Another Long week

It's been a long week. Life is getting in the way of my blog. I'll bring you up to speed.

It may have been a good thing that I was denied my request for four weeks of unpaid personal leave in order to get Rich back up to speed. Why? Because I would not have wanted to miss what's happening there at work, and I probably wouldn't believe it if they told me.

There are two of us in the nurse triage office. We handle incoming calls, which are fairly high volume, prescription requests from a recorded line and all the fax requests from pharmacies, insurance companies, etc. We have to write each request as “an encounter” in the electronic medical record system, send it to the doctor for approval and then process it after the doctor responds. We have over twenty doctors ranging from Attendings to first year residents. A large number of these messages have to be handled three, four times depending on the doctor's experience and expertise. I'm trying to paint a picture with as few words as possible.

Up until I went on FMLA, our worklist hovered between 50 and 100 items at all times, the phone never stopped ringing, and there were always messages on the prescription line, or our individual voice mails, waiting to be addressed.

In the past week, the well has dried up. Our work list has been maintained at zero to five items for over a week. The phone barely rings, and even on Monday and Friday (when we are usually swamped with Rx refill requests), I could process them all in twenty minutes. Last Friday I cleaned the office. We now beg each other for work, and are close to fighting over tasks on the worklist. Apparently it is equally slow out on the modules where nurses are rooming patients for the doctors because they are now taking items off of our worklist to fill the empty spaces in their day.

We have never been this slow the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve, and certainly not for over a week straight. I've lost count of how many days and half-days they have given me to stay at home. Unfortunately, they're gifted to me the afternoon before so I can't schedule any of his appointments. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying...

Einstein was right. The less busy you are, the slower the day goes.

I now have more time to ponder cloud formations and study the tree in front of our office window.

On Tuesday I dropped my cell phone in the toilet. It's complicated. I was standing next to the toilet (before using it!) and decided to investigate the needle like sensation at the base of my left shoulder blade, and in the course of trying to get my hand contorted to the task, my phone JUMPED out of my scrub jacket pocket and went for a swim. I retrieved it in a flash, pulled off the back, removed the battery and started drying it as best I could. I left it apart to air dry all day. On Wednesday afternoon, because I was given Wednesday afternoon off, I went to my cellular provider. After several attempts they were able to retrieve NOTHING. I have a new cell phone, which always entails a learning curve, and 95% of my contacts are lost because I had not gotten around to writing them down. Before you ask, I had purchased the drowned phone years ago before any of the providers offered Backup.

I took the whole thing well. Rich was in shock tinged with fear at how well I took the whole thing. I actually went to the mall without whining. Rich sat on the bench nearby as I stood at the keoske and chose my new phone with a speed that made the salesman's head spin. I did it all with grace and smiles.

Without effort I was immediately reconciled to the loss of contacts. If the Universe wants you to stay in touch, those people will call you. I barely gave a thought to the loss of all the photos, even of my grandbabies... Rich has all those in his phone too, he can forward them to you.

The only pain I felt was the loss of my ringtone. Years ago when I was working nights, I spent one entire rainy afternoon off searching for and finally obtaining the most perfect ringtone...... “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Since that day, EVERY time my cell rings, for a split second I think ...WoooHooo! My Ride is HERE!! and I'm sublimely happy. Now? I just don't think I have the energy to go on that ringtone quest again.

Thursday night I learned yet again to NEVER EVER EVER let my guard down. How embarrassing that I needed THAT refresher course. I thought I finally had a situation in place that would solve the current situation of caring for Rich and keeping my sanity, but that fell through and instead of being mentally prepared for anything, I was devastated. I should have known better than to count on anything that hasn't happened yet. Worse yet, someone totally innocent who was just trying to help me was devastated by the ugly turn of events every bit as much as I was.

Friday night my brother and his mate came down to console me. Alicia brought her tools and gave me a haircut that I love, so I now have the Jethro Gibbs look going again (except mine is shorter). I just have to remember that the haircut does NOT bestow the right to whap people up the backside of the head when they demonstrate Stupid. Just as well since I get too many opportunities and not enough time.

Summing up... I am back to square one...living in Hell with nothing to fall back on but Plan B, which is reorienting myself to living in Hell and finding ways to make it fun and happy. The whole cell phone thing. But gosh darn, life is good because I get an extra hour of sleep this weekend. And I don't have to go in Monday unless they call me at 08:00 because someone called off. I have nothing to bitch about.