Hanukkah

We lit the first candle last night.  This year, in our silver oil menorah, we used shabbos candles instead, as the oil can be quite messy and the shul's gift shop did not have any this year.

Hanukkah has multiple themes:  victory by underdogs, living on one's own terms, recognizing the value of small amounts of good oil when usable but defiled oil exists in abundance, adding a new candle each night as there is more to celebrate as the days proceed.

In the late afternoon, not long before the sun set, one of my favorite pharmaceutical rep pairs who used to call on me to Wilmington stopped by the suite at Mercy to deliver some Novo insulins and Victoza samples.  I was having a wicked day, ultimately seeing a personal record of eight consults before I departed for home long after most people had kindled their first Hanukkah light and munched their first latke.  I interupted my tasks in the hospital to visit them for a few minutes.  Drug reps make good spies, since their rounds take them to many places and they hear a lot of candid comments from doctors and office staff.  So I caught up on some poop at Christiana and the welfare of my former colleagues.  While I am rather content with my surroundings, despite not having the day to day control of my activities that I had in my own office, I've been treated rather well thus far and really like the people I've met along the way.  All eight of the patients I saw as new consults probably benefited from what my skill provided them.  I suspected that my colleagues at CCHS struggle more with their employer than I do with mine.  That turned out to be the case.  I think at least half of them are virtual serfs, tilling the exam rooms and wards under difficult circumstances, seeing large volumes of patients who get processed through more than they receive the individual attention than my partner and I are able to give and who need the medical care a lot less than most of the people that I have been seeing.  While my path of least resistance as my office became less viable last year would have been to have them annex me, that shidduch was not to be.  Those left on the outside but with a mission in mind sometimes really do triumph over the dominant players.