Craving

Okay...This will be short but I just wanted to say how much I'm craving a big juicy burger from the York Bar in Montana right now. With the pile of mushrooms sliding off the side. The bag of chips with the York Peppermint Patty hidden underneath. With a Caesar to drink. Man that sounds so good right now. I find that the longer I am here in Rochester and in spite of how often Dave and I go out to eat that I crave Helena food more and more. I know it is a weird form of homesickness but that is how mine manifests its self. Wish York Burger was mailable! Grease would soak through and make a mess of any reasonable cardboard box. Darn! I'll just have to settle for a Newt's burger if I ever get there tonight. If not tonight, sometime this week. Like I said...I have a craving and I MUST satisfy it.

Taking care of one's own...

What a frustrating day! So I work for the "world famous" Mayo Clinic. Every day I take care of patients in a clinic and the cast room. Every day I go out of my way to make sure appointments and tests and every thing is scheduled to both expedite my patient's treatment and to make it as easy as possible for them to make their appointments with the help of my appointment secretary. Today, it was my turn to experience the "Mayo way". What a mess! Way back in November I called to schedule my yearly physical. Now, girls, I know it isn't something we look forward to but we do it. We take responsibility for our own health and schedule the exam. I did that. The week or two prior to Thanksgiving. If anyone is counting, that was two months ago. I needed a new patient exam (45 minute appt) with the doc. Fine. I asked to have it scheduled as late in the office day as possible so I could insure that I had seen the majority of my patients before having to have someone cover for me. Fine...3:15 on January 26th. Yes, that is the first slot they could get me in to. Fine. So two weeks ago I email my colleague to see if he could cover for me from 2 in the afternoon today on if I had not seen all of our cast room patients. Fine, no problem, the boss is on trauma call so he would be available. Great! This morning I deprive myself of my breakfast in the car so that I can have my pre-scheduled lab work (gotta make sure my cholesterol medicine is a. lowering my cholesterol and b. not killing my liver)

I get to work, check in with the lab as soon as I get there (7:20). The lab tech pokes the needle in, takes a vial of my blood, all set. I got about my day. After finishing my morning clinic, I call the cast room to let them know that I am available and if there are any patients checked in to please bring them back so I can start seeing them as I will be leaving at 2 pm and would like to get as many seen as possible before than so that my colleague doesn't have to do too much. Fine. They line up all 9 patients, I have my chief available and at 1:50 the last one got taken care of. Great! Get on the bus, get to my car, eat lunch in the car, get to my appt 30 minutes prior as instructed on my itinery. I stop by the pharmacy to renew my birth control pills. Fine. They will be ready when you are done. Fine. I wait in line at the reception desk to check in. Hi, Nicolle Hendrix, clinic number blah blah blah...I have a 3:15 with Dr. D. I'm sorry, you aren't in the system. What is your number again?

Now for all those unfamiliar with the Mayo way patients have a number. if your number starts with a 0 it means you are really really old. M 7 digit number starts with a 6. I'm new to the clinic. They reenter it and sure enough, no 45 minute appt. Nothing! I take a deep breath and dare ask "why?". She does some searching and says "Oh, it was canceled". Canceled, canceled when. Let me do some checking she says. From my cushing, luxury chair in the waiting room (I'm not kidding, they just built this brand new shiny outpatient clinic for us), I watch her call over an appt secretary. Eyebrows are wrinkled, whispers...you know the scene. They disappear behind the HIPPA approved privacy screen. 15 minutes later one emerges. The doctor can not see you today. Wait...you mean she is here? So why again was it canceled? Here comes the stuttering, I'm sorries! It got "erased" by mistake. When? Two weeks after I had already gotten my schedule in my mailbox. Why wasn't I notified? We didn't know it had been canceled.

I just stand there, breathing. There are patients behind me. I have my employee photo id and name badge and pager in clear view...I clearly work here. Can't lose my temper. So, I breath some more. Okay, so what are you going to do about this? I arranged cross coverage for my patients, now you tell me I have to try to get coverage again? I call to find out when above mentioned colleague could cover again. Anytime next Tues, Wed, or Thurs? Great. Can you see me then, and please it has to be as last as possible in the day. So.....long story short, no stirrups for me today (that isn't a bad thing), I kept my cool (i'm so proud of myself) and Dr. D will see me at 3 pm next friday and I have coverage. Oh it means so much to work as an employee for the esteemed Mayo Clinic!

Other than that the day was okay. I'm on my way to check on my boyfriend you got in an accident on the way home. He says he is fine, I'll believe him tomorrow when he hurts all over. Remember, I take care of this sort of thing for a living. Fender bender victims are always fine the day of. Hurt like hell two days later. Yippee....

Breaking a rule

So I'm the type of person that doesn't set many "rules" for myself to follow. But I do have a few and I broke one tonight. I'm pretty good about leaving work at work when it is time to head home. For the first time I have left work and instead of planning to take care of it first thing in the morning, I hauled my dictations that were left to do home with me. I printed out the needed information to refresh my memory as I knew that once I had played my Tuesday night volleyball game that I would have this ankle confused with that ankle and am now curled up after a shower and supper in front of "According to Jim" with the phone and my dictation pile. I'll make each note quick and mostly painless but I can't believe at 8:30 pm I'm dictating cast room notes. UGH!

A few things to remember in life...

1. At least 2 people in this world love you so much they would die for you.
2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.
3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.
4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don't like you.
5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.
6. You mean the world to someone.
7. If not for you, someone may not be living.
8. You are special and unique.
9. Someone that you don't even know exists, loves you.
10. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.
11. When you think the world has turned its back on you, take a look: you most likely turned your back on the world.
12. When you think you have no chance of getting what you want, you probably won't get it, but if you believe in yourself, probably, sooner or later, you will get it.
13. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.
14. Always tell someone how you feel about them; you will feel much better when they know.
15. If you have a great friend, take the time to let them know that they are great.

Rearranging

At least the bed is put together...notice no curtains, dream catchers that need to be moved, yada yada yada

So do I just bore easily or what? I have spent the entire day rearranging most of the house. Now don't most people just do this just once a year...like with spring cleaning? Ugh! This all started last week when I finally got all the components of my "grown up" bed delivered. It has taken me a year to get it all but I finally feel like a real adult with a real bed that has all matching pieces and bedding. Still no matching bedroom furniture to go with it but I'll work on that. This lead to needing to move the futon that I was using as a bed into the second bedroom to have as a guest bedroom. That required the desk to be moved along with all the electronics associated with the desk. Said the heck with trying to do my scrapbooking on a too small desk and decided to move all my scrapping supplies to the den, which I haven't used at all in the past year that I have been here. Moving the card table into the den to use as a scrapping table required moving the couches that are down there. Now I still need to move the TV and the VCR down there because one of my "resolutions" for the new year was to sleep better...that translates to getting rid of the TV in the bedroom. So one might ask where everything is now...all the scrapping supplies are either on or next to the card table in the den. The desk is cleared of all electronics, files and junk (that is all in a row against the wall) and the futon is still where it was this morning. The mirror in the bedroom, as well as the cross next to my bed, have been hung up. Still have the curtains to put up, picture frames to put back up...what have I started!!! Guess this is what weekends are for :)

Me with a long jumper outside the Spokane Arena, August 2004

So I was trying to update my profile to add this as my picture and instead ended up with the picture as a post. Help someone...how do I use the settings to add my picture to my profile?

Record Patient

Well, I survived the week and am just now finding time to make a second entry into my new experiment at communication. Today was an interesting day. Started way too early, but that is usually the case Monday through Friday. My clinic list was a typical day with about 12 patients on. We had the usual post-op checks for sutures out since most of our ice storm fracture patients are now two weeks out from their surgery. Among those was a particular woman that now tops my "oldest patient" list. She is 104 years old! And she still is coherent. Other than needing to speak quite loudly and reminding her of our names, she is darn chipper for 104. She was a bit upset about her appointment though due to the fact she was going to miss her Friday card playing date...the bridge ladies might not keep playing if she isn't there. Way too cute!

The other news of the day is the continue snowfall, which rolled in at noon. From the pile on the deck table it looks like about 8 or 9 inches in the last 9 hours. Suppose to keep snowing until tomorrow afternoon. It is absolutely gorgeous outside though...big fat wet flakes. I love snow like this...I'll get to shovel tomorrow but that is okay. Maybe if I have time I"ll hit the cross country ski trails. Could use the exercise out of the gym.

So today I was running the thought of hooking up with a personal trainer at the gym. Just not liking my current "shape". Size is okay, just soft. Don't think I can get past it unless I have someone pushing me. I want to get back into my weight training program that I had in college with Laurie Fahlberg. That was the best shape I was in. I'm going to head to the gym tomorrow and hopefully the gal I want to work with me is there and we can come up with a "plan".

Giving it a try

Hello everyone! A friend of mine sent me a link to her own blog and I thought it was a nice idea. Thought I would give it a try as a way to stay in touch with friends and family a far. Since moving to Rochester, Minnesota, a year ago I have done a fairly decent job of staying in touch with everyone but one can always do better, right? Just like most things that I do, I will probably do several posts in a day on some days and then other times, go for weeks without anything. I'll give it a go and see how it works.