Mr Thomas

***please note this was originally written in 2019***

Unfortunately my picture is a bit fuzzy so let me take just a second to explain.

This is Mr Thomas. He just might be the best therapist I’ve ever had. See, I don’t have time to go to a “licensed” therapist (or enough money for that matter). Well, Mr Thomas’s licenses are apparently in “environmental services” but that doesn’t mean a whole lot to me because some folks just don’t need a fancy piece of paper or random lettters by their name, for me to know “environmental services” is clearly code for therapist.

Thankfully, I figured that out real quick.

Mr Thomas & I talk about everything under the sun while he’s in our room doing environmental stuff. He comes from a teeny tiny town in Alabama. Probably the kind where there’s 1 stop light, 15 churches, & a grocery store that never has clothes but always sells chicken feed.

He cooked BBQ for a huge national chain for so many years that they just kept promoting him until he didn’t want to be promoted any more. Same thing happened here- he’s entirely too good at being a therapist so they tried to move him way up to Chicago. That didn’t appeal to Mr Thomas in the least, seeing as he loves BBQ & all his family too much (probably in that exact order) to move up where city lights & smog take the place of smoke & embers from a pit.

It’s pretty neat how it doesn’t bother either of us that I’m a woman, he’s a man, I’m younger (younger-ISH), he’s older- It’s like he didn’t even notice any of that. That’s what a good therapist does.

Now, we did have a bit of a disagreement on the best BBQ, but all is forgiven & we’ve moved on from that little discrepancy.

Anyway, I hate to brag on him too much mainly because I’m selfish & nervous y’all might figure out just how good he really is at all this therapist stuff & the unit here will be slammed with folks needing his expertise. Plus, he’s from Alabama & the fine folks there don’t like to brag. (Football don’t count. Roll Tide🐘 ).

So I’ll just explain this picture real quick since I said it was only going to take a second. 😉

Like I said, this is Mr Thomas. And even though his expertise is being the best listener I’ve ever had here at the hospital, he took the time to sanitize our neighbor’s new remote control car. I won’t tell y’all about how that thing bumped our door all night until 3am. Nope. I won’t mention I lost sleep over his new car because it was our neighbor’s 13 birthday that day. He has Cystic Fibrosis & I’m gonna just assume he didn’t really want to be here on his big day.

Yep. That’s Mr Thomas cleaning (sanitizing) our neighbor’s remote control car to make doubly sure he wasn’t picking up extra germs... probably from ramming it into our door, but like I said... I’m not going to mention that part.

Mr Thomas is every bit as important as our amazing physicians and nurses- gracious, on days like this I feel even more so.