Corporate Healthcare Takeover and Other Fungus-Related Adventures

The second day into a six-day stretch at the hospital, everything changed.

Not in a gentle, evolutionary way. In a "someone handed the keys to a for-profit lizard who immediately changed the phones, room numbers, electronic health record, formulary, and staffing model, presumably because changing only one catastrophic thing at a time felt unnecessarily cautious" kind of way. The official messaging described this as a transition. The people actually working described it mostly with profanity.

For six consecutive days, I attempted to perform the relatively straightforward task of verifying medications while trapped inside what appeared to be an escape room designed by software engineers with unresolved childhood trauma. At any given moment, I was fifty clicks deep into verifying a single order, answering calls from nurses who couldn't scan medications, correcting outpatient Viagra prescriptions that had somehow become inpatient medication orders, and trying to remember where patients physically existed now that all the room numbers had changed. At one point, I spent so long attempting to verify an order for tamsulosin that I began to suspect I had entered a dissociative state somewhere around click thirty-seven and would spend the remainder of my career slowly facilitating urinary flow.

And yet, somehow, this is not a story about healthcare. It's a story about mushrooms.

Because while the hospital was actively on fire, one of the pharmacists helping train us mentioned he was into mushrooms. Mushroom people find me now. I don't know exactly when this started. Perhaps it's the mushrooms on my badge buddy. Perhaps they can smell curiosity. Whatever the mechanism, people who love mushrooms increasingly identify me as one of their own despite overwhelming evidence that I have no idea what I'm doing.

This particular mushroom enthusiast informed me that he had hired a mycologist to teach him where to forage. Then, as casually as another person might offer me a stick of gum, he reached into a paper bag and produced a Reishi mushroom he had collected himself. I held it in my hands and admired the deep reddish color and lacquered texture.

"I'm very new to all this," I told him. This turned out to be a tactical error. Because moments later he asked if I would like a mushroom block.

Now, for those unfamiliar (like I was), a mushroom block is essentially a living fungal colony. It requires care, attention, and at least a vague understanding of what mushrooms need to survive. At the time, I was struggling to remember to drink water. I was living with my parents. My hospital was undergoing corporate exorcism. And I had worked six days in a row. In other words, I was exactly the wrong person to be entrusted with a living organism.

Naturally, I said yes.

Partly because he was kind and had patiently spent the week helping me navigate EHR hell. Partly because it's delightful to meet another mycophile. But mostly because I was concerned this might be some kind of test from the universe. I have reached a point in my spiritual development where I occasionally worry that declining free mushrooms might somehow interfere with destiny.

The arrangement was made.

Later that day, near the end of my sixth consecutive day of trying to maintain both patient safety and my sanity, he informed me that he was going to retrieve the mushroom block from his car. He briefly considered bringing it inside the pharmacy but then remembered that even cardboard is prohibited because it contains germs. Extrapolating from there, spores, logs, dirt, and fungi occupy a regulatory gray area.

So instead, we arranged a hospital lobby handoff. He would send me a message through the brand-new communication system that none of us knew how to use. A few minutes later, the message arrived. "I have the mushroom block."

I asked where he was. I still had twenty minutes left in my shift, a to-do list I was never going to finish, and a fragile commitment to pretending I might.

"Outside the lobby."

So I excused myself and headed downstairs to complete what was, without question, the strangest professional errand of my pharmacy career. My assignment was simple: locate a six-foot-six pharmacist wearing bright orange, acquire mushrooms, return unnoticed.

The problem was that I couldn't find him. So now I was wandering around outside a hospital looking increasingly suspicious. A pharmacist roaming aimlessly around the entrance of a medical center, scanning the horizon. Not looking for a patient. Not looking for a physician. Looking for a giant man carrying a mushroom log.

At this point, I became briefly concerned that someone would revoke my pharmacist license. Surely there must be a rule somewhere stating that healthcare professionals should not conduct fungal exchanges in ambulance bays.

But eventually he found me. In his hands was a plastic bag containing a plastic-wrapped block with a cluster of mushrooms growing from one side. The mushrooms emerged on delicate stems like tiny woodland sculptures. It was genuinely beautiful.

Unfortunately, we were standing in the middle of a busy hospital entrance where people were attempting to receive medical care. This was not the ideal setting for contemplation.

As he tied the bag shut, gently compressing the mushroom cluster in the process, I became fairly certain the mushrooms would no longer be attached to the block by the time I got home. But optimism has never been my problem.

He gave me instructions. Something about shade. Something about cutting an opening in the plastic. Something about moisture. I absorbed approximately twenty-five percent of what he said. Then I carried the mushroom block back upstairs.

Since it was impossible to casually hide a fungal colony, I announced to my coworkers in the break room: "Matthew gave me a mushroom block."

What I love about pharmacists is that no one looked at me as though I had lost my mind. Instead, they gathered around and admired it.

"Oh wow."

"Look at the color."

"That's cool."

As though receiving mushrooms from a stranger in a hospital lobby was a perfectly ordinary occurrence.

I brought the mushroom block to my car. And immediately forgot about it. Not forever. Just long enough to be concerning.

Two days later, Matthew asked how things were going with the mushroom block.

"Great," I replied.

This was technically true in the sense that I still possessed it.

Then he asked a follow-up question, and I was forced to admit that I hadn't actually done much with it yet.

"So it's in your garage or somewhere cool?" he asked.

Now, at this exact moment, the mushroom block was sitting in my car.

In June.

In a parking lot.

Essentially participating in a low-budget recreation of the surface of the sun.

"Uh huh," I said.

I have never lied less convincingly in my life.

Fortunately, Matthew is both observant and kind. Seeing immediately that he had entrusted his beloved fungal offspring to someone operating at the edge of her executive functioning capacity, he gently explained again what I should do. No judgment. No criticism. Just the patient concern of a man realizing his mushroom had been adopted by a golden retriever in human form.

On the drive home, I resolved to do better. The mushroom deserved at least that much. When I arrived at my parents' house—because that is where I live right now—I opened the bag.

As predicted, the mushroom cluster had detached from the block. The separation was complete. A tragic ending to a relationship that had survived countless biological challenges only to be defeated by my inability to follow basic instructions.

Still, hope springs eternal. I carried the block outside and placed it beneath a shady tree. I told it I was happy it was there. I gave it Reiki.

Now, I am aware that energy healing cannot physically reattach a mushroom to its food source. I understand this. I have a doctorate. But after the week I'd had, it felt worth trying.

And besides, maybe the point was never saving the mushroom. Maybe the point was remembering that even in the middle of corporate healthcare chaos, endless clicking, staffing cuts, and six consecutive days of trying to keep my head above water, some small part of me was still willing to kneel beside a fungus and wonder if perhaps something new might grow.

These days, that feels like a skill worth practicing. Because sometimes curiosity looks an awful lot like hope.

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