Crazy mutts

I have a funny dog story from Sunday. I went out on the front porch to do some cleaning and the front door didn’t latch. I turned around in time to see two streaks of lightning take off down the street. I said some *very bad words* and ran inside to get my car keys and the leashes because they were down the end of the street by the time I got as far as the sidewalk. The neighbors across the street were on their porch and pointed down the street so I drove towards Hickory St and couldn’t see them. I could hear dogs barking so I turned into the alley that runs behind my house. I came up behind a house a few down from me and immediately spotted Midas. I stopped the car and opened the door and he came RUNNING full speed at me and jumped into the car. (He HATES the car!). I still didn’t see T, so I drove down the alley to Holly St (going behind my house in the process) and went back around to my street. As I got near my house, I saw the neighbors across the street laughing and pointing. I look over, and there’s T sitting on the front porch waiting for me. As soon as he saw me in the car, he came running off the front porch and up on the car door, looking in the open window at me as if to say “Hey! Are we going for a ride? Cool! Let’s go!”
The neighbors later told me that he left Midas, came across the street to greet them, and then back to our side of the street and up on the porch. All in about 5 minutes. *eye roll* Crazy mutts.

Hospital Memoirs

It occurs to me that I never posted my funny resident story from a few weeks ago.

Situation - I've been in the hospital about 20 hrs, haven't slept in 34. My surgeon has been consulted and his senior resident has come to see me. He's doing his info gathering and I'm already seeing that he's the type who's decided what's wrong and is trying to make my words fit his picture. Remember - my presenting symptom was sudden onset abd pain followed by a near-fainting spell. Since I fainted, he's focusing on making sure they didn't miss any cardiac problems before putting me under anesthesia for surgery. He's just about done gathering his info and is at the "well Ms Lee, we'll be adding you to the surgical schedule for tomorrow" stage when Jr Resident comes in, apologizes for interupting and sits in on the rest of the interview. Sr. Resident continues, saying we'll review your labs and EKG before going to surgery and I point out that I've not had an EKG. He says "really?" I saw "yes" - nothing more said.

They get to the assessment stage of the deal and I have Jr resident on my left, leaning over doing his listening with the scope deal, and Sr. Resident on my right near the end of the bed. The Jr. does his thing and after a few minutes, while listening to my belly, he says "did you say you haven't had an EKG?" and I say "that's right". As he's listening to me, he looks up at his Sr resident with what must've been a question face, because the Sr immediately starts to say "I'm sure she did she just doesn't..." Picture me - lying there, on no sleep hearing this bozo start to say I don't know what I'm talking about!

I cut him off before he could finish the sentence (and truly piss me off- never a good thing when I'm lacking sleep), and said, "I'm a nurse, I KNOW what an EKG is, and I HAVEN'T HAD ONE - in fact I've NEVER HAD ONE." Sr. Resident backed off in a major way, assured me that he'd make sure that one was ordered and left, hurriedly. Jr. followed him out the door after a few more moments.

Funny thing though - I was in the hospital for 36 more hours, and SEVERAL of the Jr residents made it a point to drop into my room at least twice before I was discharge, but I never saw the Senior Resident again.

As words go, it was reasonably mild, but I think I truly embarrassed him in front of the Jr. He deserved it, and judging by the attention the Jr's gave me, they appreciated having the arrogant jerk put in his place. It probably didn't help his rep any that I told all 3 of my doctors what he said and EVERY nurse I had. ROFL. Don't piss off a nurse - you'll never live it down.

Ok, while we're on hospital stories - here's my favorite stupid nurse one. I went in on Monday night, got to my room early Tuesday morning. I was NPO all day until 1 pm when they ordered me a lunch tray. I ate the lunch tray, had a supper tray arrive about 5:00 and had started to eat that too, when my GI showed up, after discussing me with my surgeon. He and I go over the plan and he tells me he wants me to have a CT scan that night, and that I'll be having a scope as well as the rectal exploration under anesthesia the next day. As he leaves he says - don't eat any more of that! *sigh* It was such a good looking tray too.

So, about 6 am, my nurse walks in tearing up little packets and saying "I've got some medication for you to take - just 4 little pills" as she starts towards me. I say, "what is it?" She says Dulcolax as she starts to hand them to me. I held my hand up like a traffic cop and said "NO". She said "what?" I said "no, I can't take Dulcolax - I tried it for my last scope and I got really sick." "HMMMPH" sez she. "HMMMPH" think I, not appreciating her overworked attitude, considering she's done NOTHING for me in 12 hrs except page my doctor (when I got cranky about being NPO for 12 hrs with no IV) and order me a tray.

About 6:20 or so, while I was on the phone with one of the several Suxters who called to check on me (I SO appreciated those calls from my family and the Suxters , though I was so freaking tired, I'm not even sure I remember everyone who called now) when she walked in carrying 3 bottles of Mag Citrate as my bowel prep for the scope. UGH, thinks I, and finishes my conversation.

When I'm off the phone, I'm sitting there looking at the mag citrate, and suddenly think - hey! I'm supposed to have a cat scan - I don't want to start this until that's done, right?
So....out I walk to harass my poor *overworked* nurse who's sitting at the desk. "Um, scuse me, but I thought Dr. Yates wanted me to have a cat scan tonight? I don't know if I should start this prep if I'm going to have that..." Poor over-worked nurse (snort) gives me a disgusted look and says, I don't have any orders for a cat scan. Me - "are you sure?" She *sniff* flips order pages in chart, runs finger over the page and half of orders - "no, no cat scan. You do have orders for a CT scan, but I know they're busy and doubt that'll be done until tomorrow".

Me - dumbfounded - head back to my room and pray to God that my night shift nurse this night is the same one I had the night before, because I've now found out that not only is my day shift nurse a bitch - she's a stupid bitch that doesn't know that a cat scan and a ct scan are the SAME BLOODY THING!

My saintly night shift nurse, Grace, doesn't say a thing when I tell her what has happened, but by 7:15 I have my first glass of CT contrast - when the CT was delayed she found out what the scoop was, she took me down there HERSELF, ordered me a bedside commode so that I wouldn't have to spend the night sleeping on the bathroom floor, and brought me IV Zofran immediately when I started to get sick from the mag citrate. She restored my faith in my peers, bless her.

It was a good day.

Though it started out cool this morning at about 43 degrees, by 10 am it was in the low 50's and I went out to work on my yard. Every year I seem to have more weeds and less grass, and I've reached my breaking point. I am going to try to work on it a bit every day for the next few weeks, and hopefully have all the crud that's growing out there dug up by the end of the month. As I clear each section I'll toss down grass seed and hay, and, since it can't possibly look any worse than it currently does, hopefully by mid May I'll have a yard I don't cringe everytime I look at it. It'll be much more labor intensive than expensive, and hopefully I won't have to do it again.

Let's go....

Fly a kite! That's what I did when I got off work today. It was totally spur of the moment and I had a wonderful time. Sometimes ya just got to play.

This whole "turn the clocks forward" again thing is a pain in my tush. I had a very nice schedule all worked out, and now I'm having to get up earlier. Ick. It is nice that it's light now until 8 pm; I like that part of it a lot!

So, random factoids - for those of you that weren't already aware of it, I had a short but scary spell here at the house 2 weeks ago and passed out while trying to get to the phone to call for help. That spell ended up with me in the hospital for 3 days, not sleeping for 2, a CT scan, a colonoscopy (AGAIN) and an exploration under anesthesia with 2 rectal stricturoplasties. They were SURE they were going to find a fistula, but ol' Frederica wasn't going to make it easy for them, no sirree. She's a modest lil' lady and she hid, dammit. I'm as certain as they are that she's still lurking in there somewhere, but as long as she behaves herself, I don't care anymore. I lived with her older twin brothers for 10+ years before I evicted them, so she knows the score. She doesn't bother me and I'll pretend she's not there. LOL

I'm tentatively scheduled for a capsule endoscopy test next Tuesday - that should be interesting. I say tentative, because I'm not sure that insurance is going to ok the test. We'll see. I'll be very curious to see what it shows because I've felt for years that my stomach/small intestine do not empty the way they should, though I don't know why, or what's going on. Plus *putting on nerd hat* it just kind of sounds like a cool test. LOL

I've become very addicted to Sudoku puzzles and even coughed up the $15 to download a program called Master Sudoku to my Palm pilot. LOL Yup, I'm a geek.

This Saturday Priscilla and I are going downtown to walk in the Mystery History Mile - http://www.active.com/event_detail.cfm?event_id=1287996 The weather will be a bit cool according to the forecasters, but they've been wrong the last 2 weekends so I'm not too worried about it.

Hmmm, what else. Well, I bought a new (to me) monitor last weekend. Apparently the one I had didn't appreciate being knocked around when I fell in the computer desk. The graphics have been wonky off and on ever since. It's fairly old for a monitor also - and it's definitely been well used, at least since I got it. I'm not sure how much use it got before that. The replacement is nothing spectacular, but it works, looks ok, and the price was right, so I'm not going to fuss. I'm just glad I can still get on the net.

Guess that's about it for news today. I wish you could see T right now - he's lying on the floor next to me with his paws tucked up close to his head. I guess he'll always look like a puppy to me - he's never lost the mannerisms.