Merry Christmas

I love Christmas. I am not sure whether it is the presents, the time off or the knowledge that once again the days are going to get longer (even if we are still possibly looking at 4 more months of wintry weather).

I am off once again this Christmas. I have been fortunate most of my professional life in working in large departments with people who preferred to work Christmas in exchange for other parts of the season off, not to mention those with ex-wives and large mortgages who have to work.

The hospital where I now work, is only open for emergencies throughout the Christmas slow down which this year is from December 23 through January 3. Therefore we only have to provide 2 people every day and as we had more people available then were slots for them to work, I won the lottery (not necessarily the one I would like to win) and am enjoying an extended time off work.

One of the more interesting things about Christmas that fascinates me is how we are more or less shut down the health care system for almost 2 weeks and no one seems to suffer. Of course people still have heart attacks, trauma, appendicitis and babies but we seem to handle it all very well on a skeleton staff. I say this of course as someone who hardly ever works at Christmas but it seems true. We don't do much scheduled surgery over Christmas and sadly a lot of our work comes from complications of scheduled surgery.

Of course while at work just before Christmas I did find this article from the National Post which seems to contradict everything I just said. I could try to explain.

Merry Christmas and barring my own injury or illness, you won't be catching me near a hospital.