Crisis Center

In the midst of Monday afternoon chaos, an image from a greeting card flashes through my mind - a three story cartoon building with flames pouring from every window, crookedly crashing over a waterfall - the sign above the door reads Crisis Center. This one image sums up the day - the phones have been non stop, six patients not on the daily schedule have strolled in demanding to be seen, the doctor is already an hour late for surgery and fussy - and despite the overall sense of doom and disaster, when I think of that greeting card I have to smile.

The doctor delivers a chart to me and explains that the patient is leaving the country, going to Holland, of all places, and that we will see him when he returns. What language do they speak in Holland, I wonder, he muses more to himself than to me and without thinking I immediately say Hollandaise and to my surprise he laughs outloud and the tension retreats. It's good to laugh, he tells me with a broad smile and a wink, snatches up his next chart and ducks into a exam room. The remainder of the day races by, still chaotic and stressful but a little more manageable.

Living life crisis to crisis is wearying and very often a waste of time and energy. It is good to laugh, to take a step back and remember not to take ourselves with such deadly seriousness - our next to last patient trips gaily in, singing a song from Sesame Street ( Conjunction Junction, if I'm not mistaken) and clad in tights with horizontal stripes, red shoes sprinkled with glitter, and a peaked witch hat. A black and orange oversized scarf is draped around her shoulders and neck, each cheek is rouged and face painted with a jack'o'lantern and in one hand she carries a bright purple plastic pumpkin full of candy. She gives us a suspicious look until her granddaughter gives her a reassuring hug then she flutters her clearly fake eyelashes and shyly says Trick or Treat! while holding out the purple pumpkin in our direction. The patients in the waiting room recover from their surprise and laugh and applaud as the granddaughter leads her gently to an empty chair and she resumes her song, Brought to you by the letter T, she sings to herself, T for trick or treat. Her granddaughter gives us a helpless look but there's no shame or apology in it - she's studying to be a nurse and understands dementia all too well - Halloween party at the nursing home, she says with a sigh, We didn't have time to change.

The image of the burning building going over the falls flashes through my mind again - it may not be all that far off the mark but it's still a cartoon and not nearly as strange and funny as real life.