Take care of yourself

Wow, as I was thinking about the last two weeks, this quote from the Wizard of Oz came to mind:  “I'm melting, melting. Ohhhhh, what a world, what a world.”

No matter how you see the world, there is no way we could have imagined what the world is experiencing today. Regardless the size of your world: your home, your neighborhood or the WORLD, we are connected to one another more intimately than ever.

What are you doing to take care of yourself?

First, multiple research studies have shown that being connected helps us have a better quality of life and to live longer in the process. Though we may be mostly limited to our homes, technology has us more connected than ever. FaceTime or Skype or your video chat software of choice. One old school method I have picked up again is the “telephone”. I have intentionally made a point to reach out to my people to check on them and selfishly have the check in on me at the same time. We don’t know how long the virus will be present in our communities. We have to take care of one another. Many of us are isolated at the best of times. Be sure to check on your family, friends and neighbors.

Secondly, I am an extrovert at work so working at home has never been my preferred method. I am trying to come into the 21st century (getting with the program). Again, the virtual workplace has been a thing for a while. Because of this, the work in my unit continues with a couple of hiccups. As expected, having millions of people going on the internet at once will slow the system down. First be patient with yourself so that you can be patient with others.

Thirdly, eat right, get some physical activity and be sure to get plenty of sleep. All of these are listed as “healthy habits”. They should also be listed as “quality of life enhancers”. Practicing these habits are critical to maintaining resiliency we are going to need to get through this crisis. I have personal experience of how important paying attention to healthy habits is. The most challenging time is my career was training as a physician. None of these habits were held top of mind… Eat whatever you can find whenever you can find it, exhaustion to the point of collapse (no real physical activity) and sleep, what is that? Collapsed to get ready for the next shift. Not optimal.

I want to end by reiterating, take care of yourself so that you will have the space to take care of others who rely upon you as a mom, dad, healthcare provider, friend, spouse, name it.

Keeping every one of you in my thoughts!