That room has a very specific odor that I can’t quite describe, but I trust you know it as well.

That’s the difference between gray matter and white matter. Gray matter readily communicates with it’s crowding neighbors and can retain information, while white matter is myelinated so it can send messages over distances. Gray matter extends from our brains down our spinal cords.

Muscles are dumb meat who take their orders from the nervous system. They have no capacity for memory. But training can create reflexes at the spinal cord level which some refer to as “muscle memory,” except it’s not the muscle that should get the credit here.

Antibiotics aren’t for viruses. Cold air doesn’t make you sick. Tongues don’t have “taste zones.” Muscles don’t have memory.

And because you threw up for one day, you didn’t have “the 24hr flu.” You ate something bad or someone didn’t wash their hands. The flu is short for influenza, which is a respiratory virus, which typically does not make you throw up and shit. More likely it was the dodgy gas station sushi.

Let’s keep going…

As a Midwestern American with a fondness for music from the UK, I both blindly accept your answer as 100% believable and complete bullshit at the same time lol.

Nice work! 👍

Careful. With those proportions might need a wider base.

Well, there is a “solution” in the works. It’s currently not required for my position and will only initially apply to Medicare (or Medicaid - don’t recall which) patients.

The hospital provides field staff with cell phones. There’s an app we’re just getting training on that will time stamp our visits, travel, and mileage, as well as track GPS for verification of visits. It will also flag and ask for clarification if travel time exceeds expectation.

Currently we self report, so if I stop at McDonald’s because I have to pee, it’s nobodies business. Many of my coworkers are less than thrilled with the new app (honestly most aren’t that fond of tech or changes to begin with) even though management is attempting to reassure that they’re really not intending to track us, it’s just for patient verification (for the very small percentage of patients it applies to.)

I use it to make documentation easier for work. I have to log visit times, travel time and mileage for each patient I visit. So much easier to pull up the info of my phone after work than to remember to track miles and log time getting in and out of my car.

The first 35 years of my life I was surrounded by nothing but Midwestern American conservatives, with splashes of evangelical Christians in the mix. I was raised that we should love our neighbors, give to the poor and needy, work hard, and or needs would be met. When I was no longer a child the clarifications started to creep in. I should love and help others, but only if they really deserved it. Who deserved it had a long list of unspoken qualifiers. If my needs weren’t being met, I must not be working hard enough, even if that meant working 2 jobs and my health suffering for it.

In my 30s I had the opportunity to meet people outside my bubble, and what do you know - I started recognizing the hypocrisy I was raised with and living, and finally started to grow as a person.

Huh. I raised my children to treat people the way they want to be treated and to share their toys with others. As teens and adults they’ve tended to cultivate friend groups of supportive, welcoming people. I consider them extended family, and if someone has a need we should be available to help.

The people they’re skeptical of are the “I’ve got mine, fuck you” types.