Simpler Days

Texting with Sarah has definitely changed.  Last year at this time, she was at school taking classes in a Physician Assistant program.  It was intense.  As an escape from all the medical information that she was cramming into her head, she usually steered our texts toward more pedestrian subjects.  We’d send each other our Wordle results (with the letters obscured, of course): 

or we’d discuss the latest hockey transactions as the trade deadline neared.  

It’s different this year.  For one thing, Sarah got bored with Wordle.  Apparently I have a higher tolerance for tedious games.  

Side note: Sarah doesn’t like soup because she says she usually gets bored about halfway through the bowl.

For another, the Caps are terrible this year.  They’re selling off half of their team for “future considerations.”  It doesn’t make for cheerful banter. 

But mostly, Sarah’s finding her work both more interesting and more consuming.  She’s in the midst of a year of clinical rotations, where she’s in a new location with a different focus every month.  This month she’s at a hospital in Virginia.  Her preceptor is a hospitalist. (I had to look it up, too).  Today, though, she was working with a pulmonologist.

Her texts looked more like this:

Or this:

To which I replied:

She proceeded to send me pictures of each of these “oxygen therapy” devices.  I’ll spare you.

On the one hand, I feel smarter at the end of our little chats.  On the other hand, I had a bit more to contribute when we were talking about hockey trades and five-letter words.  At least she still has a few moments to spare.

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