I'm A Cow

I am really going to miss my coworkers. We have a lot of fun together at work, and make a lot of plans outside of work too...before I leave, we still plan to get into the city to see Wicked (there's a lottery at 4pm every day to get front row tickets for $25 each), and club it up!, among other things.

At work, though, my fellow therapists really make my day, every day. Given the stress and wear of the job, and the emotional rollercoaster ride it always is, we have a really nice rapport with each other. We support each other, we help each other out, we give each other advice and shoulders to lean/cry on...and we make each other laugh, sometimes so much so that someone is literally rolling on the floor, or has a face the color of a tomato. We know how much we each care about our patients, so the gallows humor (that is present in every health care job as a coping tool) is not mistaken for anything malicious...after having seen a patient have a stroke in front of you (me) or collapse from a heart attack on the rehab gym floor in front of you, never to get up again (a PT), you can't avoid the black humor. We therapists share mutual respect and admiration for each other, and thankfully all have thick skin...because we make fun of ourselves, and probably more often we make fun of each other.

Several of the therapists I work with moved to the US from the Philippines sometime in the last five years. They are all petite, and somewhere along the line, an inside joke started where they first called themselves monkeys and then everyone (by their permission of course) started to join in the joke. Something to do with all the jungle in the Philippines, and our occasional misunderstanding due to slang or something...however, one day, one of the PTs spoke up and said,

"I don't like being called a monkey. I'm not a monkey. I'm a cow... I moved here for greener pastures!"