328) The New Social Worker

February 12, 2009
Thursday

El Milagro: I get to my chair and settle in, putting in my earphones and listening to ATC report on Clinton's Global Initiatives Conference here in Austin... when asked, Bill says we have to "fill in the gaps as citizens" and describes some of the projects folks are taking on to help the environment.

Rosie the Tech finally gets over here to poke me and set up my machine. We talk about my murmur and she tells me about her brother's mumur that just went away over time. Jo the Nurse is wearing her Valentine's Day Scrub and I remark about it... she explains she is off tomorrow and Saturday, so if she didn't wear it today she'd have to wait a year. I flirt, replying she could wear it anytime she wants.

Sherry the Social Worker comes by with a tall white, spikey-haired woman with a ruddy face, clearly to "make rounds" and introduce this person. Sherry announces that this is her last day... she is going to join Herman the Administrator over at the South Austin center. I think, "this doesn't give us very long to have closure... for a social worker, I mean..." and smile, and say something like, "Well, good luck to you over there..." This new tall person is the new social worker... from San Marcos... named Kathleen. She is cheery and louder than most of our center people... (she is actually talking fairly normally, and I recognize that the other folks here are usually fairly low key). We talk briefly. She has been working in the field for some time, was at MHMR before that... and then she springs that she actually knew me from LifeWorks (Youth Options: where I worked for 10 years and still hang around). Then she adds that she even was in one of my classes! I AM SURPRISED!!

I stare at her intently and I really don't recognize her... she adds that it was an off campus class and she thinks it may have been at TNOYS? I've never taught a class at there. I think the class must've been at LW. So we are stymied about where and we go on to when. She reports that she remembers hearing that I had just found out about my kidney disease and she thought at the time, "what a shock it mustv'e been for me." Well, that puts it at 10... no 11 years ago now... and I briefly trans-derivate back to those times... they seem ancient history now and yet is was only ten years... whew.

Mostly in my brain of brains I can't believe there is a person out there who was in one of my classes and now I don't remember them. There are always people in workshops, conferences, etc. that come up years later and I don't remember them... and I accept that... since I only had them in my reality for a few hours. But someone from a class... I have many hours with them and usually remember them... although there was that woman once who came up to me at a social function and when they were introduced, said, "I was in your class and you gave me the only "B" I got in graduate school!" and I didn't remember her... although she did LOOK familiar. So, Sherry and Kathleen finally move off, stage left, and I am left to my wonders... Sherry calls back something like, "Goodbye... I think I'm gonna cry..." as if she, herself, is surprised at this phase of transition.

Now, later, after coming back out of my thoughts, I notice Kathleen by her somewhat boisterous voice from across the room: this is going to be an animated addition to the place; a kinda non-medical and convivial addition.

I watch the first new Survivor, in the middle of the high desert in Brazil (?) and, as usual, it is interesting to get to see these new folks and watch their adjustment to the whole thing. Then I watch Gray's Anatomy for the first time in awhile... and then it is time to unhook, patch up, and zip on home. So it goes.

Notes: In at 77.5 and out at 75.3 kgs.