Simplicity is Better

I had divine intervention this morning, the universe prevented me from being able to sign up for Umstead. I wrestled with it all morning, knowing that when I'm injured I should never sign up for a race that predetermines when I will have to be un-injured. Fortunately, when I got on the website, I sat there for a few minutes refreshing the page with no luck and then decided it wasn't worth it.

So, no trip to North Carolina next spring. I'll figure something out. I might even go back to run Cornbelt again in May since that was so fun and low-key. But right now, there's no plan.

I did my first run this morning, in two weeks. I ran 32 minutes, about a 5K loop in my neighborhood, with one hill, and not a peep out the hamstring. It was already hot and humid. It did feel good to get moving again but I wasn't overly motivated to go out first thing this morning. Iris dragged me on a walk first, then I had to wait around for the big nothing of Umstead registration, so it was 10:30 before I went out the door.



Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with someone who knows the business of health care a lot better than I do. It occurs to me daily that the people who work directly with the patients and provide the direct care speak a completely different language than the people who make the decisions about how to run things.

They don't speak to each other. But when the decision-makers start throwing terms around like "value stream" and "evidence-based" and pick and choose how they want to apply those concepts without considering the hard, tangible reality of how their decisions affect the real live people providing the daily services, and consequently, the recipients of those services, it's a big mess. Ignoring evidence that is right there screaming in your face is not evidence-based practice.

Whenever you complicate a concept or task, adding steps and analysis to it, you get further away from the simple process of just doing it. You add all sorts of unnecessary in-between costs because you have all these overpaid bodies who get in on analyzing and tearing it apart, but actually make it much harder and more expensive to deliver the product. They accidentally forget to include the people who do the work of delivering it, who would most likely tell the analysts to put that in their pipes and smoke it.

Each day I'm feeling a little more positive about my future, less trashed, and more determined to move forward. I'm still very much trashed, though. If I can salvage my health before something seriously goes wrong with my body I'll be in good shape. Being a nurse, especially an oncology nurse makes you a little paranoid at times.