On working with a vindictive bitch

I knew that when I went to third shift that one of the lab assistants has a thing and a vendetta against my man. We're gonna call her VB for short, to protect the guilty. I thought that I'd be able to handle the occassional smears against him but I had no freaking idea that I'd have to hear it all day, every day.

I can't take it anymore. I can't stand listening to all of the slander. My man has always been honest with me, even when he knows that I'm not necessarily going to like it, but there's only so many of her lies that I can listen to before I have to talk to him and have him reaffirm that everything that she's saying is a lie.

Last night was particularly bad and I ended up snapping at him and he had to call me and calm me down. I just coun't help it, because she was talking about wanting to have a quickie with him and how much sex that they used to have (which I know is a lie).

Why, when people are unhappy with their own lives do they have to feel the need to ruin other people's happiness?

I feel the urge to beat the living shit out of her some days, but I know that I won't. I feel the urge to tell her like it is, but I know that I won't because I know that she'll make my life even more of a living hell.

I just don't know how much I can take.

Burps

Why do your burps always taste like the worst component of the meal that you just ate? Why can't they taste like the best part?

Dr Zhivago

I've known for weeks that my grandma had tickets for us to go see 'Dr Zhivago' today and all my mom could tell me was that it was a love story.

The high point of the day was the fact that it was at the Temple Theater which is a beautiful old theater, complete with ushers in tuxedos and white gloves.

The movie on the other hand...

I felt that it was hard to follow, and not really that great of a love story, but instead, a story of two married people having an affair.

And it was long. They could have taken a half hour off the movie, had they not had to show the ENTIRE trip across Russia. And then you didn't know what happened to half of the characters. So yeah... the movie wasn't so great.

As Natalie put it "It wasn't a love story, it was the story of a two-timing dog."

Some assembly required...

On Friday, I bought an elliptical trainer at Sears. It was a good deal, on sale for $799.99, and it was a Nordic Track which is an awesome brand. So I bought it, and unfortunately it wouldn't fit in my trunk (and I have a large trunk) so I had to wait until today to have my dad pick it up from Sears with his truck.

Now, the sales guy told me that there was some assembly required. The way that he made it sound, I'd just have to put the rails and handles on and unfold it since it folds up for storage.

Yeah right.

A good 80 parts, and an hour and a half later my dad and I finish putting the thing together and I find out that it oesn'tplug in like I thought that it did, but instead runs on manual power and the display on 4 "D" batteries. We have no batteries in the house.

To Wal-Mart I go. Wal-Mart after 10pm is a very special place. I saw many people there in pajama bottoms. In fact, I felt overdresse running there with corduroy's still on. Maybe I should have gone there in white knit short shorts (when it's 6 degrees outside) like
that one female that I saw.

But, I was successful in my battery buying endeavor and figured out which way the batteries went in (this some assembly required thing really is crap because without a flashlight, you couldn't see the battery diagram and they sure weren't going to make it easy and show it in the instructions), so I was ready to use my new workout wonder.

Five minutes in, I was gasping for breath, but I managed to stay on for five more minutes. I shall definitely have to work up my stamina again.

At least we got it together, with only one flesh wound...

Camden

My three year old cousin Camden is in the hospital right now. He's grossly dehydrated and has RSV and pnemonia right now. His parents took him to the ER on Saturday and they sent him home. Sunday they took him to the pediatric after hours care and he was sent home again. On Tuesday, he was admitted to the hospital. He was severely dehydrated and it took 6 tries to get his IV started. Then something happened to his IV during the night and his arm got all swollen and black. Sara couldn't get a nurse to come and check his IV, so she yanked it, and it's a good thing that she did because the doctor said had it been much longer then he could have lost his arm.

My mom just called Sara and she said that if Camden can keep fluids down tonight then he can come home tomorrow and just be on oral antibiotics.

Stop lights

Why is it when you're running late, that you hit EVERY red light between your house and work?

Sleep

It seems like that's all that my world revolves around right now. When I'm going to sleep, how much sleep that I'm going to get, if it's going to be during the day or night, am I going to need a nap to get through work That's the joy of working third shift. You're awake unnatural hours and your body doesn't like it. And thanks to random days off, I'm having problems getting on a regular schedule. Good thing that this is only until I get done with school. In the mean time, give me lots of coffee.

Random thought for the day

I've decided that I'm going to try to post a random thought just so that you can see what goes on in my mind daily.

Today's thought: Organized people are just too lazy to hunt for things

Four and a halfish years of blogging: Months 7-12

Month 7
1. Damnit! So we do rounds at 2am and all is quiet, half hour later night security calls me, funky smell down on terrace. Can you guess what it was? Yup it was spray paint and marijuana. And the stupid people grabbed their stuff and ran as soon as we mentioned the police. I love my job.
2. What kind of screwed up world is this? Last micro exam I half-assed my studying and got an A, this time I studied my ass off and got a B.Screw studying
3. I saw one tree that was orange, yellow and green and there was a rainbow. And I loved looking out the window and up at the stars on the way back, reminds me of being out on the water late at night in the middle of summer... like home.
4. You might be the only one who heard that. Do something. Don't run. Do something
5. And as we were meeting at the desk to go on rounds at 11 last night, one of my residents came and asked if we'd seen anyone come through the lobby running because some had thrown a piss filled balloon at his window, which he of course had open, and shattered when it hit the screen and there was urine all over his stuff.
6. Today was kind of a rough day. I had kind of a tough talk with someone that I care about last night but I feel better now that things are out in the open. Unfortunately the rough feelings kind of carried over into today some but luckily T was able to give me some insight, along with a little reminder of 1 Cor 13:7, which is an awesome passage in itself, I just love the passage on love. It's a good thing for friends like T sometimes.
7. Damn. Damn damn damn. Ok something is wrong with my car. All week people who have been riding passenger have said that the floor has been damp up front. Well, when I went to go to church tonight, there was about a quarter inch of some kind of liquid on the passengers side. The window was up and the door was closed on that side. I don't know what's wron
8.It's the day of a million posts. Sure, we'll go with that, it's 3am after all. Just finished TFP. Think I'll start Blade. Anyone calls me before noon, and they will die a slow and painful death
9. Yeah, so I'm a geek. I mean I knew it before, but after driving an hour yesterday, on the release date of The Final Prophecy, down to Grandville and Rivertown Crossings mall, I realized that as much as I may try to hide it, I'm a geek. Either that or I'm just really impatient because Big Rapids sucks book wise. But while I was at Barnes and Noble (yes, there's a B&N inside of the mall) I dropped $40 in about 10 minutes.
10. And ok, yeah I did have about a half hour gossip session with Officer Hottie while on rounds last night. Ah the good old memories of last year. All the drugs and alcohol and fire alarms. The funny thing is, he agreed with me about it being impossible to get our hall director over here in the middle of the night. I qoute "you almost needed a murder over here to get her here" Which is pretty darn true. We had a freaking fire and she didn't come over one night.

Month 8
1.No better way to brighten up a class then a discussion on genital cultures. Fun times.
2. And now I feel like I'm losing my best friend to his girlfriend and I don't like that feeling. This sucks.
3. OMG. Last night I did an alcohol alternative karoake program. Sure, it's Thirsty Thursday so you don't expect the biggest turnout in the world, but boy I really didn't expect the people that did show up. Every pothead/suspected pothead in the building was there. Even the ones that we'd just caught the night before, and I'd just finished their judicial documentation an hour before. Well, one of them decided that he needed to sing with me, so I let him pick out a song and he picked Nobody Wants to be Lonely. Ok, so it's a big love song duet by Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera. That was interesting. And then he decided that he needed to hug me and profess his undying love for me that he'd been fighting for a year and a half. Maybe he wasn't as sober as I thought that he was...
4. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
5. So anyways I was sitting at one of the tables drinking my mocha and eating my cinnamon roll and working on my notecard for my exam when the associate director of housing walked by. I said hi, he went off somewhere and then came back and looked over my shoulder at what I was studying. I looked up at him and said "Diagnostic Microbiology" and he shuddered and walked off.
6. Tiger Balm! I love that stuff. It is the best muscle relaxant/arthritis cream out there. And it actually smells good too. Ok, it smells good if you like the smell of menthol, camphor and cloves. I'm addicted to this stuff. Started using it during swim season in high school. Half the team used it. We were the hardest working team in the conference and we really beat ourselves up during practive so the pool always smelled of chlorine and tiger balm. I love this stuff. Just the smell brings back all the memories of HS, and I feel great now.
7. Damn it damn it damn it. The first night all week that I actually fell asleep at a decent hour and the fire alarm goes off and we find a room smelling like pot.
8. Ahh there's nothing like hitting the local pub at noon

Month 9
1. I just have to surivive boredom for another week and teach my dad how to knock on my door before opening it..
2. I was curling my hair this morning while I was getting ready for church and I found my first gray hair. Excuse me while I go lay in bed and cry all day, I'm only 20!!
3. Ok so letting my Aunt Denise's dog lick the plates after dinner wasn't a good idea because the dog farted all night and cleared four of us off the couch at one point, but it's a good lesson learned.
4. Oh man am I glad that my parents weren't home earlier. I was lighting my fudge candle and as I ignited the match, it broke in my hand and the lit end fell onto an old blanket that I had sitting on the floor. Luckily I grabbed the match and stomped on the blanket (which reminds me, I don't think I'll ever get that kind of blanket for when I have kids because it melted and burned pretty quickly) and put the small fire out before setting my room on fire. I'm just glad mom and dad weren't home because my room smelled like burnt fabric for a while. They probably would have taken away my matches had they been home.
5. It hurts. My closest friend is going through something that I don't even want to have to imagine going through for many more years and I feel so helpless. I want to be there offering my friendship and suppory, but I can't be and it hurts so muc hseeing him so vulnerable like this. I just feel like there's something more that I could be doing...
6. Unfortunately, the coming of the snow means that I don't get to do my ritualistic snow dance in the backyard. Probably a good thing for the neighbors though. ;)
7. Why do telemarketers alwayscall either when you're eating a family meal or on the can?
8. There's a lot of ugliness in the world. I wish that it'd just go away. I wish that everyone could feel safe and unthreatened by the people around them. I wish that people weren't so obsessed. I wish that people wouldn't want to hurt each other. I wish that people would learn to accept differences. I wish that people would learn how to control themselves. I wish that the world was different. This quote just popped into my head from the leadership program that I did the other day. From "Everything I need to know about leadership, I learned in kindergarten." "Just think how nice the world would be if at 3pm everyday everyone put down what they were doing and had a snack of warm cookies and milk and then laid down for a nap for an hour."

I wish that the ugliness would go away...

Month 10
1. I don't think the snow is ever going to stop. Somewhere around 9 inches is supposed to fall by morning, and it's nasty out there. I just want to spend the day cuddled up somewhere warm.
2. This is something that really pisses me off. People disrespecting the national anthem. The time between when it's announced that the anthem is going to be sang and when the singer starts is NOT the time to yell obscenities into the silence of the arena at the officials or opposing team. During the singing of the anthem, you either sing along or remain respectfully quiet. You do NOT carry on a conversation. You do NOT pass around chapstick. You do NOT laugh. You do NOT curse. You respect our flag and country and whay it stands for. It's as simple as that.
3. But back to Bubba. In the 3 hours that we were at the bowling alley, he actually kissed my ass, kissed my hand, slapped my ass and I spent a lot of time held close to him.
4. It also really sucks when you're trying to sleep and someone knocks on your door at 3am, when the door says your out (just because you forgot to change it to in when you got back) and wants to be let into their room.
5. It's even less fun when you go somewhere in your car and the door won't open so you have to crawl over the center console and get out through the passenger's side.
6. Bow before my Geekiness underlings!
7. have a new hematology teacher who has both a mullet and a combover
8.

Random Quotes From Bored RAs

1. The Glitter Glue is crunchy
2. Are you saying that the Virgin Mary has a penis?
3. It's a baby Jesus
4. A bandaid just fell out of this phamplet
5. Eww my gum just fell out of my mouth
6. Bomb's away
7. I'm sorry I left my whore boot box at home
8. It's a 69
9. It's growing stuff
10. The tape has salsa on it
11. I got one of these stuck in my ear once
12. Amanda, you've got a pin in your ass
13. I'll put your hand there to get it
14. Big gap where there shouldn't be.
15. Don't touch the coffee
16. ...It's stolen from a hotel
17. She's got the leaning tower of cups going on over there

9. Lack of sufficient hot water.

Month 11
1. I was on rounds about an hour ago. There was a bag of trash in the hallway. Jill knew who it belonged to. We knocked on the door 3 times. They said come in. The music was loud. The door was locked. I announced that RAs were keying in. I saw 2 people having sex. I need bleach. I told them to put some clothes on. Their door closer wouldn't work. I had to see more ass. I want a drink.
2.

You might be in the medical field if...

-Discussing dismemberment over a gourmet meal seems perfectly normal to you
-Your idea of a good time is a full code at shift change
-You find humor in other people's stupidity
-You believe in aerial spraying of Prozac
-Your idea of comforting a child is to place him in a papoose restraint
-You believe that "shallow gene pool" should be a diagnosis
-You believe that the government should require a permit to reproduce
-You believe that "Pizza" is a food group
-You believe that unspeakable evil will befall you if anyone says "Boy, it sure is quiet around here"
-You are out in public and you compliment a complete stranger on their great veins
-You have ever referred to someone's death as a transfer to the "Eternal Care Center"
-You hate working on nights with a full moon
-You don't think a referral to Dr Kevorkian is inappropriate for this patient
-You have ever wanted to hold a seminar called "Suicide-getting it right the first time"
-You have ever had to leave a patient's room before you begin to laugh uncontrollably
-You think caffeine should be available in IV form
-You have ever restrained someone and it was not a sexual experience
-The most commonly uttered phrase after midnight is "What changed at 2:00am that makes it an emergency after 6 months?"
-You believe that "too stupid to live" should be a diagnosis
-You have ever referred to the ER as a "shit magnet"
-You believe that the ER waiting room should be supplied with Valium
-You have ever wanted a terrorist to deliver a Ryder truck to the lab
-When ordering labs, the doctor wants to order a "dumbshit profile"
-When you mention vegetables, you are not referring to a food group
-You are totally astounded when someone from the lab speaks English (HEY! I speak English)
-Your patient states "I have no idea how that got stuck up there"
-You have your weekends off marked and planned for a year
-You encourage an obnoxious patient to sign out AMA just so you don't have to deal with them anymore
-You use your status to get out of speeding tickets
-You use the word GOMER (Get Out of My ER) in a sentence more than once a night
-You have ever bet on someone's blood alcohol level (Hell, I do that as an RA)
-You threaten to use the hose if your patient won't give you a urine specimen
-When someone tells you how many drinks they've had, your question it "and how big were those drinks?"

Month 12
1. Postatem obscuri lateris nescitis.
"You do not know the power of the Dark
Side." There are two possibilities: you
are a Star Wars geek, or you are unreasoningly
scary.
2. I need to stop depending on caffiene to get me through my day and lower my stress level (like that will ever happen).
3.

What the Clinical Lab Science Program has ruined for me:

1. SEX! (For reasons far, far too numerous to mention).

2. Most food, excluding eternally-sterile Hostess products.

2a. Milk (Cellular; Listeria monocytogenes).
2b. Spaghetti and Meatballs (Malassezia furfur wet prep).
2c. Fresh vegetables (Listeria from contaminated fertilizer).
2d. Most meat (Antibiotics, parasitic cysts, Cestoda, etc., etc., etc).
2e. Butter (Appearance of pathogenic yeast colonies).
2f. Grapes (Pseudomonas, Staph aureus).
2g. Honey (Clostridium botulinum).
2h. Anything home-canned (ditto).
2i. Oysters (Vibrio cholera).
2j. Sushi (Again, numerous reasons).
2k. Tap-water (Giardia again; hooray!).
2l. Strawberries (lesions from Trichomonas vaginalis).
2m. Chocolate agar (chocolate agar plates).

3. Swimming in lakes or ponds.

4. Monkeys (thank you, Giardia lamblia.)

5. Holidays, as professors seem to take sadistic pleasure in scheduling huge exams on or
immediately following them.

6. Pets. (Gah, more parasites)

7. Contact lenses (Acanthamoeba castellanii(

8. Growing old.

9. Having babies.

10. The wonder and mystery of the human body.

11. Faith in the beneficence of Nature. I now understand that Nature is out to get me in
nearly every way imaginable and some that aren't.

12. The company of my fellow man, especially if said company is in a hospital, nursing
home or daycare.

13. Gardening (damn you to hell, Sporotrichosis).

14. Haylofts (Aspergillus).

15. Birds (Histoplasma capsulatum).

16. Bats (the same).

17. Air conditioning (Legionella).

18. Turtles (Salmonella).

19. Restaraunts.

20. Travel both foreign and domestic.

4. Why is it that for me, the amount of time that I spend in one class is greater than most people spend in class all week for all of their classes?
5.Maybe soon this caged in feeling will go away and I'll feel less trapped
6. ACLS meeting went good today. We finally made plans for MSCLS. There's only 4 of us going because it's partially over our easter break. And I'm the only female going. And we're only getting one hotel room. That's gonna be interesting...

The scope and aftermath

So a week ago I was getting ready for my scope. About 11pm on Monday I had the first of three enemas. That was joyous. Got through that part of my prep and went to bed and then got to repeat that process two more times in the morning. Then I got to go to my doctor's appointment. They did the sigmoidoscopy with the only comfort help being in the form of lube and no sedation (fuckers). Mom, Grandma, Uncle Tom and I went to Mussell Beach for lunch afterwards and I've never seen Grandma so excited to eat nachos. We had the nachos and a hot fudge sundae and I started feeling really crappy again. We went home and I kinda dozed on the couch since I was scheduled to start third shift that night. Unfortunately that nap was interrupted by my stomach and frequent needs to empty my bowel. Needless to say, I didn't go to work that night.

But I also did some thinking and remembered that my senior year of college I was having similar stomach issues that were resolved by removing dairy from my diet and replacing it with soy and when I couldn't avoid dairy, to use lactaid to avoid the stomach ache.

Wednesday I woke up and was shaking and twitching and it wasn't cool so I called the doctor's office and got in that afternoon to see the nurse practitioner. Verdict: Dehydration from that damn prep. I also talk to her about my suspected lactose intolerance and ask for a lactose tolerance test. Instead I get food allergen testing ordered. I also started working thirds that night and drank copious amounts of coffee to help me get through the night.

Thursday, wake up again feeling shaky and twitchy. Call the doctor's office again and they tell me to keep on the fluids and also NO CAFFEINE.

The bastards.

Don't they know that caffeine is my lifeline?

I suffer through work that night, come home and then drop dead for a majority of the day.

I know that there is no way that I can make it through another day with no caffeine.

So I go to work with a thermos of coffee in one hand and a bottle of gatorade in the other.

Problem solved.

The butt story continues

So yesterday I got instructions in the mail for my specialist appointment on Tuesday. Boy was surprised to see that they'll be doing a sigmoidscope in the office. They're going to be sticking a CAMERA UP MY BUTT! And they're doing it in the office, which means NO GOOD DRUGS. Of course, I also have to prep for this and that prep includes the purchase and USE of 3 ENEMAs. So not only will I be violated by a camera but I also have to violate myself 3 times with those enemas (did I mention that my butt is an exit only?)

Tuesday will by joyous

New Year Resolutions

1. Lose this final 25lbs
2. Join a gym
3. Get back into school to get my teaching certificate
4. Get organized and stay organize