simple math

It's hard to sit down and quantify just what makes a shift good or bad. If you weigh the little boy with no front teeth who screams in laughter when you try to speak Fon against the other one with big, tumor-swollen cheeks who probably isn't going to live much longer, which one comes out in front? For the little girl with the extra toe, which carries more weight: the fact that her dimples frame a perfect smile, or the fact that the extra fluid around her brain means that she'll never learn to talk? When you sit down to teach a new nurse how to draw blood and she gets it on the first try, is that success at all diminished by the fact that you then turned around and put that hard-earned blood into the wrong tube?

I'd like to propose a new metric. As far as I'm concerned, the success of any given day can be measured by a simple formula. Take the number of patients who know my name and shout it when I walk through the doors. Multiply that by the number of mamas who offer to let me carry their babies home to America with me. Add ten bonus points for each of those babies that falls asleep in my arms while I chart on the kid in the next bed over. Anything over, oh, let's say ... fifty? That's a shift where the good outweighs the bad.

Today? Definitely a good day.