Off Topic Rant

Not about kids, microtia/atresia, adoption, or the usual.

How to annoy your health care provider:

Saturday afternoon. Office hours are over. It's the weekend. Call the office. Leave a message with the answering service that you need a medication renewed. Your health care provider looks at your demographics and medications in the electronic medical record, and assumes that it's one of the medications that regulate blood pressure or cholesterol. In other words, important.

Even though it's not an emergency-emergency, health care provider returns the one call, only to find out that the patient needs his prescription for Viagra 100mg renewed. It's Saturday night, after all.

THIS IS NOT ANYWHERE REMOTELY CLOSE TO AN EMERGENCY, it's so far from one, though it will be come one when the HCP has irritation leads to her having an MI. After she decides whether to laugh or fume.

Damn Pfizer, damn those Viva Viagra commercials.

And because the health care provider doesn 't feel like contending with further phone calls or wasting time or breath giving a lecture on what is the nature of an actual emergency, the prescription is renewed.

This gets filed right up there with patient who called the answering service on a Thanksgiving Day a few years ago needing a refill of her Premarin. Perhaps a few hot flashes would help her roast her turkey and help her remember to renew her medications during normal office hours. (And I will admit to being a chump and renewing the prescription; my bark is much worse than my bite.)

But because HCP is annoyed, no refills on the Viagra prescription. Patient can tick off one of the health care provider's colleagues on another Saturday afternoon.

I hate being on call sometimes, though it does provide material when I have nothing else to write about. If nothing is happening I'll have to recycle the poison ivy on the privates story (another patient on another Thanksgiving Day, a tale whose lesson is sometimes you should sacrifice privacy if you cannot recognize poison ivy before relieving yourself in the woods) or the compound swear word story from the days of working in prison.

Adventures of Bunny Bear

This morning at 4 m, both children came to sleep in our bed, Micah probably crawled in earlier, but woke up and was moving around and chattering, Thea had a little bloody nose. After 30 minutes to get them settled and back to sleep, I found myself wedged between them, awake and needing to go to the bathroom and with almost no room to move. So I slithered, wiggled, readjusted Thea whose legs were hanging of the bed, and left. On the way back, I decided to try Thea's bed where the large white tiger was taking a lot of space, but probably wouldn't kick me in the kidneys or try to take over what little space was mine.

Not the best start to the day.

But the day goes by with the usual chaos until we arrive at that time of day when Tesh returns with Micah and then he and I drive off to pick up Thea.

Except the first words out of Tesh's and Micah's mouths were, "Micah left Bunny Bear at school."

Oh, sh*t. Well then, that puts yet another kink in the day. My usually sunny, happy guy is visibly upset, mouth is quivvering, tears are welling.

And I had to survive a 20 minute trip to Lawrenceville with a sobbing little boy crying, "I want my Bunny Bear" in just the most piteous little voice.

So, since I went to extremes about two years ago when we thought Thea's tiger could have been at the rest stop on the Eastern Shore, it seemed like something similar needed to be done.

After signing out Thea from YingHua, I got out the cell phone and started by calling Ela, Micah's itinerant teacher (until March of this year).

And sympathizing with our plight, Ela called Miriam (she's the coordinator of the parent-infant program).

Miriam called the school, where by some stroke of good fortune the custodian Craig was still around, and despite my misdirection about Bunny Bear either being in the room where Micah naps or in his his locker, he found Bunny Bear on the floor in the bathroom in Micah's classroom.

And by another stroke of good fortune, Steve was driving home from an afternoon bridge match and was in a place where he could make a detour to go to the school to pick up the bear.

Which necessitated all the phone calls made in reverse order to arrange the hand off.

Micah kept going to the powder room window to check for the arrival of the Bunny Bear.

So Bunny Bear is safe at home tonight, taking a bath in the washing machine to celebrate because he was packaged with a note that said "Wash Me" - he's overdue, but Micah likes him that way. All the good smells get washed out, the drool, the dirt, all the stuff the makes it his most loved stuffed animal.

Thank you, Ela.

Thank you, Miriam.

Thank you, Craig.

Thank you, Summit School for being the sort of place you can call a staff member about a dirty, smell cross-dressing bunny-bear and they understand its importance to a little guy's happiness.

Windshield vs. Bug

Some days you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug, or so the song goes.

Me today: Bug, making a rather large splat on the windshield.

Forgot the power cord to my laptop, brought home said laptop which was already sending low battery warnings before I shut it down. Make dinner, drive back to the office, grab the power cord, drive back.

And there goes 60 minutes of my life I'm not going to get back.

I left the office to run to the post office after the morning session, not seeing that there was a provider meeting. Fortunately no one else was ahead of me in line because it was the postal clerk who makes that Tim Conway character from the old Carol Burnett Show look like a speedy genius. So I was late for the meeting, but a least I got my parcels mailed. (A book listed on Sunday on half.com, already sold and an envelope for my mother, I can't remember the last time I went to the post office - probably when the cost of stamps increased.)

Another book was purchased today, so I have to find time to go back to the post office. I love half.com - getting rid of books that aren't worth keeping (Bitter Is The New Black - the author footnotes as often as I use parentheses, which is damn annoying, buh-bye book, hope your new owner is a Nordstrom's-obsessed Republican who can perhaps related better to the story.)

Weekend Update

Call this a weekend of a whole lot of nothing much special, and it was good. A little bit of cleaning/purging yesterday. Hanging out and straightening up (finding the Fisher-Price police car parked behind a bin in my closet - it's been MIA for days.)

The pools went up Saturday, and the kids got in a quick swim Saturday after coming back from visiting their grandmother. Today Thea's friend Emily came over so they could have a splash party - now we have three pools: our original baby pool, the large rectangular pool from Aunt Shannon and the pool we got last weekend while at Oma's (which she didn't want to keep at her house.)

I went through back issues of The Journal for Nurse Practitioners and finished a half dozen CME tests, put up a stack of books for sale on half.com, and picked up the nine thousand Matchbox cars, trains, playing cards and other debris that Micah has scattered over the living room and foyer.

To be finished off with a dish of chicken and cashews (reheated), the NY Times crossword, True Blood and the season premier of Entourage.

And the good thing about this weekend is that my right knee is merely making me aware of its presence versus its usual shrieking at the top of its lungs at the end of the day. It will go back to being miserable after about four hours of pounding the floor tomorrow at work, but it was nice to have a break for a couple of days.

Fourth of July Weekend

We managed to avoid a lot of the beach and NJ Turnpike traffic by taking I-95 through Philadelphia - once we managed to get out of town. The morning was peppered with phone calls from the answering service from patients who didn't realize the office would be closed on Friday and Saturday, which put me behind schedule on packing. Then we finally got on the road and were just pulling onto Route 1 when another call with four more messages came in. Those got squared away while we were getting lunch at Wendy's (still in Princeton, an hour after leaving home).

Then Thea needed a bathroom break so I found the Dunkin Donuts in NE Philadelphia near where I first worked after nursing school, and she was in a graffiti-covered bathroom with an electronic lock, taking her sweet time doing her business. And the bathroom has a timer on the light, so it cut out, leaving her a little wigged out. I managed to get a cup of coffee to keep me going. Meanwhile, Micah was passed out in his car seat so I'm trying to keep an eye on him and on the bathroom.

The answering service conveniently rang again as we were getting close to the Chesapeake House rest area on I-95, so we made another stop and took another bathroom and snack break.

We made it to Oma's by dinner time - which wasn't bad considering how late we started out and all the stops. Micah sounded the "I have to POO-OOOOO-OOOP" alarm as we were on Route 50, necessitating another stop at the McDonald's on Route 301. False alarm. Both kids are becoming fans of automatic toilets and sinks, which is starting to make me wonder do they ask for a stop out of necessity or boredom.

We celebrated the Fourth by using the GPS to got to the German Deli in Virginia and then having lunch at Panera's. Hard salami. Kinderschokolade. German pickles. Good stuff.

Thea and I dropped off Oma and Micah and then went to Target. I picked up an inflatable pool, which turned out to be 81 inches in diameter, which cupholders in the rim and an inflatable bench in the pool. Much bigger than I had originally thought, and it completely freaked my mother out as the electric pump inflated it (in the living room). The kids spent the afternoon splashing around, and then went into the bathtub to get warmed up before dinner.

Thea was less than thrilled with the idea of fireworks, and Micah was toast, so we skipped them. And despite it not being a total flag-waving, patriotic, red-white-and-blue sort of day, it was fun.

Sunday we got going with an agenda of going back to Target to return an item I bought the day before, got to Safeway to get flower and go to the ATM and then head to Watkins Regional Park for train rides and stop at the cemetery on the way home. We made a first stop at my brother's so Mom could drop off something, and then from the back seat Micah was yapping, "I want to see W-i-l-l-i, I want to see Un-kah Kah-rul," so I let him out of the car. And from there he went in and started to play with his cousin and the Thomas trains, then Thea got interested in the trains, and so we hung out there for a bit.

The plans got re-worked so that we all went to lunch at Ledo's together, after we made a quick stop at the ATM and a run throuh Target (thank you, Aunt Shannon for telling us about Thomas the Tank Engine underwear!). Karl introduced my daughter to those machines that you put quarters into and then try to grab a toy or stuffed animal. She didn't quite figure it out, but Micah benefitted from Karl's and Willi's success and we have yet another bear joining the flock. Yippee. . . .not.

By the time we got back to Mom's it was time to load the car and hit the road. Micah checked out and was fast asleep by the time we got to Upper Marlboro and the turn for the park. Thea voted for stopping and waking Micah up, so we went to Watkins Park and bought tickets for the train. Micah was in heaven - we took two rides and then went on the Carousel, then back for one more train ride.

Our pit stop at the park cost us in terms of time, so we didn't get back to Princeton until a little after 10 pm - both kids were awake until the last few miles.

And despite the late night, we were right back into the routine Monday: school van coming at 7:45, Thea going to camp, and me going to work. . . .

Buh-BYE

. . . .for a few days.

We're going to Maryland tomorrow until Sunday. Needing a below the Mason-Dixon Line fix since it's been almost two months. Micah is thoroughly psyched because Oma has found Mavis -one of the Thomas the Tank Engine trains that he has obsessed over for months. Oma rocks.

And while the weekend hasn't even really started, I'm already dreading Monday. No Friday office hours, no Saturday hours, thanks to the Fourth of July holiday. Two providers out (one returns Wednesday). Monday will be ugly, ugly, ugly at work.

But first, Maryland.

Blogoversary

What a horrible addition to the ever-evolving English language. July 1st marks the day that I've been blogging for two years, starting a few days before we left for China to meet Micah. It started as pure avoidance of the chore of packing up three suitcase and two carry-ons for four people.

Once upon a time, in the Land Before Blogs, I tried to write a letter to Thea once a month on or around the 13th of each month, and I did fairly well for about two years. It's stashed someone on one of the computers, along with all the emails that I sent from our first trip to China. Between 2004 and 2007, along came blogs, and here we are.

It was an uneventful, eventful day. Micah went back to school, survived his transition to Miss Margie's classroom - and his BAHA is back from its vacation/spa treatment in Colorado. The audiologist at school went to put it back on his band, but we'd taken out the mounting piece (they're expensive, and if he tugged off the BAHA it could go flying, never to be seen again.)

Only one call so far, I'm on call again - with the one provider out on family leave and one on vacation, the grace period that usually comes after a weekend on call is not in the cards.

After dinner the kids and I went to fill up my car's gas tank, and while we were waiting at the gas station, we saw a double rainbow. We could actually see the arc going up into the clouds and then down again. It was pretty cool - but unfortunately if I would have tried to photograph it, the rainbow would have appeared behind all the powerlines that run along Route 1. Once the car was happy, we went into town to Thomas Sweets for ice cream - and along the way there were people out for walks who were pausing to look at the rainbow.

Thea had chocolate ice cream, so Micah had what she had, until it went onto the ground. Thea nearly died (she was promised any that Micah didn't eat and he quickly lost interest). They ran around the grounds of an old school building is next to the ice cream parlor, which provided the opportunity for them to be snacked on by mosquitoes - both had at least two or three welts, so it was Benadryl and hydrocortisone cream all around after their showers. Somehow the bugs don't seem to like old, grumpy B+ blood, so I was unscathed.

I'm on a new medication for pain, new as in new to the market - and one I wouldn't have chosen mostly because I had to endure months of him hyping the as-yet-unreleased medication without really being able to say when it would actually be on the market. It helped without knocking me out, the knee still hurt a bit, but I was moving better and in a better mood because of it.

Happy Birthday, dear Blog, you're probably better and cheaper than a therapist.