my little songbird

I've got to work tomorrow through Sunday and I've got the familiar pit of dread in my stomach that comes every Thursday evening. I want work to get to a place where I don't get so stressed out about it, but I think that would entail having a different job. Nursing, permanently twisting the knife in my wound that is worry. My stress pit is larger tonight, I imagine it's blossomed beyond the tight fist the usually resides between my umbilicus and xiphoid process because I had to drop Oona off and I really had such a lovely time with her this week. She's such a sweetheart and we really bonded having four days where it was just the two of us. I loved listening to her sing; in the car, at home, in a store, she just sings her little heart out and she really has a beautiful voice. Her repertoire includes Adele, Lily Allen, songs from Mary Poppins and this week she added Juliana Hatfield to the mix. We had such a nice little routine, just the two of us and I let her and her favorite stuffed animal monkey, which is, surprise surprise, a pink knitted monkey, sleep with me. I'm going to miss her because she's off to the ex in-laws to have her own week in the country with them and her cousin, who's the same age. I'm sure Oona will have a blast but I'm going to miss my baby girl. She told me that monkey could sleep in my bed while she's gone, I think she believes we look after each other since will both miss Oona. 

the two of us squeaky clean from a shower after being at the pool

uncle

Yesterday I was beginning to think I might have been infected with the rage virus. Not that I was going off on anyone just that the littlest things would upset me. It was one of those days where bad things just keep piling up on you, and you're wondering if you should have just pulled up the covers and ceded that day. I went to the gym and as I'm getting stuff from my locker a morbidly obese woman sitting naked right next to my locker lets out a huge fart in my direction and absentmindedly says 'sorry'. I'm trying to hold my breath and collect my stuff when she lets out another, even louder and longer than the last one. She doesn't even bother to apologize that time and I'm thinking,  is it really that hard to control your flatulence until no one's face is anywhere near the vicinity of your ass? It was just a day where the interior monologue is heavy on profanity with God and Christ getting thrown into that mix. I didn't curse out loud until an idiot in her CRV almost backed right into Oona and I. Even then I didn't curse at her, just said look where you're driving you almost hit us. But under my breath I muttered a fuck heavy diatribe getting Oona safely into the car. The way people drive in parking lots makes me rabid and it was just one loooong day where I felt like I was in a parking lot with bad drivers. And do I really need to be friend's with my ex on Facebook so I can see how wonderful his life is? And how everyone likes that? I mean it's great, do not get me wrong, it's not like I don't wish him well, I'm truly glad he found someone and is happy. But I don't need to virtually be told how peachy keen things are over there while I'm ready to a. weep   b. pass out   c. devour carbs   d. join a cult.  I'm just kidding with the last one since I'm not much of a joiner. Tuesday was just a fucking nightmare day filled with rage but always I rage hardest against myself. My insides feel clawed.

So I talked to Owen last night and had a nice chat with the ex mother in law, who apologized that Owen had hung up on me the night before and she filled me in on the fun Owen is having. Either everyone is reading my blog and correcting their behavior or I just took things too personally. Hmmm, wonder which one it is?

lessons from my daughter

Somehow I feel that Oona is on to something. Although this probably has more to do with genetics and the way her alleles lined up than any sudden realization that dawned on her at the time she started speaking. Both of my children have no trouble talking to adults, they're confident and comfortable speaking with them, something I never was at that age. I'm still probably working on this, which is why I'm writing about Oona.

But first I need to mention Owen. Owen is away for the week at his grandparents in the country. Oona goes next week. My mom will most likely never take them for a week because that would be too much for her, at least that's what I was told this summer. But that's a post for another day. So I'm calling the ex in-laws, and I dread calling there because, let's just say my ex-in laws aren't real interested in small talk with me. I called tonight asked how Owen was and if he had fun today and the reply was 'Oh yeah, here I'll pass you along to him and let him tell you.' Owen gets on the line says hi and then tells me there's a movie that just started on tv. I ask what he did today and his response is 'nothing much' then 'Iloveyouhaveagoodnight.' I told him he was being a turkey and that he'd have to talk to me more tomorrow. And then the phone just hung up. No one took back the phone to tell me what had actually occurred today or, God forbid, turned off the tv so he could focus for two seconds on a conversation with his mom. Mmmm, can you just imagine how much I look forward to calling them tomorrow.

Oona got the one and only fancy pink chair

So today was a day just for Oona and me. We went to get mani/pedis because Oona's never gotten one before and I must have mentioned this idea very briefly (like a nanosecond) in passing a couple weeks ago but Oona homed in on it right away and it's been mentioned frequently since then. So Oona was knelling over all the colors and it was tough for her to narrow it down to just four shades, two for the toes and two for the fingers, but she somehow managed. I think she had a better time than me. I put my feet in my boring unchanging water and was promptly scalded. Seriously, it was so damn hot I don't know how I escaped second degree burns, guess I got them out quick enough. Then I asked that they not cut Oona's cuticles or mine because, that's supposed to be an easy way to get a fungal infection, you don't want to break the skin's protective barrier. And yes having a fungal infection would suhuhck (have you ever seen how nasty peoples toenails get from them?) but the even worse thing, in my opinion, is that you have to take oral anti fungal pills for a long time (months) and they have horrific side effects just check out lamisil here. A little liver failure for you? Or how about sporanox with the small but very real risk of congestive heart failure? To be honest the one side effect of lamisil that I learned about and which scared me the most was ageusia or loss of taste. I read an article somewhere or other about a woman that got a toenail infection from a manicure, treated it and wound up with ageusia. Fortunately it was only temporary but just reading how profoundly it affected her was terrifying to me.

and yes not only is the chair fancy the water changes colors
from teal to blue to purply blue and back again WOW

I thought I had a fungal infection on my big toes over the winter, it turned out to be the my clogs for work were too small and rubbing the tips of my toenails ($125 down the drain for those white patent leather Sanitas) And, if you were to ever get a fungal infection on your toenails don't use fungi-nail, which is like a nail polish thing. Because even though it says fungi-nail in big lettering all over the goddamn package and shows an awful fungus ridden toenail, you will find somewhere on the bottle, in 4 point font, that it doesn't actually work for fungal infections of the toenails. Seriously. I kid you not I returned a bottle for just such a reason. The lady in lace didn't do the cuticles on Oona but the lady in what appeared to be a knock off lacoste started on me and I said no and damned if five minutes later she didn't use it on my pinky toe when I had very clearly said 'do not cut my cuticles. no cut. I don't want that.' Then I get the manicure and she says I should save money and just get a polish change because I don't want my cuticles cut but I did want the flipping hand massage stuff, yet didn't get it. Fucking waste of my money, especially considering my thumbnail smeared before I walked out the door. Grrrrrrrrrr

supercuts for men, women & Oona mismatched socks, only Oona

After the mani/pedi, if I get a fungal infection so help them, I took Oona to get her bangs cut because she won't wear them pulled back in a barrette and I can't stand them in her eyes. I cannot even stand seeing stars with bangs cut at eye level, it's a huge pet peeve of mine, hair in the eyes I think it  makes people look at least 40 IQ points less intelligent, and with some of those said hair in eyes banged stars they don't have much to work with on the IQ front. But watching Oona at Supercuts was something to behold. She is more comfortable talking to those ladies than me. I could hear her chatting with the lady doing her shampoo the whole time, telling her about watching Rugrats, and that her brother is out in the country with grammy and paw paw, and that her best friend is Chloe and she wants her to come over for a play date. And the lady doing her shampoo, another customer, the guy shampooing that woman, they were all totally charmed by her. Oona just says whatever comes into her head and never thinks twice to edit herself. She doesn't have concerns the way I do where I will over analyze (nobody cares what you think) and edit (don't say that you'll sound dumb) until I don't say anything. And the thing is Oona is really bright and articulate when she talks and I think she has so much passion for life and all the stuff she's talking about, it just bubbles over and infects those around her in a delightful way. Everyone seemed happier when she was around.

And I looked at myself in the mirror and I just looked sad. Like that absolutely revolting drivel Cindy Crawford spewed about the face you have at twenty being what god or genetics (secular or non-secular, I can't be compelled to get the actual quote) gave you, but the face you have at forty being the one you earned. So she has earned an overly tweaked look that lifted the sexiness right out of her lovely ever so slightly hooded yet sultry eyes. But can that trite cliche be true? Had the past twenty three years earned me this face where my eyes always look sad and, yes, very tired. My previous post about the incident with the fellow last week. I came in friday and he was fine with me. Like it didn't even register to him and briefly my blood pressure spiked and I thought I've got to delete that post! What if he finds it. Because I'm sure my blog is something he's going to happen upon and read in his infinitesimal downtime. I'm taking things way way too personally, or I'm overly sensitive and when people flare up and get nasty but then cool down and are their happy go lucky selves five minutes later I'm still hurting from that flare up. Or it's some combination of the not registering, taking things personally, highly sensitive person perfect storm of melancholy. I feel like I try so hard at everything and it gets me nowhere near where I want to be. I wonder if I'm trying too hard. Do I have to let go somewhat?  I wouldn't even know how to go about doing that. This is when I want some of what my daughter has, that innate confidence and fearlessness.

play nice

into the woods, this is how I feel facing each work week, except the woods are much more foreboding

I have been so mad and upset for most of the week, still kicking around the hurt from work this past weekend. The odd thing is nothing absoltuely horrible happened. Friday the 13th sucked, I got an admission with change of shift which is always a huge pain in the ass. It's not difficult so much as I hate leaving my patient just sitting there wondering why it's taking me forever and a day to get around to them. But, this patient and his wife were understanding. Things went smoothly with them, the patient got a central line placed, foley put in (for continuous bladder irrigation because some chemos can cause hemorrhagic cystitis) and the chemo was up by 4:00. I got through it all without a problem. I had to deal with the rude IV nurse whose lack of industry and rudeness is such a slap in the face when the other two IV nurses are so friendly and helpful, seriously I sometimes wish I could find out this shrew's schedule just so I could make sure to schedule myself when she isn't working. But so I paged her about a patient and she did the absolute minimum, just slapped a dressing over the existing leaking one and didn't bother to change it, it's lazy and stupid but not entirely unexpected given who it was. 

Saturday I had four patients. I was busy busy and one of my patients handles fear of the unknown by being terribly mean-spirited, making comments about basically everything I do. Saying 'overkill. overkill' when I'm examining their feet, palpating for the pedal pulse. Talking about how golfing is for fools that don't know how to fish and then saying 'Do you golf Kim?'  I just try to deal with it and not let it take too much out of me, but I find behavior like that, well it's sort of like having a dementor for a patient, it can be wearing. My central line guy's dressing was leaking. Again. No surprise given the half assed way the dressing was taken care of yesterday. The IV nurse was on the floor and asked if anyone needed help before she left, behavior that was noteworthy for it's rareness coming from her. I said, yes my patient in room #- needs his dressing changed. To which she replied, what's the problem. Well it's starting to leak again and the dressing is coming up near the biopatch (an antibacterial foam disk near the insertion site to decrease the risk of infection). Her reply, if the biopatch is exposed it's your responsibility to change the dressing. I say but the line was placed less than 24 hours ago it was my understanding that only IV team can change dressings within that time. She makes some other comment about how she can't do this and how it's something I should take care of and then I say 'Didn't you just ask if anyone on the floor had anything you could take care of?' That silenced her and she asked what room number and said she'd look at it on her way out. Fifteen minutes later I saw her walking off the unit and I went in my patient's room to ask if she had checked in on him. No she hadn't. 

I gave her another hour but she didn't come back and by that time I figured 'fuck it' I might not do these changes as often as IV team but I'm anal to a fault when it comes to them so I just got the supplies and did it myself, and as nervous as I get about doing the dressing changes I do really good work, lines that seem to have an issue with leaking stop when I change the dressing. It's like glorified cleaning but using sterile technique and being on a person. I'm good when it's very important to make something clean and neat. The IV nurse showed up five hours later to change my patient's dressing at which point he said 'no it's already been changed.' This nurse then tried to remove the dressing I had done saying I shouldn't have put gauze where his steri-strips were, that I just should have put the dressing directly on top, that it would heal better that way. His skin at that site was a bit boggy (soft and moist) and I figured that it would be make more sense to put the gauze there to get the moisture and feel much better and if that area was moist how good a seal could you make with the dressing without gauze and why are flipping showing up hours after the fact and then acting all righteous and indignant at the fact that I changed the dressing. The patient got annoyed with her and told her to just leave it, he was fine. This patient, my admit from Friday, got discharged early Saturday evening, he gave me a hug on leaving. He was such a nice man and so delightful to take care of. He was a much harder patient than my walkie talkie dementor but I will take a challenging complete care patient any day if they're friendly. I don't mind working I have a harder time with emotional vampires.

Sunday my patients were easy, no blood, platelets or replacements. I only had three after my discharge yesterday evening. I couldn't beleive my luck. Then I saw it was at the expense of another nurse who had an assignment from Hell. I told her I would help her as much as I could and I tried to do my best, to help her out. I was getting pain medicine for one of her patients when my day took a nosedive. I went in the room and the patient was bleeding from the mouth. I knew he needed blood and platelets so I became concerned about a spontaneous bleed and hollered for the nurse. My old preceptor, who I love, came in to help me out and she called for the doctors. The resident came in first and then the fellow, I was trying to draw up the patient's morphine into a syringe. Now the problem was the morphine wasn't in a regular glass vial (short and squat that you place an equal amount of air as what you want to draw up ) but in one of the long slender vials that's supposed to be used with a carpuject but no one does that they just draw it up with a syringe (my first night working during orientation I accidentally put air in this vial and the bottom exploded off, along with my morphine, leaving me panicked that they'd think I'd taken the medication. fortunately others have made this stupid mistake). So I'm trying to draw up this med and I hated doing it from these slender vials and the fellow is looking at me like I've got three heads and I don't do well performing tasks in front of watchful eyes. The fellow suddenly says 'How long have you worked here?' And tone is everything. It wasn't friendly, or conversational or even humorous, it was a wafer thin veil of contempt. He might as well have said 'what the fuck are you doing?' I said, 'I'm new here, I started in February. Why?' All the time I've got this fucking syringe in one hand and vial in the other still trying to draw up the med under his black eyed scrutiny, sweating in the gloves and yellow gown. His response was because I've worked here over three years. 

perhaps I would have gotten a better response if I just looked at him like this? would go over much better if I was as cute as my daughter.

That was it and for the life of me I started thinking. What did I do wrong? Did I accidentally touch the needle hub with my gloved finger (due to the patient being on contact precautions). Was he mad that I had emptied the emesis basin three times rather than save the bloody water the patient had spit out. What had I done that could justify incurring such invalidating behavior. And it wasn't even my fucking patient. I was helping out. Emptying C difficile bedside commodes (diarrhea heavy and a smell that can make even veteran nurses gag). What did I do? I felt unnerved the rest of the day. And when I went up to the resident, I avoided the fellow, about another patient, very tearful, very depressed, due to be discharged the next day but talking about just wanting to be dead. I'm like this patient needs help. We need to get a psych consult. The resident nodded and the fellow just looked at me with this smile like I was an imbecile unleashed on the floor and the attending, to his credit, nodded and agreed that the patient seemed much more depressed but I felt my wee bit of confidence in my work eroding with this fellow's reactions to anything I did. At the end of the day I steeled myself and asked him about a medication for another patient, and it became this cat and mouse game. I don't think the patient needs this med, perhaps colace but not miralax, he's had three bowel movements today and two yesterday. He told me he had no bowel movements yesterday. Yes, well he had two, he mentioned blood on the toilet paper when he wiped the second time while he was getting  platelets yesterday, I talked to him about not straining. He had told me he hadn't gone. Yeah, well he did go, twice. We don't need the medicine. Which he hadn't ordered, I'd seen it in the progress notes but no order in the computer. I don't know it sounds so inconsequential but his tone, so dismissive and the way he would look at me, like I was an idiot or else he would avoid looking at me. But then the next second he's all friendly and chummy with the registry nurse sitting right next to me. It was awful, honestly I came home and cried. Why can't people be nicer. I so miss Aaron and Jason, two of the fellows from last year. Who were so easy to talk to and Jason went out of his way to tell me I was doing a good job. Now I get to deal with this guy until next July. Delightful. I hate that I get so unnerved by dismissive doctors. Please pray that next Friday through Sunday goes better.

code rugrat

my little rugrat lover

Oona is a very loving, intelligent and strong-willed girl. I don't worry about her the way I do my son, because I think she's got a strong enough sense of self that she'll never let anyone push her around. She is going to set the world on fire, I knew it as soon as her head popped out of me. I can swear that her body wasn't even out of me all the way yet and she let out a surprisingly hearty for a newborn cry. Is that even possible? I feel like the RN in me should know this stuff, it would seem unlikely but that's the way I remember things. Needless to say once I heard her cry a part of me thought, 'uh oh.' like what have I gotten myself into?

She slept most of the first year, slept a lot. We would wake her up, and she wasn't our first baby so we knew better than to chance things like waking a baby that might then be up all night but she was unbelievably easy and very well rested that first year. I think she was preparing. Storing her energy, like a caterpillar biding her time before she burst out of the cocoon of infancy. Look out.

She has a very different personality than Owen. She has been able to charm the pants off of anyone since she was two or three. She's got incredibly big, beautiful brown eyes framed by long dark lashes and the sweetest little angelic face, I feel like this is some genetic compensation that allows her to unleash her fury and not get harmed as a result. Oona knows how to throw a tantrum. Oona knows what she wants and when she doesn't get what she wants heaven help anyone keeping her from getting what she wants.

I talked to a 'talk doc', Owen's name for a wonderful therapist my ex and I took the kids to during our separation and when Owen had some issues after my dad's death and more recently with a kid whose a bit of a bully. The talk doc thought Owen was doing great so I asked her about Oona because, well certain women can take one look at Oona or briefly interact with her and see just what a challenge Oona will be as a child before she takes over the world as an adult and the talk doc had Oona's personality down from the first day she met her. The talk doc suggested getting a box or basket with items of Oona's choosing to help her soothe herself and preemptively avert a tantrum and I would then give Oona much positive feedback for deescalating on her own.

I discussed the self soothing box or basket idea with Oona and Owen in the car, it's seems we're always in the car, while bringing them home one day. Oona embraced the idea, if only because she was quickly filling that box or basket up with so much stuff that it sounded more like Martha Stewart's craft room. Kudos to Oona for at least thinking to put books in her self soothing container. Owen quietly asked if he could have a box and I said sure, knowing he would never have reason to need this box. When I asked Owen what he wanted to put in his box he said, a hole puncher. He didn't even ask for paper at first but after some prodding said he'd like paper and a hole puncher that makes special shapes. Then he said he'd also like a lighter, not because he's a 9 year old pyromaniac but just because he likes to look at flames but he also knew my parenting skills well enough to realize that there was no way I was putting a lighter in that box. I passed the idea along to Toby and his wife and she said maybe they could download the app for his iPhone (he and Oona have their older iPhones at their house). That sounded safe and clever.

So a few weeks later Oona, Owen and I are in the checkout line at Whole Foods and we're trying to figure out a code that I can call, sort of a secret phrase, when I think Oona's getting close to a meltdown. Oona loved this idea, while I was explaining about codes at the hospital and she kept rattling off every color in the rainbow and then it was code lemon meringue pie and then she hopped up and down (the checkout lady was an older non-tattooed whole foods employee, the less than 1%, and was having a good time just watching Oona in action with this idea and, fortunately, there was no one behind us) and said, I've got it! Code Rugrat! We made our way over to the orchid forest (aka the booths where the they've propped potted orchid plants all along the wall the cordons the section off) and I thought maybe this is just what I need to get us through Oona's next few years until the tantrums end, they have to end eventually right? To my way of thinking 6 seems old for tantrums but what do I know some adults continue to throw them and get away with it.

Thus Code Rugrat was born and damned if I can remember to call that code when Oona starts heating up, in her prodromal phase. I really feel that I need a code (code ennui? code apoplexy? code maladroit mom?) because after getting the kids today from Toby's house (they were away for a week in which I did fuck all around the house, aside from sleep in on the day or two that I could) Oona had like three meltdowns and when she wasn't doing that she was being disrespectful and talking at me with attitude, complete with hand motions and eye rolls, absolutely revolting behavior in anyone but especially my 6 year old daughter. And dealing with that all day all does not make me a happy or  nice person so I'm definitely close to a meltdown of my own after enduring that all day. By 6:30 I was count the minutes until bedtime, a huge headache blossoming on the right side of my head.

the unfortunate outcome  if a code rugrat is not called

independence day

My children are gone for the week, out in the country at my ex in-laws. Last year, when I was still in school, I would have been able to take advantage of this time to myself and do stuff (being me, most likely it would have been fixing stuff up around my 100 plus year old house of cards that I call home). But now that I'm working any free time is eroded, especially working nights this week and last, I sleep fitfully during the day, wake up at noon and can't get back to sleep (which is really really bad if you're going to be working 7 pm - 7 am later that night). I walk around in the drunken fumes of sleep exhaustion, trying to function on four hours sleep, trying to find the right way to explain when I last worked, surprisingly confounding for one that's college educated, not yesterday but last night into this morning. I had a free Monday and I can't even tell you how I spent it except to say that I don't think I got enough done. Slept tuesday to work last night, in a hermetically sealed nurses station where I can't see the outside world. I didn't realize how bad it was storming until I went to get a coffee in the lounge around 1:00 am.

I'm back to work tonight, I'll be missing fireworks, which is no biggie for me since I used to be terrified of them. Seriously they used to render me close to catatonic as a child, way way too loud I remember my mom taking me to watch them outside, spreading a blanket for me and her date and I was five or so, very excited to see the lights in the sky and then it started and I had my first experience with absolute terror, I couldn't move, I might have started crying or screaming, I can't remember. My mom had to carry me to the car, guess I ruined that date.

I'll come home tomorrow and sleep then I get a free day for Friday and then it's back to work, mornings this time, for the weekend and then I get the kids Monday morning. My two free days I don't even know how to properly suck the marrow out of them because I'm still trying to get my body back to being among those who do stuff during daylight hours. How the fuck am I going to accomplish anything, going back to school, cleaning the house, having a life, on this schedule, it's like the employment equivalent of a death eater sucking the life out of me. 

In other, match maker news, match continues to disappoint reaffirming my belief that my golden years will be spent with a vibrator and a stack of saucy erotica, if I can find erotic writing that I actually think is well written and erotic. I had a date last week with a man that I was really getting along well with through writing. He sounded very nice and we have a lot of shared interests and he's a doctor in a related field so I was like cha-ching, I hit the jackpot, a man I can use as a sort of medical pensieve (I'll try to limit the Harry Potter references from here on out).  I should have listened to my gut (Malcolm Gladwell would be so disappointed with me) when there was only one headshot on his profile. Now, to be fair, this man was incredibly kind, unbelievably polite and really interesting. But, let's put it this way, he listed himself as stocky and he's probably a good seventy pounds overweight. Plus I think the headshot of himself was taken a good decade (maybe two?) ago. As soon as I saw him sitting at a table, not facing me, he had left the seat that faced the room for me, like I say unbelievably polite that way, but  all my hopes sort of deflated when I saw his flesh straining at his clothing (just one more Harry Potter reference, like Aunt Marge when Harry puts the spell on her and she starts to swell). He made the chair he was sitting in look so tiny and he was only an inch taller than me. 

And, one other sort of odd thing with the dinner. Well first, I can't believe I didn't post this on Facebook but I saw this slight, asian man with a pleasant face pop up in the doorway and I said to my date, 'Isn't that George Takei' lo and behold it was. Mr Sulu wound up sitting right next to me at a neighboring table. I didn't post it because I never really watched Star Trek, caught an episode here and there, I'm not a trekkie but I have many friends that are, although I'm a friend of George Takei's on Facebook because I love his posts, think they're great, very playful and liberal, he's done a lot for gays just by being his lovable self on Facebook but I'd feel like an imposter bragging about this sighting because, while I was happy I knew who it was in a heartbeat, it's not like I'm going to fawn over this man and disrupt his meal. My date stood up and shook Mr. Takei's hand as he was leaving and thanked him for his work (he's a trekkie). Anyhoo, so I had written that I wouldn't eat much the day of our date because I wanted to fill up on all the sushi at one of my favorite restaurants in Pittsburgh but this man ordered so much flipping sushi and kept holding off on eating certain pieces and kept encouraging me to eat everything, even though I was stuffed half way through the meal, it was sort of weird, like was this some feeder thing? I'm sure he was, once again, just being exceedingly polite and me, being exceedingly untrustworthy and bitchy, I go to feeder fantasies. I hate dating.

In other news I went to see a sports medicine doctor for my ongoing back and hip issues. This guy was funny. At first I couldn't tell if he was flirting with me because #1 I can never really tell when someone is flirting with me, my flirting radar is nonexistent but #2 he'd look, smile and interact with me in a way that made me think 'is there something on my face or stuck in my teeth? is that why he keeps looking at me?' Like I say my gauge for determining if someone finds me attractive, it's nonexistent. And, anyway the doctor is married because he answered a text while talking to me. OH NO YOU DIDN'T! Can I harp on how fucking unprofessional and disrespectful it is to even look at your phone while being with a patient unless you preface it by I'm expecting a call, with intonations of pathology results of the five year old whose life you're single handily trying to save. This doctor is giving the med student who initially examined me a hard time because she didn't make small talk with me and learn about my interests and then he's like, looks at phone, my wife didn't sleep last night, why didn't she tell me she couldn't sleep, she should have woken me up, that's why she wouldn't go to the gym with me, my wife my wife my wife, the uxoriousness he displayed, I'm thinking is this an act or compensation for a cheating mind, heart, penis? Once again displaying my untrustworthy bitchiness.

Well, as a doctor, aside from the phone thing, he was great. He said my situation is different because I'm so flexible, even being stiff and injured I'm exceedingly flexible, he seemed strangely delighted, like he was playing with a new toy, putting me through motions and moving my legs to see just how far they could go. He actually took the time to get a resident, who goes back and forth between this hospital and a competing system, to bring up my MRIs online and then point out to me what he thought was my problem. So after talking to him I decided to hold off on the steroid injection in my back, he doesn't think it will help, try physical therapy yet again to strengthen my core, being flexible (or floppy in my mind) is makes back issues likely because moving so easily it can cause the vertebrae to also move easily. And, my favorite part about the doctor, he ordered a mess load of blood work. But not without quizzing me on what one blood test was 'come on you should know this you're straight out of school.' To my eternal shame I didn't. I'd, in fact, never heard of the blood test (ACE) before. I know what ACE stands for and what ACE inhibitors are but an ACE test to see if I have sarcoidosis? I'm going to bet that test comes back negative. But he ordered so many flipping serum test, seriously they drew something like 7 or 8 tubes. I talked to phlebotomist while my right antecubital vein was squirting in the tubes (I'm sick that I enjoy hearing the blood spraying into a vaccutainer tube) and got info about which tubes do in fact need to have blood up to the black line and which can you cheat on and by how much. All in all that was a productive doctor's appointment. 

I've got to iron my scrubs, I seem to be the less than 1% that do this, and get ready for work.