Keep It To Yourself, It's My Life

I'm at work again today. It has been a pretty good one so far: one of those steady/busy days that balance out the crazy/busy and slow-as-cold-molasses-crawling-across-the-salt-flats-in-winter days. It all started early, with Benji waking up crying. It's so sad! I'm not sure what the deal is, if he's teething again (he has nearly all of them, can't we be done with this already?!) or if he has nightmares or what. Allen thinks he may have swallowed a penny . . . I really hope not, but weirder things have happened. He goes back to the doctor next week. I'm pretty darn sure he has gained weight, but he's not walking on his own yet. He will walk holding your hand, or pushing the fun music bus that Granny gave him for Christmas, but he's not confident in independent movement just yet. I think he's realizing how much it is holding him back. We went to Rachael & Seuao's for Family Home Evening last night, and Benji wanted to run and play with Lily and Noah so so bad! But he's okay, and he's getting there. I don't think we'll have to take him to Physical Therapy. Even so, Tessa is crawling already and is about ready to walk, and by gum, she will NOT beat him! That's the final straw! Anyway, back to my day. I brought Benji with me to work so I could clock in on time . . . if it weren't such a pain, I'd wait for Allen to get home when he gets off work at 10:30 a.m. But I just don't think it's a good idea to leave the house when he gets home around 10:45 a.m., then drive five minutes to work, find an employee parking spot (and the best of those are a good five minute walk from the main entrance), clock in, change clothes, put my lunch in the freezer, get my assignments, gather and open my gown and gloves and mask and be ready to scrub in by 11:00. This way, I take Benji with me, clock in, and wait for Allen to pick him up. That way, at least I'm ready to go and I won't be penalized for being late. I'm sure Allen would prefer the other way, but if I'm late again before September, I won't get a raise next year. They are that serious, and it's a pain in my you-know-what. So Benji has started saying "Hi." He'll wave sometimes, but not often. We were sitting in the lobby waiting for Daddy, and he kept saying "hi" to everyone who would walk past. I love that everyone would smile and say "hi" back when he did. He's such a little charmer! I just love that boy! Anyway, after Allen picked him up, I went upstairs to the O.R. and changed. I did a first lunch in room 3 with everyone's favorite surgeon, Dr. Noyes (the only surgeon who has made me cry . . . a story for another time). He is a fine surgeon, but he believes the world revolves around him. It doesn't matter what else is happening in the other 21 operating rooms, if it's not a good time for me to give the scrub a lunch relief, then I can't--no matter what my other assignments may be. At least I got to be with my dear friend Mary, the charge nurse in that room and my comrade from working nights at LDSH. For some reason inexplicable to everyone, when we work together, we speak in British accents. Yeah, sometimes it gets on the surgeons nerves (and we didn't really do it with Dr. Noyes . . . with Rob or Ray it's fine), but most of the time they just laugh at us. It's so rare that we get to work together anymore that we have to make it worthwhile! Anyway, we were venting a bit about Dr. Noyes (pronounced like "Noise"), and how, once one realizes that the good doctor is the center of the universe, one is much happier. As we were cleaning up the room between cases, I made up a little song to the tune of "The More We Get Together," but it goes something like this: 'The more we worship Dirk Noyes the happier we'll be.' Mary got a little mad at me, because it was so catchy that she would be singing it for the rest of the day. She cracks me up. Wow--I'm rather verbose today! So, after that, I took a little break. I went to the cafeteria (not that great today . . . I should have gone with the pizza), then I went to O.R. 6 to do a little GYN and let Janet go home early. I had heard there was going to be another DCD organ procurement at about 2pm, so I asked if I could cross-train on that. I'm pretty close to being ready to go on my own, but I'd like to do a couple more before they let me loose. It went very well, and our times were excellent (and Dr. VanDerWerf decided he didn't want to do the liver transplant, which didn't break my heart!). Unfortunately, as he was pulling the liver out, part of it got caught on the chest retractor and the liver got a nice big gash in it. VanDerWerf described it to the docs at UCLA (other than the gash, it was a beautiful liver), who decided they would take it. I didn't know this, but apparently the organ recipient/insurance has to pay for the organ itself. I knew an enormous part of the cost was surgery, sterile supplies, and post-op care, but I guess they pay for the liver, too. I don't know why I find that weird, but I do. So the DCD went well; I was more of a 2nd assist/observer/suction queen than anything (Kirk was 1st Assist, Shaunette and Tami were scrubbing), but it was cool to see what they are actually doing. Tami told me that we never see what they are doing, but it's always nice to know what happens in the surgery so that I can know better what to anticipate. I think I mostly have the hang of it. I really enjoy first-assisting, and that's a big part of why I'd like to go to PA school. I don't know . . . I see all these people around me getting their Master's and Doctorates, and I think about my parents and how hard they worked for their post-graduate degrees, and I feel like I should do it. Even so, there's a big part of me that just wants to be home with my baby while he's so young. I don't know. It's still a thought swirling around. I went straight from the DCD to the kidney transplant, which also went well. I like Dr. VanDerWerf a lot--he is very calm and controlled. Things never get crazy and stressful with him the way they did with LeGrand. I am still a bit intimidated by him, but I have learned just to take my time with him. He's more concerned with my doing things right than with me doing things fast. He'll take the time to explain things to me, which I really appreciate. He's a good egg. I like working with Diane, too. I'm not a huge fan of taking implant call every week, but I don't have the dread in the pit of my stomach anymore, either. Sometimes I miss LeGrand, but I really don't miss the chaos he left in his wake. After the Kidney transplant, I got another break, and then went to finish the percutaneous nephrostomy. Luckily, they were almost done when I got there, so I got to suture the skin (and I did a good job, if I do say so myself!) and clean up. And by the time we were done, the rest of the rooms were finished, too. So as of now, there isn't anything going (yay!), and I can write a super-long blog post and get paid while I'm doing it! Double yay! :o) And that's the update for today. I do need to update you on this weekend's drama. Last Friday, I woke up about 7:30 a.m., and I sat on my bed for a couple of minutes trying to get the fog out. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I went to turn my head, and I heard a 'crunch' at the base of my skull and I realized I couldn't turn my head. I kinda started freaking out, and I wasn't sure what to do. I thought about going to a chiropractor (but I really didn't want to end up paralyzed if there was a problem). I made an appointment with our family doctor, but they couldn't get me in until 3:30 p.m. I was also supposed to go to the dentist and work for 12-hours that day. Instead, we went to the E.R. Honestly, I was concerned about the care I would receive elsewhere, and I thought they would a) give me something decent for the pain, and b) take an x-ray. Nope and nope. Two hours and a $150 co-pay later, I walked out with a prescription for ibuprofen, having only seen a medical student. I was more upset with myself than anything for having wasted so much money to have a med student tell me what I already knew and would have done if I had waited for a few hours before going in. The nurse (whom I saw for the first time when she was discharging me) saw that I was crying, and asked me why I was upset. I told her that I was mad that, for $150 I didn't even get to see a real doctor. I was still in quite a bit of pain, but no one ever asked me to even rate it on the scale, and I forgot to mention it to her. She said that the med student consulted with the doctor, and I guess that was supposed to make it okay. Whatever. I work with medical students every day, and I'm sorry, but they are at the bottom of the totem pole. They did give me a pain pill on my way out the door, and they offered me a soft-collar (I not-so-politely refused that one). I was grouchy because of the E.R. situation and mad at myself and in a fair amount of pain, so I was pretty much useless the rest of that day. Thank heavens Allen was there to take care of me and Benji. Things got better over the weekend; I went to the adult session of Stake Conference on Saturday evening, which was nice. I love Primary, but sometimes it's nice to hear sermons aimed at adults without having to wrestle a toddler the entire time. Anyway, I stayed home on Sunday, and Allen went to the morning sessions. It was a nice, quiet day, and as it progressed, my neck did feel better. On Monday, I got a call from Dr. McNalley, the E.R. doc whose name was on all the paperwork, but whose face I never saw. He said in his voice message that in a lot of years of working in the E.R., this had never happened ("this" being my having been discharged without him seeing me). So he apologized, said he'd be sure I didn't get charged for a physician's visit, and he gave me his cell number and asked me to call him back. All weekend I was thinking about who I could write to complain about my visit, hoping the SelectHealth survey drones who call about EVERYTHING ELSE would call me so I could give them a piece of my mind, but all that dissolved with his phone call. I called him back, and thanked him for recognizing his error, and told him I was feeling better. So it's not a great story, but I can consider my lesson learned: I won't be going back to the E.R. unless I'm bleeding out my eyeballs. Did I mention the $150 co-pay?!? Grrr.