Have you ever played canasta?
It is a card game, best with more than two people.
2 will do in a pinch.
Especially if it is the long summer between 8th and 9th grades and no one has a driver’s license and all the adults are at work.
And your best friend has come over for a visit.
This is a time when it was long distance to call the town over, where he lived.
Yeah, a long time ago.
That summer, in Glen Ellen, CA, I played a lot of canasta.
And I was ruthless.
Ruthless I say.
In canasta if you can hold all the cards in your hand and silently build your entire meld.
And put them all down at once.
And win.
Because you get more points for doing so.
I did this at least 3 times a day while we played canasta.
On the hot summer between 8th and 9th grades.
Oh, he would get so mad.
And fall for it the very next hand.
Good times.
I am not sure why that memory popped up today.
The characters in the book I was reading were playing canasta.
But that is not the important part of the story.
The important part is the holding of all the cards so that I could play them all at once.
I am sure I had opportunities to play cards before that, to engage more fully in game play.
It was more important that I get one over on my friend.
Thankfully I grew out of that one sided upmanship.
However, not everyone has.
And they hold information about doctor preference cards and wants and desires close to their chest.
They can reveal what they know in the exact moment that the case seems lost and the doctor is getting mad.
And they can be seen as the savior of the case.
This does no one any favors.
Least of all the patient.
I share freely what I know.
I no longer hoard cards.
And I definitely do not hoard knowledge.
And I think that makes me a better nurse.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 