Speak Spoke Write Wrote

interesting day on the floor with patients today. i noticed all the cool ways i get to communicate. as much as i whine about rounding on patients the rare weeks that i have to do it, i do always learn a lot and in just a few days the relationships you establish with the patients and their families and the juicy human interactions you're part of make it not all so bad. (i guess).

firstly, i have a spanish-speaking family of a young patient who just went through major surgery. the child (the patient) translates on her parents' behalf. how helpless would you feel as a parent at the hospital when the staff is telling you important details of your kid's health and that same kid is the only one who can understand them? not to mention- this gives said kid big responsibility to not accidentally mismanage the truth in translation. ("the doctor says i will only get better if i get a pony for my birthday...yea, yea...and i should be allowed to eat chocolate cake for breakfast everyday when i get home"). i love speaking spanish and am piss-poor at it. but i feel like a total rockstar when i'm the only staff around who can do it at all. hooray for working in a whitebread hospital in the suburbs!

then, i had a patient who formerly had a trach (after they took his larynx among other neck area important parts in a series of surgeries to resect tumors -from years of smoking- just had to say it) and now has a gaping hole in the base of his neck with no ability to speak. except that he writes! beautifully! so we had a conversation like this for a good 20 mins about his time in the airforce and what it was like to be on huge ships like the one being shown on the discovery channel on TV when i came into his room. it was lovely.

amazing how you can get a feel for the personality of someone through such limited interaction. and i mused that- like the great "silent bob"- people with few words always seem so wise! the text written on the silent patient's note pads by his bedside seems so profound. even if it just says in shaky block letters "ham sandwich" or "make that damned PA girl go away and leave me alone" it carries a lot of weight.

and on that note.

Score 0.33 for Medical Science!!

we're getting there!

together, the zany philanthropic mad scientists with all their smarts plus the "rent" cast and all their fund raising efforts have concocted a vaccine for HIV that is showing some efficacy!

how cool is that?

please read this and do a tiny anticipatory celebratory dance with me!

I Just Want to Work Already!

this has been such a weird month. not only did i have 2 weeks off for my zombie bite illness, but last year, when i requested time off for this year, i crammed all my vacation time into the end of the summer/early fall.....so i had a week's vacation before my sick leave in mid august....then i had a 5 day weekend for labor day in which we went to austin to visit friends...then this weekend we went to nyc for a wedding and i took a 4 day weekend for that. and in just 2 weeks i have my annual 1 week off for continuing education when i'll do home study for a few days and also go to a local conference for a few.

crazy, right? and expensive.

anyone need a kidney? some eggs?

Celebrating my 1st Anniversary in a Shower of Poo

so i've officially been working at MBH for 1 year as of yesterday. i can't believe i've been a real life PA for a year already! it seems like just yesterday that i was crying into text books and my classmates and i were feeling each other up under the guise of learning how to do physical exams.

i still have so much to learn, but i do recognize how far i've come. i feel mostly comfortable in almost every case i do (at least those i do fairly regularly) and i loath a little less being on the floor doing medicine the rare times i have to do that.

i have some goals for this next year. i want to learn to do some pretty invasive floor procedures that will raise my skills, knowledge, and stock. and i want to get back into learning and reading. i've read almost nothing clinical over the last year and it's time to get back into it. i'm forgetting a lot that i learned already and i need to review and update. (i might be woefully behind in my clinical skills and can't correctly diagnose heart failure, but this year i did read the ENTIRE sookie stackhouse vampire novel series and can chronical her sexploits with vampires, were wolves, were tigers....the list goes on. impressed?).

WHAT ABOUT THE POO you ask? that's another resolution i have for next year. don't inadvertently pull off a patient's VERY full colostomy bag onto myself, the floor, and everyone around me right before we're going to start a case. this happened today. and remember that show "you can't do that on television" where the liquidy slime stuff came out of the sky? that was sort of the consistency of the goo. and the smell- woo! the whole surgical area smelled like a slaughter house farted. so....i won't do that again. what i will continue to do is have spare socks in my locker just in case.

I Feel Very Much on the Outside of this Healthcare Coverage Debate

we've been really fortunate as far as health insurance goes. our jobs have always been full time and included benefits and allowed us to pay in our few hundred bucks a month and they chipped in the rest for good private insurance. and we've had great jobs that for the most part haven't laid us off and even in the down times between jobs, one of us has always worked with benefits. and, of course, we've always found it important enough to pay in even when we were doing nothing but paying since we were healthy, healthy, healthy and never required any pay outs.

until now.

i was a little worried all week while in the hospital that we might have crazy high bills to deal with when we got home (since, once again, we've never actually USED our insurance so i've only always assumed it was good, but didn't really know). i actually almost stopped my dad from opening a second box of kleenex one day while i was still in the critical unit just in case they charged ($12 a pop, no doubt!!) per item.

so i got my bill from the MBH today and my total charges for 6 days in the hospital with all those specialists and all those tests (and all that kleenex!!) was some $42,000.00. (what the what??)

but guess how much i have to pay?

$47.50.

priceless.

PLEASE STOP TELLING ME HOW SICK I WAS!

i got the memo. you thought i was going to die. it's not really helping me now to hear it over and over again. this is just after coming from the cancer center at the "MBH" following up with my hematologist/oncologist. first of all, scary as hell to have to go there. i never want to have to go to a cancer center for anything they'd want to see me for. (before you get your knickers in a wad- everything is totally groovy. my labs are behaving just like they should in the event of a funky virus. no scary cancers or blood disorders and even after i pushed, pushed, pushed- frankly became the annoying pushy patient who seems to be begging for painful, invasive procedures- the MD reassured me that further testing will be limited and she has ZERO suspicions based on all the findings she's seen that there's a cancer lurking somewhere in my depths ). so that's a relief.

but this is also after two other docs i saw this week and last both looked at me from across the little exam room and shook their heads like, "i can't believe you look so much like a human now after you resembled a soggy puppet for so long" and said things like "do you know how sick you were?" and, when the aide couldn't get blood from my ruined veins at one of the appointments (don't they just have too many perforations in them after a certain number of needle sticks? wouldn't it be like a sprinkler head and just start sort of sprinkling out everywhere? must make note to ask poor, abused heme/onc on next visit), the MD referred to me as "the poor woman who's been through so much."

just stop.

i'm back at work and for the most part, feeling really strong. let's all just let my bruises heal and let me get back on my feet and be as strong as i know i am again. let's not see me as a tragic, broken doll, but as a horse. or ox. or bull. or some other labor animal.