why so serious?

as many of you who know me, you know that i am sick and tired of my job. one of the many reasons are the calls i have to take. the clinic is a specialty clinic, gastroenterology/hepatology/bariatrics/gi surgery, and as such, receives numerous referrals. in fact, our gi staff physicians are booked out well into february for new patients and that is to put it mildly as we don't have all the referred patients scheduled. we get approximately forty referrals per day to the various services. and yet, the response from both patients and referring providers alike when i tell them my first available appointment for a morning colonoscopy on a monday or wednesday is such and such date in january.
"you're joking?" is the most common response.
yes, sir. of course i'm joking. i find it quite amusing to wile away my 8 to 5 by joshing with patients. our 30 second interaction led me to believe that you would be open to a bit of leg pulling before we get down to the dirty business of scheduling a colonoscopy. i'm afraid i was mistaken.
it's only that it gets extremely exasperating when things are completely beyond our control about scheduling patients in a timely, or even reasonable, fashion. on a day-to-day basis this becomes a real drag on a person's psyche. especially when a number of people state that we must want them to die rather than schedule them.

on another note, i came across a referral for a patient with a relatively minor complaint. all was dandy until i caught sight of the name, which slightly resembled another existing patient's name. i read on with interest. candy morningst**. not her birth name, obviously. most m2f i've come across don't have names that are quite that stagey-sounding. also, her wife was still listed as nok. i don't mean to come across as insensitive; it's only that we have an ongoing list of unusual names in order to keep the mood light on occasion. she qualifies. as does the wife of the patient with a similar name. her first name is blueberrie.

mute

on thursday night i went to bed with a scratchy throat. just in time for the weekend, what a perfect time to get sick! well, i couldn't talk on saturday, but s & i went out for a nice dinner. turned out to be an overpriced place, but he had a gift certificate from someone for his efforts with the flood in june. my salmon tasted fantastic, though & i gladly shared with s. twenty minutes later, upon arriving back at the house just in time to feel the effects of food poisoning. (i won't go into gory details, but i lost 3lbs). sunday morning, still scratchy & again on monday, but i went to work hoping that i would be able to avoid the phone since i work in the backroom on mondays. unfortunately, one of my other coworkers called in sick, so i ended up having to use my much depleted voice more than anticipated. this was not beneficial in any way & it hurt to swallow my own saliva due to a lump that had taken up residence in the left side of my throat. and because of a complete lack of appetite, i skipped my lunch & left at 4. s & i had grilled cheese & tuscan tomato soup courtesy of bread garden. (i made the grilled cheese, but purchased the ingredients there.)
at his invitation, i joined s at the house to sleep after knocking back an aperitif of nyquil cough. we chilled in his room watching tv & he repeatedly informed me that i wasn't going to work in the morning. i said/croaked we'll see how i feel in the morning. i also had a delightful cough going for me, not phlegmy but not dry. well, the nyquil dried that out, so throughout the night i woke to bark/cough.
a steamy hot shower at 6am didn't do much to alleviate my symptoms, which now included a swollen right eye (i think the coughing traumatized my eyeballs), cough and no voice. when my alarm went off at quarter to 7, i nudged s & dialed in my boss's number. she didn't answer, so he left a message. then at 8am, when she didn't answer her work line, he called & left a message with another coworker. i really hope the sick one yesterday was there today because we can only afford to have one person off at a time, but i was no use to anyone.
i spent the day surfing the net, flipping channels, napping. i didn't talk until i called s about quarter to five & ask him to bring me some velveeta shells 'n cheese. sounds like something that would slide down smoothly. if i didn't actually have to swallow.
hopefully my voice is back tomorrow. i've skipped enough work in october already (4 days so far).

bigotry

oh how i love being awakened from s's cozy bed at 2am by the sounds of shouting and an imminent fight outside his house. his bedroom window faces the street, which is more than 5 blocks from the downtown bar scene. somehow 3 friends of his roommates' friends (2 guys & a girl, who i swear are underage, but hey, they let 19 year olds in bars here, so long as they 'don't drink') ended up sitting on the stoop since both roommates, aye indeed everyone in this here house, were asleep at that time.
and lo, the screaming and name-calling and fight-inducing began. not necessarily with the sketchy 'friends' on the stoop, but some other lovely neandertals, one of whom started screaming 'faggot!' and 'pussy!' repeatedly to taunt some other not-so-bright male who happened to be outside.
now as an insult, neither really works. there's nothing wrong with being a faggot, per se (i prefer other words, but meh, i love my gay friends) and perhaps if you, being male, have an issue with pussy & find it an insult, then maybe you are gay yourself. whatcha gonna do?
a number of factors (this not being my house, response time of police, my lack of voice & snotty head due to a nasty cold that is still causing me to hack up phlegm balls this morning) prevented me from opening the window into the 40 degree chill & screaming back at them that they were complete morons & get the hell out of here because i'd called the cops to report a hate crime. s went down in his robe to let the people on the stoop in, but things slowly dissipated after that. (perhaps very large occupier of house coming outside while the two drunk douchebags fight probably brought them enough to their senses to go away or at least move to another vicinity)
and now i'm headed downstairs to dig up some dayquil. pretty sure the random folks are still crashed out on the various furniture down there. yay!

not sure what to post

i'm a little slacking in blog-life in the past week. not much going on around here. that could be a good thing or a bad thing.
having dinner with s tomorrow night. we haven't been able to do our customary monday night dinner for a couple months since he started working in loss protection. unfortunately, he was laid off on saturday after getting his 60 day review. his boss was told she only had 89 hours to fill each week, including her 40 hours/week, for 4 people. since s had only been there for 2 months, that meant he was the one to go. i guess he can collect unemployment until he gets a new job since he's almost done with the military & won't be getting his monthly check from drill (the one weekend a month training/work they do in national guard) soon. i'll be glad for him to be out, though.

crying at work

this story made me cry at work:

Amazing Holocaust love story lives on

180 degrees

i've taken off from work until monday & as of this morning i feel like i've made a 180 degree turn for the better. my arthritis has kicked in because there's less than a week left until my next infusion, but even that isn't getting me down. i'm hoping that this will last for a while. s is also holding me 'captive' at his place to keep an eye on & take care of me. i think i have a case of stockholm syndrome. ;)
resting, relaxing & recuperating after a small surgical procedure yesterday is probably the best thing for me. plus, i desperately needed a mental health day or two after feeling like crap for the whole month of september. (hopefully this won't be a trend since it was last september that i spent in the hospital, too.)
enjoy your weekend, everyone!

loss

if surgery could cure what ails you, would you do it? especially if it meant possibly losing more than you gain? can losing a part of your physical body actually be considered a "cure"? and how long does the grief last?
lots of questions causing turmoil and no resolution in sight.
i realize this is the opposite of my post from yesterday. it's not that i'm not happy in certain aspects of my life, but other things constantly try to overshadow any contentment that works its way in. i guess maybe i'm being pessimistic. whenever things seem to be going well, something comes & blows it out of the water. why i still don't expect it after all this time, why i go glibly along during the good times & expect that they'll never end is beyond me.
my decision, and my loss, is basically already made, but that doesn't mean my mind doesn't still waffle back and forth over the supposed options.

i'm yours

still sick, circumstances as to why could be better, but in general i'm pretty happy right now. love is a wonderful thing, but i don't want to jinx it.

i can't get this video to embed, but i'll try to update it later.

update~

needs

some perspective on the situation. it's too close to have an unbiased view, but wants to avoid any judgment by outside parties.
*sigh*
what to do?

apology

i've been pretty much unresponsive on a lot of fronts lately. i haven't done laundry in 3 weeks nor have i bought groceries in nearly as long. my carpet needs vacuuming, my bathroom needs cleaning & my dishes need a good bath. but for the past month i haven't felt like i have the energy to do anything, besides go to work & get through the day. the fatigue and abdominal pain has moved to include chest pain. i think i know what's wrong, but don't want to get into the gory details.
so if you're on that list of things i've neglected, i'm sorry. one of these days i hope to wake up & feel better, but until then, it's all i can do to post a couple sentences on the blog.