Yaaaay!

Wednesday is my day for volunteering at St. Elizabeth's. I like St. E's--the atmosphere, the location, the Christian worldview (even if they are Catholic) but I'm a little frustrated. I'm volunteering up in the postnatal ward, and the nurses aren't busy enough to delegate much to volunteers. Finding enough to do is a bit difficult, because I can't take my supervisor's advice and knock on doors, asking patients if they need anything. This is, apparently, the nurses' territory. They have a point--a new mother probably isn't interested in doing much beyond sleeping and cooing at her baby, and who am I to interrupt? But that leaves such activites as making tea-pads and badgering Mallory at the desk for chores to do.

Well, today I did very little badgering. The tea-pad supply was actually low, and I spent an hour and a half making tea-pads. While no task can be entirely mindless, one does eventually hit the limit on refinements to technique. I think I am approaching this point, making tea-pads. I mean, I've got my work setup down. Now I'm trying to order my operations to maximize cooling of the tea before I have to hold a thin plastic bottle full of it. Divide and Conquer sounds fun, but the fun is limited. Anyway. The supply of tea-soaked maxipad icepacks is now Topped Up.

After that I did go and ask Mallory, just in case, because while the supply of care packs is low, I can't make up more without more photocopies of the booklet, which always runs out before I come. Mallory told me that the lady at the Labor and Delivery desk had mentioned a project for a volunteer. That was interesting! I mean, it was filing, and I probably committed a dozen HIPAA violations today, just trying to find a clear version of a patient's name in order to look for her file, but admissions and things were going on in the background, and medical eavesdropping can be educational--especially if one asks questions afterwards. Medical questions, not gossipy ones, of course.

To summarize--today I felt both competent and useful. Best of all, I felt as though I was learning.