Inside the Clinic: The "Sweet Spot" Edition
Each week, our Executive Director, Anne-Lise Quinn, sends out a Clinic Update to the staff. In an effort to keep our wider community updated about the happenings inside Culmore Clinic, we will be posting an annotated version of this update to our blog each week under the Inside the Clinic tag.
Dear Community,
How are you all doing? Isn’t the fall in Virginia glorious? I could stare at the colors of the trees all day!
I’m going to share a little story: Last night I went across the road to watch my Jaime’s travel baseball team play a game at his high school. It was a gorgeous fall evening – the kind that makes you think that all is good in the world (unless you think too much).
Jaime wants to play ball at college, so we have started taking videos of him batting and catching in the outfield for all those promotional thingamajigs that we’re supposed to do. Do you know where this story is going? Haha, I bet you do….
So, Mama Quinn takes out her phone in the sixth inning as Jaime comes up to bat again. The bases are loaded and there’s a hush on the bleachers. At three balls/two strikes, Jaime hits the next pitch, and the ball flies off into the air, hitting the top of the fence and dropping. No homerun and grand slam, but he gets three RBIs and makes it to second base.
All caught on video?????
Nope.
In my excitement, the phone followed my hand, not my eye, and I got a whole lot of fence and not much else. I was so sad; only the very beginning of the video was clear.
When I told my son the video footage didn’t come through too well, he said: “But can you hear it?”
"Hear what?" I asked.
“The hit; can you hear the bat hitting the ball?”
Well, we looked at the video, turned up the volume, and sure enough, we could. Jaime’s face lit up and I realized that the sound of his bat hitting the ball told him everything he needed to know about that moment. He listened to that “hit” multiple times as he ate his supper and drank his chamomile tea, smiling into the cup each time.
What he was listening to was the sound of the “sweet spot” (as my dad, a golfer, refers to it). The moment you swing the bat – or club – which you have done so many times before, and the stars align – POW!
It doesn’t mean that all those solid line drives or tactical “bunts” aren’t good, of course; but boy, does it feel good when the stars align!
I’ve been thinking about that on and off all day and particularly in relation to our small, but mighty Clinic: the solid, steady work you all do every day and the incredible joy we all feel when the stars align and patients respond well to treatment; or, as an interpreter, you find that difficult word somewhere deep in your head that expresses to the provider exactly what the patient feels in that moment; or when, after long hours on the phone making repeated calls to specialists, the appointment is made and another dear patient can see relief on the horizon.
Those successes motivate and encourage; they help us feel hope and joy; they keep us going.
I also thought how lucky I was to have seen (and heard) my son’s special moment – just like I feel lucky to share in yours each day when we have successes with our patients. But I know so many moms and dads out there can’t make it to the games their kids participate in because they are working, possibly two or three jobs, or need to stay with their babies or a dependent parent. Moms and dads who are our patients.
I listened to a webinar this afternoon put on by the Northern Virginia Regional Commission called, “New Americans in Northern Virginia: Contributions of Immigrants in the Northern Virginia Region” and the data was fascinating and eye-opening. Did you know, for example, that in Northern Virginia:
Immigrants contribute $57.7 billion to the region’s GDP;
They contribute $2.9 billion to social security, but may never see a dime of that; and
A staggering 47.9% of “essential workers” are foreign born?
POW!
Of course, every day we see those immigrants who aren’t faring so well; who struggle to make ends meet, including those undocumented, hard-working essential workers who, though their labor in 2017 alone, contributed “$150.9 million” in state and local income tax!
At Culmore Clinic, we can’t fix everything, but we can help keep these folks healthy; help them stay strong! They are part of our community and if they suffer, we all suffer.
So, not on our watch, I say!
Have a good evening and let’s always remember to celebrate and take joy in all those moments when, against all odds, we hit the sweet spot!
Warmly,
Anne-Lise