Seems like several months since I have put anything down here. As I write this I am sitting at the kitchen table, a candle simmering in the center, one half is a class of phonics, with Alec attempting to sound out different words and forming sentences, trying to read my expressions as to whether he is correct or not in his guesses until I make him really read it by himself. Jan is on the opposite side, working on her pen-woman-ship, and completing riddles and sentences of her own. Anne is playing with cars, of course, in the living room below, with Pati doing her best to be annoying as she tries to play with Anne, and running to the bathroom every so often telling mom she has to go, which she does.
The other half of the table is occupied by me, my two laptops, and scattered recovery disks, windows reinstallation disks, and a screwdriver. The Hard Drive went out in one of the laptops (which are identical models, both gifts to us) and I know this because it started making loud scraping noises, followed by an error message and crashing of the computer. Being poor, and a man, I decided not to ask for help and found a new hard drive online and bought it. So, now I have removed the hard drive, replaced it with the new one, and was attempting to reboot the computer when I encountered all sorts of error messages. The other computer is used to search all sorts of help on how to go about navigating the error messages, and I am now waiting for the new hard drive to be formatted, so I am taking the moment to blog. Oh, this is about midnight for me, since I am on nights right now and have just come home from work (even though it is only 10:30 am).
Work has been frustrating for me lately. There have been days of sunshine, where the pager is mostly dormant, the patients are getting better, and everything goes our way in the OR. Mostly, however, lots of death, poor prognoses, and sharing bad news with family. This past three days, I have seen three people die, taken care of one guy who shot himself in the head, and then kept him alive enough so his organs could be retrieved (preferred to the word "harvested"), which took place about 3am this morning. Another lady I admitted as a trauma patient really had nothing wrong with her, and I was contemplating sending her home but decided on keeping her overnight since she was a kidney transplant patient, and I wanted to be sure. Well, apparently she was doing well that following morning, walking the halls, cheerful and then her nurse found her unresponsive in her room. Initially she was confused and then not very alert so the decision was made to intubate her to protect her airway, upon the completion of this she was noticed to be without any pulse and after 45minutes CPR was stopped, leaving everyone shocked and stunned, wondering what had happened. We have gone over the records of this 42yo woman, and meticulously examined the films in a vain attempt to identify some passed over clue, but will have to wait for the autopsy.
Then we have the lady who comes to the hospital because her life is unbearable, so we keep her until she decides to be healed and await her return. Next to her is the lady who likes to have problems, and injects herself with stuff to produce infections that need treatment, pain medications, and attention. Fortunately, there are the folks who are more "normal," and joke around with me about their symptoms, opinion of the food, various tubes coming out of their orifices, and remind me with their gratefulness why I am still putting up with the ridiculous hours, the criticism of the smallest mistake with the sledgehammer, and the expectation that I have no need of sleep, am sitting around waiting for work, and make lots of money.
Fortunately, the Lord knew what He was doing, and surrounded me with a loving family who support me and endure this with me. Honestly, I don't know how the single ones, or the ones with poor social dynamics survive.
The whole goal for me is to be open to serve wherever and however the Lord directs us, but with my experience here, coupled with the current political climate, I am feeling like getting out of the US, as I am concerned about the lack of good relationship between doctor and patient, undue expectations of patients, impending socialism, and decreased reimbursement coupled with higher taxes and cost of business to where the profession will be so undervalued that no-one will want to enter it, and for good reason. That being said, and quite gloomily at that, I know for sure I am where I am supposed to be, that the Lord will work it all out, and every once in a while the pat on the back, or the patient who says "thanks" seems to keep me going for at least another week or two.
Well, we are nearly 83% formatted, but I don't think I can remain conscious for the end of it, so I suppose I will be installing all the software tomorrow, or perhaps on my one day off this weekend.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I do appreciate hearing from anyone about how they are doing, what is new, etc.... If you want to go sledding on Thanksgiving, come on out, we have about 4 or 5 inches, and it is snowing now.
Dr. Meat
