I’m a bit indifferent towards hospitals
Michael Scott didn’t like hospitals mainly because he associated them with sick people.
I’ve been at a few over the years. They’ve without fail been places of resilience, calm under pressure, and always, hard work
The one we’re at today has more of the same.
Service, with a compassionate smile
I don’t know whether I could have taken up a life in healthcare. I admit parallels to teaching exist.
We too are about mental, emotional, and physical safety. We too are about healing. We, too, are about making the world better, full stop.
But I don’t know that I could take on a career here.
To wit, as I’m composing these words, a woman walks by, cradling a wee one in her arms. Couldn’t be more than a year old. Head shaven, and a line of stitches spanning her cranium.
On its hardest days, teaching is like brain surgery.
But all analogies, subject to scrutiny, eventually break down.
Get Up Eight 
I agree with this Radutti about what teachers are or do, “We too are about mental, emotional, and physical safety.” I always think about diagnosis as assessments and recommendations being just like a doctor’s remit.
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Your words “Service, with a compassionate smile” are now tucked in my journal.
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who cares indeed- teachers and medical folks. But the hospital is a whole other deal, as you share. I think revealing your actual small moment at the end of the piece added power. We all leave with such a vivid and poignant image in our minds.
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What a beautiful post you have here. Just thinking through, even from my own experiences, how much love and trauma and hope those walls hold. And oh! your tone throughout the piece. There’s something about the words “I don’t know whether I could have taken up a life in healthcare. / I admit parallels to teaching exist.”
You’ve pulled back, brought us a distance away from the subject, brought yourself a distance away from the subject – even though I know how deeply personal it may be.
And then you leave us with that last image, that child after surgery, to bring us back into reality. Beautiful.
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I was there for the comparison but your ending is so true.
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