I don’t know how many front desk members wincing at the sign of blood while poking the suction tip to patient lips this week. This is the point of whatever warm body I can field at this point.
The good news, this too shall pass. If you read last week’s episode and told me this must be awful for the practice… my reply will be quick… maybe.
Cross train, cross train, cross train. Everyone tells you to do so, not everyone does so. That was the basic point of todays episode, but I’m going to digress, so you’ve been warned.
It’s cold, flu and covid season. Nothing has changed. Expect this to be more of the norm for several years. The twitch your patient gets when the assistant coughs will get you the judgemental look of ‘why haven’t you let them go home yet!’
Dare I say, a bit of hypersensitivity? Probably just better to be overcautious.
As we move from Pandemic with a P, we will slowly transition to Endemic with an E. As a kid I always wondered how Milk in the fridge could just spoil overnight. Spoiler alert! It doesn’t! It’s a progression. Bacteria in the milk ferment the lactose to lactic acid before, during and after the supposed expiration date printed on the carton. Fresh out of the cow, there’s hardly any lactic acid build up,
I always knew it! Expiration dates are a sort of conspiracy in making you buy more products. Smh at the dental implants expiring on my desk right now.
Back to the milk and covids. So when we drink milk right before expiration, there is already a percentage of spoilage(?) in the milk that isn’t detectable to your refined dairy palate. As more time passes, more spoilage, curdling and we are at 100% point of no return.
Right now, this point in the covid, we’re likely nearing the midpoint. The expiration date I suspect is going to be sometime late this year or early next year. We will continue to drink the covid milk way past expiration but at least we know it’s time to discard the contents and move on to say Almond Milk.
The analogy breaks down, sorry. It took just a few years after 9/11 before it became normal to take shoes, belts and your dignity off at the airport. It’ll be a few years before it is normal to know that staff and patients during cold, flu and covid season are going to need to take time off.
So get your cross training thinking caps on. And warn your front desk person they might be holding the suction for the next root canal.
Lam