Tuesday, A Schedule Finding Its Feet

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSlept properly last night, the sort of sleep that doesn't need explaining or apologising for, and it made all the difference to how the morning unfolded. Anita had a check-up first thing, so she came along with me, which turned an otherwise routine start into something closer to companionable — the two of us setting off together before the day had properly decided what sort of day it was going to be.

This was the first outing for the revised clinic schedule, morning and afternoon both, today and tomorrow, a slightly heavier arrangement than usual and one that had been theorised about for a while before finally being put to the test. There's always a small nervousness attached to any new system on its debut, the sense that it might buckle somewhere unexpected. It didn't, as it happens. Held together rather well, all things considered — though not without the odd wrinkle, the afternoon round running late enough that one patient ended up waiting longer than either of us would have liked. Nothing dramatic, just the sort of drift that new schedules seem to accumulate before they learn their own edges.

I'd made a point this week of not seeing any pharmaceutical reps, a small deliberate omission rather than an oversight. There's something quietly restorative about a week with one fewer category of interruption, one fewer polished pitch to sit through. The days felt marginally more my own for it.

By the time the afternoon list finally cleared, it was later than usual, the sort of lateness that makes the drive home feel longer than the odometer would suggest. Still, I made it back before sunset, which felt like it ought to count for something after a day that had run past its intended shape. Straight for dinner on arrival, no detours, no pretence of unwinding first — the kind of hunger that doesn't negotiate.

There's a particular satisfaction in a day that's asked more of you than expected and still ends somewhere near where you'd hoped. The revised schedule will no doubt need a few more outings before it settles into something unremarkable, which is really the aim of any new system — to eventually stop announcing itself and simply become the way things are done.

Early night planned again, and this time I intend to actually honour the plan rather than let it drift the way plans sometimes do. Tomorrow brings round two of the same arrangement, and I'd like to meet it having actually rested, rather than merely having intended to.

For now, though, the day is done, the schedule has survived its first outing, and that will do nicely.

Monday Rounding Into Shape

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThere's a particular kind of quiet that comes with a Monday after a Friday that had, by all accounts, gone somewhere. The bags still hadn't quite settled back into their usual corners, and neither had I, but the sun outside made a decent case for optimism before I'd even had my coffee.

Traffic, for once, seemed to have read the room. Smooth going in, no theatrics at the junctions, no one testing the structural integrity of their horn. I took it as a good omen, the kind you don't trust entirely but accept gratefully anyway.

New face at the department this week, a medical student assigned to shadow for the next few days. There's something faintly recalibrating about having someone new watching how you do things — not scrutiny exactly, more a gentle reminder that habits formed over years still need explaining from scratch to someone encountering them for the first time. I did my best to make the mundane sound purposeful, which is, I suspect, most of teaching.

The morning itself belonged to paperwork, in the fullest and least glamorous sense. Forms begetting forms, signatures chasing signatures, the sort of administrative undergrowth that never quite gets cleared, only temporarily beaten back. I made what progress I could, occasionally glancing up to see whether my shadow for the week was suitably unimpressed by the glamour of it all.

Afternoon brought clinic, and with it, new patients — always a slightly different register of concentration required, meeting people for the first time, piecing together a picture rather than continuing one already sketched out. There's a rhythm to it, an unhurried sort of attentiveness, and by the time the last one had gone, the light outside had shifted into that softer, more forgiving late-afternoon gold.

I managed, against the usual odds, to get home before sunset — a small victory that felt disproportionately satisfying, the way minor wins often do when they arrive at the end of a long first day back. By then I was thoroughly starving, in the specific way that only a day spent mostly indoors and mostly on your feet can produce. Dinner didn't stand much of a chance; it was gone before I'd properly registered enjoying it, which I suppose is its own kind of compliment.

No grand plans for the evening. Just the practical business of winding down — the day settling into memory rather than lingering in the room. An early night beckoned, and for once I didn't argue with it. Mondays have a way of asking rather a lot upfront, on the promise that the rest of the week will behave itself in return. We'll see.

Tomorrow, no doubt, will bring its own version of paperwork. Tonight, though, belongs to sleep.