My cartoon life

Response to Paul taylor

2009-08-13T18:09:00.005-05:00

I was recently browsing the website of a local hospital, actually looking at their careers section when I came across a tab with a link to a blog written by their CEO. He has a detailed description of why his particular hospital is a good model, and a barebones idea for healthcare reform. Lots of good information but this my repsonse to his white paper where he details his ideas. It's a good read in case you're interested

Just want to start out by saying that I think you have a lot of great ideas for healthcare reform in America. That being said, I fundamentally disagree that it is necessary to implement a single payer system to accomplish these things.

The first thing I’d like to address is that I don’t believe OCH can be used as a practical model for the majority of hospitals. You’re successful in a niche market created by a “perfect storm” if you will. You claim to be an organization that can’t be included in a list of “cherry pickers”. I respectfully disagree. The reason you’re able to succeed is that there are two large health systems capable of eating much more loss than you are in the area. These two health systems, take the most critical, urgent cases, that generally require more care, are more expensive to treat, and have greater risk of non repayment. You don’t have to deal with cancer, or trauma’s, or burn victims, Patients that all are high risk in the sense they require a lot of care, and you have no idea if you’ll be reimbursed for that care. You can send all of those cases away. You’re ER is more like an urgent care facility in it’s ability to treat acutely ill patients. You don’t have to pay to maintain equipment you may only once a month. You don’t have to pay for lab equipment you may only use once a month, etc… In essence, by limiting services, you are able to cherry pick cases that are relatively easy to deal with, ensuring your Medicaid/medicare reimbursements cover your costs. You provide a valuable service to the community, and I applaud your ability to cut cost, but when comparing yourself to one of the two major health systems in Springfield you’re comparing apples and oranges.

You go on to say
“Hospital emergency rooms are not very efficient places to treat people, but it is our country’s current version of universal healthcare. Those who are opposed to universal healthcare should have sufficient courage of their conviction to propose the elimination of EMTALA. Those who advocate reliance on total free market reform must consider if they are willing to let people die on hospital parking lots. If not, then they should acknowledge that we already have a universal healthcare system and focus on how to pay for it and manage it in the most efficient manner possible”

I agree with your major points. I also understand that you make an attempt to account for people that abuse the system by allowing ER’s to send patients PCP’s in the event of a non emergency. This would require you to get rid of emtala laws. What happens the first time an ER physician makes the wrong call? And that patient dies in the parking lot? A pretty hefty lawsuit, that’s what, except now the patient’s family can go after the really big fish called the government as well . There are too many Americans with a sense of entitlement and entirely too many that are abusive of the system. These ideals aren’t going to change because a new system is in place, You’ll still have patients present to the ER for pregnancy tests or a cold or minor issues. As long as the threat of a lawsuit hangs over the head of a physician they’ll continue to work up patients and spend an ungodly amount of money doing so. Only this time, the health system won’t be there to encourage them not to, because they know they’ll be paid.

At the beginning of you’re proposal you say
“The rising cost of healthcare is making American companies struggle to be competitive and driving jobs overseas. The cost of providing healthcare for their employees and retirees was one of the leading causes of the recent bankruptcies filed by automakers GM and Chrysler”
Yet, you later say The basic benefit coverage would be financed for the elderly through Medicare, for the poor through an expanded Medicaid program, for the employed through mandated coverage paid equally by the employer and employee. So every employer is now required to pay into the system. What about small businesses that only have a handful of partime employees that hire college or high school kids? They’re mostly family owned, How does this help small businesses that already have a hard time paying for benefits for employees? Where’s the cap is it every buissness regardless of size? What about restaurants who pay below minimum wage to servers, whose wage is made up in tips and offer no benefits? These are costs that will be passed along, or the businesses will close.

The way I read your proposal, My employer will be required to pay a premium, I’ll still have a premium, I’ll still have to pay Medicare and Medicaid and on top of it, you also want me to buy private insurance to simply pay the outrageous 30% copay? Sure does seem like a lot of money out of my pocket. One thing most people tend to forget, is that the workforce is getting smaller and smaller, so fewer and fewer people are going to be around to drive these programs. We need to remember that the baby boomers are getting ready to retire, and the onus for their care will be placed directly on the shoulders of a younger workforce with fewer participants. In a town hall meeting in MT president obama lauded medicare as a great example of government run healthcare, then went on to say it will be bankrupt in 8 years without major reform. I guess he and I have different ideas about what a success is. You can’t have a program that will cover 1 generation, then leave subsequent generations to pay for it, and struggle to find ways to keep it afloat, or from bankrupting America.

There are about 304 million Americans, and the number that keeps getting thrown around is 46 million uninsured Americans.
That is 15 percent of America. Should we scrap a system that works for 85 percent of America because of a 15 that struggle to find it? As you so poignantly stated, we already have universal healthcare because of emtala. Access to care isn’t the issue, cost is. We CAN control costs without further government involvement. You also know that a large portion of healthcare waste comes from redundancy that happens because of too many government regulations on care. You said “We can make healthcare better and more affordable if we empower general practice physicians and give them the freedom and means to care for patients independently using their judgment, experience and intelligence—augmented (only when necessary) by the positive aspects offered by technology, specialists and medical towers” I agree, but The government is yet to show that they can effectively manage a health program without bringing it to the brink of bankruptcy and overregulating the ever loving crap out of it. Do you really think physicians would be allowed to truly care for their patients? The government would establish a standard of care to be followed precisely or their would be no payout. A government run system, when it’s the only game in town will face all the same pitfalls that private insurance companies do. Doing so without a profit motive can be a positive or a negative thing.

You hinge being able to pay for the system on the idea that everyone would now be included in the pool. Everyone that doesn’t have coverage falls into one of two catagories, those too sick or too high of a risk or those too poor to afford it? So who exactly are you reffering to? Young college kids with no income? I get labeled as greedy because I like my health insurance and am annoyed with the idea of paying even more into a system than I already do. I’m one of the young healthy individuals that pays more into the system than I use. I served in the military when I was younger and had health care through them, I earned a degree and found a job that offers a great health package, and now I should be punished for working hard? I’m already paying into a social security program I’ll never use, now you want me to pay into a universal health system that may or may not be there in 40 years when I really need it. There won’t be enough people added to the pool to make up for the cost of the poor and the sick that would be added to the system. Instead of charity care, and a whole system being able to absorb small losses at a time, you have uncle sam absorbing all of those losses. Your also essentially asking people that can barely put food on the table to have more taxes taken out of their check, while now requiring them by law to buy secondary insurance just to cover the outrageous copay.

Most people agree that you have to have some skin in the game to prevent abuse of the system but what if those people don’t have any skin to contribute? Is the federal government going to go after them? Are they going to be put in jail for not being able to pay for healthcare, then becoming an even bigger drain on the economy?

I’ll move onto some things I really liked but disagree that we need a universal payer system to achieve. You said
We provide an across-the-board forty percent discount for the uninsured based on our belief that those without coverage should never have to pay more than Medicare pays. We allow uninsured patients to pay what they can without having to beg for charity or fill out complicated forms “proving” they deserve charity. We trust our neighbors.
In some healthcare systems, the uninsured are actually compelled to pay more than the government pays hospitals for the same service—often more then twice what Medicare pays”

I can’t think of a bigger fundamentally problem than a lack of pricing transparency in healthcare. To give you an idea of the issue, in our hospital a cbc costs an insurance company about 15 bucks, medicare or Medicaid about 5 and self-payer 50 bucks. We have to have pricing consistency and transparency. Everything should be out in the open in terms of cost to you. Then maybe you get to choose if you want that extra 50 dollar box of tissues.

You said;
“Comprehensive medical malpractice tort reform has to be part of the overhaul of the healthcare system. Malpractice litigation is expensive and inefficient. Malpractice litigation must accept at least some of the blame for making the practice of medicine technology driven instead of being directed by the wisdom and experience of a general practice physician with a unique insight into a particular patient.”

Patients need to stop thinking of a medical mistake as a possible lottery ticket, it just creates bad medicine. Although, earlier you did say “The fact is that the actual economic cost of malpractice litigation has little bearing on today’s high cost of healthcare” so you contradicted your assertations when describing how wonderful your health system is.

You said:
Private, for-profit insurance companies would be hired to do claims processing under Americare. The insurance lobby will furiously oppose Americare, and it will be politically necessary to offer something to lessen the pain of lost profits. A reduction in profit-taking by private insurance has to happen no matter which healthcare reform program ultimately prevails. The country simply can not afford to pay for healthcare while putting billions of dollars every year in the pockets of the “middle men.”

The beautiful thing about the military, is that there is little confusion, they basically have an SOP on how to scratch your ass, less confusion means money saved. Things like record keeping or claims processing HAVE to be standardized, however, we need to keep government monkeys from extending that standardization even further into patient care. Patient care should be only in the hands of the doctors.

You said;
No reform of healthcare will be meaningful over the long term without an increased emphasis on the primary care relationship between physician and patient and a related increased reliance on generalists over specialists. While there may be a number of ways to accomplish this change, it will no doubt require enhanced compensation for primary care physicians and decreased compensation to hospitals and subspecialists. The best means of accomplishing this goal would be by bundling payments for services. CMS has already begun this transformation but it has to go much further.

A lot of private insurances have climbed on the PCP bandwagon in the last few years. I think it’s vital to American culture for PCP’s to be an integral part of patient care. It would help change the attitudes of everyone about healthcare and help to institute an awareness that your health is your responsibility and should be managed with the help of a doctor, rather than I’m going to live anyway I want, then I’m going to go to the ER when I’m in a diabetic coma. However, I worry that fewer and fewer doctors are going into family practice because it’s not financially lucrative to do so. There needs to be an incentive to be a PCP rather than a highly paid specialist that can pick and choose their patients.

Finally, rather than looking at your system and seeing it as a success of government run health care, I see it as a success of a true free market system, there was a need to fill in a community and you were able to fill that need through transparent pricing and getting rid of financial incentives to physicians to see one type of patient over another, I don’t agree that it’s a model that can be easily reproduced though. It is refreshing to see a lawyer write a blog about humanity, and about the need to take care of our brother’s and sister’s rather than just about money. Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to address a lot of things. I’m sure I’ve even forgot to write down many of them.

This statement is against every ideal that the constitution every stood for.
Public health, safety and welfare concerns trump individual liberties every day in every town in America. Mature, rational adults understand the necessity of laws ensuring public health, safety and welfare.
The constitution was specifically set up to basically allow a system where you can do anything you want so long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of you neighbor. Remember the ole Ben Franklin quote that says those who sacrifice freedom for security, deserve neither I think that is applicable here.

Obamacare 2009

2009-08-12T00:07:00.007-05:00

Just wanted to write a rundown of a few thoughts I have about the federal health plan that is in the house right now.

My first issue is with the utter lack of consideration for the constitution. Essentially, in creating a national health option, the federal government is creating a monopoly that no one will be able to compete with. I'm pretty sure this is against every single ideal of a free market system. Also, the bill states "There shall be no aministrative or judicial review of a payment rate or methodology." It's on page 124 in case you're interested in looking it up. What's great about our system of checks and balances is that nothing is above judicial review. Except of course what a team of politicians decides is an appropriate pay out for services rendered within obamacare. So the first strike is that the plan is unconstitutional.

The next issue I have is how in the world we plan to pay for this? It's been stated in many places that the U.S. spends upwards of 17% of the GDP on healthcare. Already one of the hightest rates in the world, while only providing coverage to a small portion of the population. If you add the rest of the citizens of this country it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand you'll need more money. I think no matter what price tag you put on it you'll vastly underrate the amount really needed. When we run out of money for the program one of three things will happen. You'll see either a tax hike, or rationing of care along with decreased payouts.
The population that stands to get the most out of the bill are people with no skin in the game. The same people that get back more in a tax refund than they paid into the system. There is only so long that a dwindling work force can support the healthcare needs of the nation. We've already seen this issue at work with social security. Fewer and fewer people are paying into a system that needs to support more and more people. The numbers just don't add up. The plan is just not fiscally viable. Strike two.

The final problem I'll write about in this post has to do with the mindset of americans. I'm going write a synopsis of a story I read on another blog, I'm sorry I don't remember where I read it so I can't link to it. The story tells of a young woman with medicaid that came into an ER after a car accident. The doctor tells the man she came with that they'll need to get a head ct scan. At first he was hesitant worrying about the cost. The Dr. tells him there is no need to worry that it will all be picked up by medicaid. The man stops and says, "Oh, in that case can you just scan her whole body to make sure nothing else is wrong?" The story is an illustration of americans mentalitly when it comes to "free" stuff. There is already entirely too much waste in healthcare. Just wait untill people have no vested interest in what's happening. How in the world will the government control waste at the patient level? It can't. Creating waste is strike three, and yoooouuuuurrre out.

We have a flawed system, and there is no doubt that reform needs to be made, but not this way. Competition drives innovation and lower costs, not a government mandated monopoly with limited funds. It'd be nice to live in a utopia where people didn't abuse systems and we all went to the Dr. on an appropriate basis, but we don't live in that world. We live in a world of waste and excess This plan won't help that, it will make it worse.

Alot of people have championed this cause because they think our country has a problem with availability of healthcare. Our system has many flaws, but availability is not one. Between charity care, free clinics, medicaid/medicare and emtala laws, healthcare is available at the very least on an emergency basis to everyone. Also, please don't get too involved in the "sharing the wealth mentality." America was founded on the idea that hard work will pay off. It's against everything that america stands for to penalize someone because they make too much money. Or to penalize people that have worked hard and earned more money than most people. If it were you being taxed at a 50 or 60% clip would it be fair then? We need to wait for a better plan. This healthcare bill is no better than the flawed economic stimulus plan that overspent borrowed money. It's financially irresponsible.

I hope all of you will at the very least read the bill and understand it's merits and demerits and tell your representatives that this isn't the plan to fix healthcare. Write them, even if you'll be reported to obama. I refuse to let such a flawed plan completely sink healthcare, and potentially my job into a dark abyss.

Lack of professionalism

2009-07-26T00:24:00.000-05:00

I get more and more irriated by the general lack of professionalism that is displayed in hospitals. It's a bit silly really, I understand wanted to like you're coworkers and wanting to be friendly and jovial, but if I hear "Oh thanks honey/sweetie" one more freaking time I'm going to flip the eff out.

The weird part of the lack of professionalism in a hospital is the fact that it occurs on both ends of the spectrum. You'll hear someone yell and scream and cuss you out, which wouldn't be acceptable anywhere else, and you'll also see someone get waaaayyy too involved in your personal life, of touch you when they're talking to you, or call you honey or sweetie. Either way you slice it, it's not cool.

I realize that from a nursing point of view, the overly nice act comes from having to do patient/pallative care, but frankly no one will take you seriously when you're fake. Believe me, we all know you're being fake, and it pisses me off. Then again, anymore, what doesn't piss me off. I need to find a new career.

Realizations

2009-06-28T00:20:00.001-05:00

My wife is a brand new nursing graduate and she opened my eyes to something. That I never thought about. There's a good reason Med techs think nurses are stupid. We only talk to the dumb one's that don't know there shit. They're the only one's that call down with stupid ass issues that make me want to shake my head in disgust, and hope I never become a patient.

She also said there's a reason Nurses think Med tech's are stupid. In most large labs like mine, We have people that answer our phones that are aren't certified to do anything. They're glorified secretaries that log specimen's in and then send them to the appropriate areas. When a nurse calls she get's that person, that doesn't really know anything, but tries to help regardless. So the nurse is almost always talking to the uneducated people in the lab, and assumes that person is a medical technologist as well.

How could I have been so dense as to not realize all this before. Maybe now I can take it a little easy on the nurses that I know probably do a good job, like Nurse K. I think her last post was especially poignant. Don't be a lazy slackass that assumes shit if fucked up because that's the way it has to be. I don't imagine I'm getting phone calls from nurses like her.

Who do i get to shit on?

2009-06-27T23:50:00.002-05:00

There seems to be a natural progression in a hospital, Patients try to shit on doctors. In turn, they shit on nurses, and nurses shit on the Lab, My question to you, is; who exactly do I get to shit on?

The lab, like everything else in a hospital is starting to have more and more defined customer service roles. And it's starting to piss me off. The lab has started to publicize their desire to become more customer service oriented. We have posters up all over the place about how to perform better customer service. One of our catch phrases is "You're right, we'll do better next time." UMMM, not cool.

I've learned that this phrase can help me, you'll learn how at the end of the post.

I had a situation tonight when I walked into the blood bank. On the previous shift there was some miscommunication about some FFP. The med tech on the second shift wanted to clear it up before he left and called to see if the patient was still going to need the FFP that was ordered 4 hours previous. She stated she never recieved a call saying it was ready, and never got an order from a Doc. This is happening more and more, docs are now ordering their own labs and may not communicate certain orders to the nurses. Anyway, she said she'd call back.

She calls back after shift change for us, and I was expecting a pretty simple, yes he needs it, or a no, he doesn't need it answer. Instead, I got a 10 minute lecture.
Mrs supersleuth had found the problem. She said one of our techs had called down and told the CNA that blood was ready, The Nurse then decided that because the patient's HGB was 13 that it must have been an on hold order, even though there was no type and screen done. She also decided to try and lecture me and tell me that there was a difference between blood and FFP and that we needed to differentiate. Just as a point of reference. I'm going to assume that a Medical technologist with a specialty in blood banking that has worked here 20 plus years, realizes the difference and probably said the right thing. It's pretty reasonable that cna and her six weeks of training was the one that didn't differentiate. Either way, don't call down asking me if I realize there is a difference between blood and FFP. That kind of arrogance pisses me off. She continued on by saying BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH, or something like that.

Evidently she wasn't done bitching. At the end of all of it. She wanted to know why there was an order that was canceled in the computer and why did it say she canceled it? Shit lady, I have zero Idea. point 1. We don't use the same computer system you do. Point 2. We're not the IT department. It's amazing what people think the lab takes care of or more correctly, what is the labs fault. At any rate. I gave her the best possible customer service by only making one remark about the fact I was sure our med tech's no the difference between ffp and blood. and the promptly saying, you're right, we'll do better next time. and hanging up.

2009-06-16T13:38:00.000-05:00

Bear with me a bit i'm sending this from my phone. i just wanted to let all the nurses out there know somwthing if you call and loudly proclaim i need this now! i'm not all that motivated to help you also if you lie to me about how long ago you collected something to make it sound more emergent.... i really don't want to help you. one more thing. calling every 5 minutes for results does not help. especially if i've already explained we're having issues. we have shitty equipment too.

Nurses = Children

2009-06-09T09:08:00.004-05:00

As I get older I start to learn certain absolute truths. One of these truths is that everyone likes to feel in control, or that they have some sort of choice in life. Lately, I've been employing a favorite trick that I use with my 2 year old. It's working beautifully.... At work.

There are alot of times my boy freaks out about things, like every 2 year old does. Usually it's over not getting exactly what he wants. Often, it involves food. if he doesn't want to eat carrots, then I offer him a choice of eating his broccoli before his carrots, and for some reason it works, it's all a control thing, he thinks he's regained some semblance of control over his life.

I know, you're thinking "what the hell does this have to do with anything?" Lately, nurses have been giving me extra shit about having things recollected, so I've decided to distract/appease them by letting them think they have choices and that they're involved in their patients care. I've started running absolutely EVERYTHING I get regardless of the issue. Clotted,hemolyzed,unlabeled... anything at all. I will then call the patients nurse with the inevitable crappy results and say " I got such and such result, this was the problem with the specimen, I'll be happy to turn out the result, I just need to record your name here in the computer." It's pretty amazing, I haven't have anyone give me shit about doing this. I give them a pseudo-choice, and I guess it makes them feel like they're the one making the decision so it's all good in the hood. It's either that, or they sure as hell don't want their name on that shit... ha.

It delays patient care a bit, and it's borderline unethical, but oh well. At least I don't have nurses bitching at me... all because they now have the option to accept shitty results, so long as I can put their name on it.

Nameless and faceless.

2009-04-29T13:41:00.004-05:00

I've touched on these topics before. but obviously no one reads my blog or cares what I say. I'm alright with that, I think. I keep reading ridiculous comments about the things that the lab does to mess with a nursing staff. I think I need to reiterate a few things.

1. Yes, we make mistakes, no we're not trying to fuck you over or do we ask you to do anything out of spite. It's just not worth it. If we get caught, we're generally not highly valued and will be replaced.

2. I can shake the ever loving crap out of a PT/PTT for a straight year, and it won't cause it to clot if the specimen was drawn correctly. Along those same lines, dropping it won't do anything either. It's not my fault you can't draw blood correctly. Reference This Post.

3. A specimen being hemolyzed isn't a bullshit excuse not to run a test. I'll remind everyone that most chemistry analyzers work on the basis of Spectrophotometry. Can we all see how a bright red color could effect results. Also, it's a good overall indicator of specimen integrity.

4. Vacutainers are made of hard plastic and don't break. We didn't break your specimen. Contrary to popular thought. It's MUCH MUCH easier for us to just run a specimen and not call and have it recollected.

5. Most chemistry analyzers run microassys that require a little more tha 100ul , Vacutainer tubes have a lip on them, if you were to somehow knock over a uncapped specimen, despite all of our automated safegaurds, they're designed to leave about 5oo ul in the tube anyway. I'd have to turn a tube upside down and shake it in order to spill all of it.

6. If something does need to be recollected because there isn't enough in it, it's probably because the first run gave us poor results, whether because of a bad stick, or because of analyzer error. that's why Sometimes you can send underfilled tubes and "cover it up with a label and we'll never know."

7. As much as I'd like to do shit to spite some of you, I can't afford to, The nursing staff is always the squeaky wheel that gets oiled. We're always the one that has to adapt to the nursing departments because you have many more employees. I've come to terms with it.

I realize that it's easy to blame the lab because we're nameless, faceless "robots idiots" and frankly I'd do the same thing if I did patient care, and I was the one that had to stick a patient again. Frankly, I'd find anyway I could to blame nameless people that make me look better, I get it, but I don't understand getting on the internet and acting like you really believe the stupid ass conspiracy theories and then spreading said theories. Oh well, maybe I should be the squeakiest wheel.

Off The deep end.

2009-04-21T06:43:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was my 100th post and I didn't even realize it.... not too good considering I've been around for about 2 years now. that's almost one per week.

Anyway, I realize that I talk about how much I hate my job and my boss entirely too much, but yet again, she amazes me so I have to share my thoughts and feelings to keep from donkey punching her. I'm convinced she's not naturally mean spirited, just too dumb to know she's being a bitch.

I think the issue that she and I have is that she views my kindness as weakness. I'm a much different person today than I was just a few years ago. I've beaten a man with a baseball bat to within an inch of his life, I've pointed a rifle and fired at someone with the sole intent to end their life, I've destroyed peoples lives with malicious intent. If I were me three years ago I would have her cowering in fear, crying in a corner of our lab curled up in the fetal position. She's lucky I'm not that person anymore.

One of my personality flaws is that I can take a little thing and blow it way out of proportion, and I can take perceived slights to heart. One small issue can ruin my whole day/night. I shouldn't let it, and knowing that I can recognize that in myself, I really should do something about it. Too bad I can't seem to.

I'm sure you're wondering exactly what happened and I'll tell you. Our ER has a habit of screwing up orders, they'll cancel the wrong tests, order the wrong test, cancel things, and reorder them, then just send down the mess to us to figure it out. Just so you know, we don't have a magic box that tells us what you want regardless of what you think. So we got sent down two requisitions, one had several tests and the other had two tests that were also included on the first set. Our specimen processor decides she can discard one of the reqs because it had duplicate orders on it. The only way for me to know to look for a test or to make sure it's running, is if these tests get logged into our lab, it's impossible to look up every single patient individually in the computer and ensure things are correct. Well, the ER decided to cancel the duplicate orders on the original req, but still include it in what they sent down, and then reorder what they wanted. so basically it was a mess that didn't get dealt with to their satisfaction, the tests they originally cancelled didn't get completed because our specimen processor decided to discard what she thought was an extra label.

The patient's testing was delaying, and surely her dispo as well, you could probably logically conclude that fault could be divided equally be between the ER and our processor. That is, if you're a normal person, not my boss, She pulled me aside and tried to lecture me about ensuring I complete all tests yada yada yada.... making zero sense. All I could do is walk away. She has a tendency to "correct" me because everyone else on my shift at some point in time has blown up at her, I guess she figures since I haven't yet that I must be weak and that I won't stand up for myself. Frankly, like everyone else in this economy I need my job but I wonder how much bullshit I'll deal with before I tell her to fuck herself.

Good for miss California

2009-04-20T09:34:00.008-05:00

I was reading a Story about miss California on Foxnews. and evidently she's being lambasted for giving a decidedly non-pagent answer to the question "Do you believe in gay marriage." Her view isn't exactly in line with what I believe but I applaud her for having the guts to say what she feels is right, and to do it on a national stage in front of an openly gay man.

Too many people forget that free speech, or any amendment for that matter doesn't just apply to the minority or the people that feel they are oppressed. Free speech is universal. Carrie Prejan thank you for giving an honest answer and not being afraid to voice your convictions.

"We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised." These are the words she spoke and these are the words that everyone should feel alright saying if that's what they believe. Who cares if you don't agree with her, she has to listen to the crap that liberal jackasses spew everyday, and it's okay because they're "oppressed". Screw them.

My personal opinion is that the government should have no place in deciding civil unions, and that every couple should be afforded the same civil liberties/opportunities regardless of your sexual preference. However, In terms of a religious ceremony I believe that marriage was intended as as a union between a man and a woman, the only combination capable of procreating. Child birth is a miraculous thing and is afforded to a couple that is a man and a woman. Before calling me a hypocrite notice my use of the word "civil union" then marriage.

I think part of the reason I'm getting upset about this, is that for the last five years or so I can see America sliding in a direction of hypersensitivity and being overly politically correct. Remember that a democracy is majority rule. while protecting just three natural rights life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Pursuit of happiness is admittedly vague, but I hardly think it includes being free from hearing any criticism at all. I'm all about protecting physical definable rights of a minority group, but they shouldn't be free from opposing viewpoints simply because it's not popular in the media or in hollywood. I'd be willing to bet her view is much closer to societal norm than the other side whether you admit it or not. We were founded as a christian state, and our laws and values are all based on judeo-christian principles.

Btw, screw you keith lewis, no one cares how sad or hurt you feel because a young woman stood up and instead of giving a retarded pagent answer to a question, she had self-conviction to give a true representation of her feelings. How can he possibly try to say "religious beliefs have no politics in the Miss California family." She was obviously baited, why even ask the question? If they thought the answer was so egregious why did they ask such hotly debated question. I'll tell you why, they expected to hear this lovely young lady give the politically correct pageant answer to give further clout to the idea that gays should be allowed to be married, ya know, just in case she won. Even miss america thinks it's okay, so it must be. Shady bastards.

Where are all the boos I heard so much about????

Response to Nurse K

2009-04-15T07:18:00.003-05:00

I was reading Nurse K last night and found myself leaving a comment about a post concerning a dumb lab tech that turned into a mini post so I figured I'd just write it down here, where no one will see it.

I've been an adamant supporter of my fellow lab workers online. I'm done with that shit. I'm finding out that my little corner of lab heaven doesn't exist everywhere else. I'm knowledgeable, have good social skills, and have common sense. In general, you're lucky to get an average lab worker with one of these skills. You could be a serviceable Med tech with only the ability to maintain an instrument and follow a flow sheet telling you what to do in certain situations.

The reason I'm giving up on my fellow lab workers is simple, they're pissing me the eff off and I'm running out of excuses. Some of the silly shit I hear from other places and even from transplanted coworkers is ridiculous. we have strict time limits on completion times from the ER so I've had a hard time listening to people say it takes hours to get results or that techs make up random excuses as to the whereabouts of a specimen. We have 15 min for an ER CBC, 30 min for a BMP, and 45 for a CMP. Every specimen is tracked and you can face disciplinary action for not having a plausible reason for taking longer (ie documented instrument failure). I guess in smaller rural areas things like this are real concerns, you can't exactly afford to hire the best and brightest they get a lot of bottom of the barrel employees.

The second issue I have is with older techs that are generally full of shit, back in the day a medical technologist was well respected and testing was complex. Some people can't come to the realization that a new analyzer and a relatively bright high school grad could do their job. They think too much of themselves and their skills. They try to maintain that their jobs are still complex because they lack the computer skills essential to succeeding in our job market. in Ten years a lab will be run by 1 med tech with the background knowledge to maintain QC and QI records and everyone else will be a high school grad running a computer that won't make judgment calls. They will follow a flowsheet made by someone with real experience and pass along issues to people with real knowledge.

I've already begun to prepare myself for changes. The only real way to demonstrate our usefulness will be through management or mechanical skills. As of now, you still need some basic knowledge to do your job well. in five years, maybe not. I've started taking classes in engineering, if you can start making medical technologists take engineering classes so that they have a better understanding of how the analyzers they use work, you may be able to maintain the usefulness of a med tech. Administrators will certainly see the value of not having expensive service contracts because of the new found engineering knowledge their techs will have.

I promise there are a few good med techs left that really have a good understanding of what they're doing, have the social skills, and the common sense to do our jobs well. Unfortunately the number of us are dwindling. A perfect example of this, was a conversation I had with a tech at a smaller hospital within our network concerning some FFP.

The tech called asking if we could thaw and ship some FFP to them, which is pretty strange. I asked why they wanted it thawed and was told they don't have a thawer. Alright, I'll deal with it, I start getting some info and ask what blood type he is, the tech says O plus. WTF! you don't even know blood types? It's not plus it's pos or neg. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge deal but it's ignorant, and I don't deal with ignorance. I form an immediate prejudice when you say something ignorant. To compound the problem, she called back later and asked the indications for use of FFP. I know it's a crazy idea but if your facility can't store or thaw FFP and your medical technologist doesn't know the indications for use, maybe you shouldn't be using it. or anything else for that matter.

I know I went off on a bit of a tangent, and I didn't do a good job organizing my thoughts but let me give you a general synopsis of what I wanted to really say. At the end of the Day med techs are in a strange place, we're in the middle of a transitional phase. We no longer need a Medical technologist with a degree to do moderately complex testing. The most important skills you need are organizational and multi-tasking skills to keep up with volume testing that every lab has to do to remain viable. Unfortunately because of this transitional phase, we have a lot of old techs that lack skills needed in high volume testing markets that use a computer for everything. The new techs are learning too much extraneous information to perform their job, then because you never use that info, you can't recall it the one time every 2 years you need it. Many schools have closed and are closing because it's quickly becoming an archaic job. The job title and skills taught need to be revamped. Hopefully schools will start to incorporate more engineering and more business skills and eliminate teaching old methodologies.

My friends, please pray for my sanity. My boss rejected three urine drug screens collected via catheter because the specific gravity was too low, indicating (in her opinion) that they must have been water. He're an idea, maybe they're pumping people in the ER full of IV fluids... I know it's crazy to think about, but it just might be possible. Why am I the only person that seems to understand that????

A hypochondriacs wet dream

2009-04-15T06:47:00.003-05:00

This little nugget of info might be useful for those in our community that seem to get off on being sick or being in the hospital.

It's not uncommon to see elevated protein in the urine of patients from the ER. It's most commonly associated with some form of kidney impairment or severe dehydration. Usually if the protein from a dipstick on a urinalysis is elevated, it's prudent to do a few more tests. Obviously elevated urine protein isn't an indicator of acute renal failure by itself but it is a clue. that requires further investigation.

The reason I bring it up is that we had a gentleman in his early thirties come into the ER today, the only real issue he had was this elevated urine protein. His urine was a pretty cloudy considering there were no cells, things just didn't quite add up. While doing the microscopic evaluation, I found an ass-ton (that's alot) of sperm. What I don't get was that it came down to us in a tube that is generally used to collect urine from a catheter. If it had been a normal cup I would have said he just masturbated into the cup right before he peed. Since it was a cath tube I guess he had to masturbate while the catheter was in him. I can't imagine that being comfortable. Who does that?

So in conclusion, if you have the desire to stay in the ER just a little longer and get a bigger work-up because you're a piece of shit drain on our healthcare system, then just jack off in your urinalysis cup. It will elevate you're protein falsely and you'll get a few more hours with our lovely ER nurses. Especially if, as usual, our docs are overworked and have huge patient loads preventing them from immediately ordering you're follow up testing. You may even get a free hot meal! hooray for perverts abusing the system.

POO worms

2009-04-07T11:58:00.005-05:00

I've pretty much given up on blogging but I may make an appearance every once in awhile. This is obviously one of those instances.

At work, I don't get to see most of the crazyees being in the lab and all, and not dealing with patient care (THANK GOD!), but tonight we got to deal with one, it made my night.

A lady in her 40's came into the ER about a week or so ago convinced she had worms. I'm not entirely sure why, but she was absolutely positive. My guess is that the Doc who saw her in the ER just decided she was bat shit cray and did an Ova and parasites work-up on her just to appease her. I'm fine with this, I'm sure I'd do the same thing. As expected we found nothing. no big deal right????

WRONG!, This bat shit crazy woman comes into the lab, just walks right in with a bag of shit in her hand demanding to speak to the micro supervisor because all of us were "obviously fucking idiots". It's 2 AM no one important is here. Oh well, I didn't get the pleasure of running into her first so I thought I was going to get to sit back and watch the show, but of course, being the only male, and a large one at that I had to tell her to back the fuck up, in some kind of authoritative tone. She was having none of it,

She was flinging around her baggie of poop and getting it perilously close to my face, Thank God those Glad zip tie things work so well. She was pointing out undigested plant matter in her poop saying that it's plain to see a worm, and asking how we could possibly be so stupid as to miss the worms, The worms that were eating her alive. The poor thing couldn't get any help if we continued to suck at our jobs and not see the obvious. She needed help alright, but not the variety I could provide.

What drives a person to be this crazy, Too much time on their hands??? who knows. I really never thought I'd ever have to call security working in the lab, but I did, and of course it took their happy asses about 70 bajillion years to get there. (70 bajillion is alot, in case you didn't know.)

Just to make my life that much better, as she was being escorted out of the lab, she took her baggie full of poop and flung it as hard as she could against the wall. Not cool, Good thing I didn't have to clean it up, I'd pick it up and fling it right back into her face, shit eating grin and all.

My boss just doesn't get it

2009-03-13T08:09:00.004-06:00

There are a few basic rules of leadership that apply no matter what role you're in, one of those basic rules of leadership is that you praise in public and discipline in private. Evidently my boss thinks it should be the opposite way.

When we have computer downtime in my lab it's really only a partial downtime, as our reporting systems still work, so we're able to still print out results and send them to floors. Most people were evidently printing out results from analyzers which tend to be a little difficult to read and just delays patient care. A nurse of doctor shouldn't have to calls us to interpret results. However, our system will print a nice tidy report and we mail to our outpatient providers, for some reason, I was the only person to ever print this report off to send to floors. My boss happened to be looking over my shoulder and saw me doing it this way and got super excited and said; "Boy am I glad I saw you doing that." Everyone else gave me a quick pat on the back and went back to work. One co-worker said good thing we have Rob around he's the only one that ever seems to know stuff like this. Her response was "well I'm just glad I saw him doing it so I could tell all of you, and the only reason he knows it is because he used to work in client services.

The comment didn't really bother me till I thought about the fact that she was publicly degrading me, when she is terrible at her job. Oh well, so she degraded me in public. The weird part of all this is a conversation that I had with the supervisor of a different department last night. I was chatting with her about our new method of autoadsorption and one thing led to another and evidently, She was chatting with my boss and my name came up and said "He's pretty much the only one that knows anything around here." WTF??? So I'm an idiot in public and great in private.... I can't wait for my next evaluation... ha.... dumb bitch.

A new blog, and death

2008-12-05T00:17:00.002-06:00

I came across a great blog yesterday, I don't know why it took me so long to find him, it seems as though we read similar blogs. His name is Savage henry. We have alot of similarites in experiences, but our biggest difference comes from the fact that he's more willing to write about military life, and he's an actual writer, I just use this blog to rant and bitch a little bit. After reading all of his blog in the last 2 days I feel compelled to share a little piece of my life that I rarely share.

I don't talk much about my military life, and for good reason. Some things really just need to be repressed. The transition from military life to civilian life was pretty difficult for me, The army didn't help prepare me for life after service, but I can't blame them. I had alot of growing up to do. I didn't know how to make a budget so I screwed up my credit. I didn't know how to control my drinking, and I lost a job. I didn't know how to interact with people, especially without dropping an f-bomb every 2 minutes and being overly demanding. All of these things factored into my difficult transition. What made it really difficult was transitioning from a brotherhood where everyone looked out for one another, because every step could mean life and death, to a free for all civilian world. Deciding to be in the health care field made the transition nearly impossible. How could I transition to caring about the sick when I was programmed to perform a task without thinking about what consequences it might carry.

Several years ago there were three soldiers that returned home from a deployment and all killed their wives at Ft. Bliss, unfortunately I couldn't dig up a story to link to, but I think most of us remember it. I never really knew if it was a premeditated thing, or if it was PTSD.

I happened to be working in the blood bank in the hospital at WBAMC the night this happened. I didn't have much work to do, because they were all dead by the time they made it to the hospital. I was morbidly curious back then and decided I needed to go and see the bodies. I don't know why, the morgue was just around the corner and the guy in charge was a buddy just down the hall in the barracks. In a civilian hospital it's hard to get stories in the lab, in a military hospital, they guy that just perfomed cpr on some poor sap for the last hour just happens to be your roomate or another soldier down the hall. You'll always find out what happens. Anyway, I walked in the morgue and saw 1 clean bullet hole in each head. It kinda freaked me out.

I was deployed after that and dealt with soldiers with limbs missing, and bullet wounds and shrapnel ridden bodies. That never effected me the way those three women did. You can only turn off emotion for so long. Eventually something will get to you. For me, that night was what was a wake up call for me. I've had a hard time adjusting to normal life after that, but I know i'm not the only one with stories like this. In fact most are probably worse. It's not easy to re-wire your brain. but it can happen over time.

I think the Army or the armed services for that matter, need to do a better job preparing soldiers for post war/service life. It's a difficult situation that many 20 something year old kids that enlisted right after high school don't have the tools to deal with. The next time you look at a vet that you work with or interact with, just remember that the things he's had to deal with in his formative adult years, are probably things you'll never even have to imagine in a nightmare. The one's that can make a smooth transition should be given the utmost respect. What would you do with your life post military if your one discernable skill is killing, or teaching others to kill?

Shady company.

2008-11-20T14:51:00.003-06:00

If you've ever seen my blog before you know that I'm always preaching about doing what's right for the patient above all else. Forget the fact that you feel slighted by someone calling you and bitching, forget about extra work it may cause you. Above all else, our responsibility is to the patient. With this said, I now understand a little better why many of the older techs at our hospital are good with washing their hands of any problem and not worrying about it so long as they won't be held responsible.

I was working a night in the blood bank. I think I've stated before that we're a reference lab for many smaller hospitals in the area. On the shift previous to mine, one of the smaller local hospitals sent a sample for a red cell antibody ID. The patient had a FYa antibody. This particular antigen on red cells occurs in about 66% of the normal population so there is about a 33% chance that a randomly selected unit of blood will be compatible with this person. They sent us sample of two units in their inventory to do testing. They needed two unit crossmatched. At a 33% likely hood of compatibility, it's not too likely both of them would be negative.

The tech on the shift before me basically washed his hands of the problem by informing the smaller hospital that they had to call the blood donor center they use and have them do the work since we didn't have everything we needed to help them out. About an hour later I get a phone call from the local blood center, of course it's midnight on a friday night, I'm informed that unless it's a medical emergency they're not coming in. That's fine, It really doesn't effect me. Except, The hospital says We need it tonight, but it's not a medical emergency, I don't get it.

What I find out, is that this gentleman's only diagnosis is anemia and they want to discharge this patient. The Dr. seems to be looking out for his best interest, in terms of cost for the patient, and in hoping to get him out of the hospital to prevent things like nosocomial infections. I can appreciate that. So I agree to have the blood center send me some historically FYa antigen negative units. I'll do the antigen typing and the extended crossmatch and go ahead and send these units on to the smaller hospital. It's alot of extra work, but it should do two things, It should save the hospital money considering this hospital is a satellite hospital and under the same blanket organization. The second thing it should do is enable the patient to receive the units he needs more quickly.

I complete my end of the bargain and send the units on their way. and try to leave an email to the blood bank supervisor about what happened, hoping all the charges can be fixed appropriately. Come to find out, the blood center charged us for the units, then charged us a "consulting fee" of $800 even though the on call tech from the blood center called me. Somehow, they even passed on charges for the work I did, to the satellite hospital.

Basically trying to do the right thing financially effed us, not to mention it caused me a shit ton more work. I easily could have washed my hands of the situation and said that it's a contractual problem between the blood center and the smaller hospital, but nooooo I had to try to do the right thing for the patient.

Frankly, I hope events like these won't cause me to think twice about doing the right thing for the patient. I can see why people are so hesitant to go out of their way to help, in the long run you're just screwing yourself. I hate being a hypocrite more than anything in the world

Rumblings and grumblings

2008-11-16T00:18:00.003-06:00

I haven't really had anything blog-worthy happen lately so I have a list of a few things I just want to get off my chest.

1. I really, really hate having to call positive blood cultures to Docs at 3 AM. Really, I don't like to call anytime but 3 am just sucks.

This happened awhile ago but I just remembered it while I was typing how much I hate calling blood cultures We have a set of Dr.'s at my hospital that are married, one is a surgeon the other is a hospitalist, I think. I had just started at the hospital and was working a second shift in micro. I didn't know that these two doctors were married, and I didn't even realize there were two of them; they had pretty unique Indian names. I had to call a positive blood culture at about five in the evening, so I called the operator and had DR. unique name paged (still not knowing there were multiple Docs.)I get a phone call back shortly and immediately the female doc starts reaming for calling her on a Saturday during her time off for a patient that wasn't even hers. How could I possibly make such an egregious error? I swear to you I spent 10 minutes listening to her bitch. Finally, at the end of it she said you probably want to talk to my husband, here. Her husband took the phone and was surprisingly nice. I was on the phone for about 15 seconds and we were done. How hard would it have been just to hand the fucking phone to your husband in the first place?

2. To my wife; if you're too sick to clean up after our son while I'm sleeping, then you're too sick to play on Facebook. Grow up. I fuck HATE Facebook! If I could ground my wife from it I would. I can't count how many times I've woken up and there she is sitting on the couch while my son has a full diaper and crap all over him and the house is a mess while she's on the computer chatting on Facebook. Facebook, I hope you die!

3. To my boss; Do you're own damned job. Before I took the job I'm in now, I took an entry level position and amounted to me wasting my degree but it was a foot in the door after some hard times. Anyway, because I know this job, I get screwed any time our specimen processer decides not to show up. Recently, we hired a new girl and she can't seem to make it to work. Because of the fact it's impossible to fill that job, she may have to kill someone to get fired. Anyway, my boss grew a pair and put her on probation and gave her a list of things she needed to improve upon if she wanted to keep her job. My boss approached me and said I really needed to take time and try to help the new girl. I needed to not only do my job, but retrain someone else at the same time. Ummmm, no. Do your fucking job and make sure people are trained correctly. I refuse to make my life harder simply to make yours easier. I'm the shortest tenured person on my shift but somehow I'm already the go-to-guy. I don't think I'm alright with that.

I saw a couple of funny quotes posted lately and I wish I could give credit but I don't remember where I read them.
1. "You can't cure crazy or stupid".... so true
2. A positive attitude may not solve all of your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worthwhile".

Powerpoint Fun!

2008-11-01T22:45:00.001-06:00

There's a good chance I could be fired on monday.

Last night I called a floor and informed the unit secretary that a protime on a patient was clotted and would need to be redrawn.

Five minutes later a nurse calls me and asks what I did to the specimin and informs me that it was a good draw and looked fine to her. I told her that there was nothing I could have done to MAKE it clot. She replied that she wished the lab would just own up to their mistakes and maybe she wouldn't hate us so much and hung up.

I brushed it off, hey everyone deals with stress and needs a release. She was probably busy and didn't want to deal with the nuisance.

Five more minutes passed and I got a phone call from the nursing supervisor asking if I had "dropped the specimin". I said I hadn't and privately wondered why the hell she asked me that. The nursing supervisor hung up and called back about two minutes later to inform me that we needed to run the protime on the specimen we had and that she'd be writing up a QI report detailing how I refused to accept a good specimin. She went on to say that the nurse is postive it was a good stick and the problem must have happened in the lab.

I knew full well that there's not point in doing a clotting study on a sample that's already clotted, evidently I couldn't explain this to her. Sometimes I wonder if nurses always know what tests are for, or if they simply know if something is out of range, and what needs to be done i.e. call the doc. Either way, eventually I convinced her I wasn't going to run the sample and she had to have it recollected.

Most normal people would let this slide. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong but frankly, if my time is going to be wasted on filling out/sitting through a reading of a QI report, I was going to waste her time.

I decided to spend the rest of my free time that evening creating a power point illustrating how the coagulation cascasde works and how sodium citrate works in binding calcium to prevent the cascade from ever starting. Thereby illustrating how if a sample is collected correctly, nothing I can do, short of adding more calcium would make it clot. This included the dropping scenario. No matter how many times a specimin may be dropped it won't spontaneoulsly clot.

I can't figure out how to post a powerpoint on here but if I ever figure it out I'll try to. I haven't gotten a response to this yet. I'm waiting, probably untill monday but hopefully it's not too bad. Surely my bosses know I'm a smart ass by now.

I'd like to end this post by telling everyone that we're accused of "not getting it". We just don't seem to understand that patients are critically ill and a nurse can't be bothered to redraw a specimen. My favorite line is that we only ask for redraws when we don't want to run something. Let me tell you, I get it. We're all on the same team here and we should have patient saftey and quality of care in the forefront of our mind. There is too much inter-departmental strife that was created because of an "us vs. them" mentality. It also takes me longer to pull one specimin out of my work flow and have it recollected than it would take to just run the sample and send out erroneous results.

I promise I understand that being a nurse isn't easy, I could never/would never do patient care. I also know that nurses are paid much better than we are even though we have similar degrees, ours may actually be tougher in terms of learning bodily processes on a molecular level, and I also know that the squeaky wheel gets oiled. The nurses always seem to be that squeaky wheel. Anyway, I'm tired of being accused of not getting it or just trying to avoid work. Just understand that shit happens. I'm not sitting in the lab making fun of someone for a clotted or hemolyzed sample. Shit happens it's not a reflection on your phlebo skills it's just something that happens, and there's nothing either of us can do to avoid it. I promise I've never had anything recollected out of spite or laziness.

Please pray that I still have a job monday.

Our helpful nurses

2008-11-01T04:34:00.002-06:00

This just happened about an hour ago and I don't have any thoughts on it yet so I thought I'd share it with you and let you decide what you think.

We were in the middle of a fire code when a nurse came down to get some blood from transfusion. She comes to the window and says "I don't know if I should pick this up right now, I know he really needs it, but we're not allowed to use the elevators during a fire code and no way in hell I'm walking up 4 flights of stairs.

AWESOME!

My Views on gay marriage

2008-11-01T01:01:00.004-06:00

Gay marriage is a touchy subject for me. On one hand this is one of the few things I'm somewhat "liberal" about. Our fore fathers set up a system that yes, was to be founded on judeo-christian principles, but above all else was designed to be free. Abraham lincoln was a staunch supporter of the idea that you should be allowed to do anything you want so long as it doesn't hurt the community or another individual. I agree. When did it become the government's place to say who could or could not get married?

I kind of follow in the footsteps of Gov. Jesse Ventura in saying that regardless of whether homosexuality is right or wrong, it's not the government's place to say who can and cannot be wed. It only seems logical that a couple who have devoted themselves to one another be allowed to receive all civil benefits afforded to heterosexual couples.

On the other hand. Homosexuality, in many ways is seen as deviant. Liberals tend to follow Darwin's theory of evolution and prescribe to the notion that only the strong survive in nature. If Humans really did follow this line of thought, then homosexuality could never sustain itself. People would learn that homosexuality prevents reproduction and have no need for it. Although, along the same line of thought, it may prove that homosexuality is not a learned behavior but something coded into a person's DNA. Homosexuality wouldn't exist under darwinism if it were a learned behavior.

What I'm trying to say, is that I really have no idea what is right. Why promote a practice that could potentially be harmful to a community. If homosexuality is a learned behavior and allowed to continue to grow due to new civil freedoms, our ability to reproduce could be hampered, or our available DNA pool limited. I realize I'm looking at a gross view of the subject that may not play out for thousands of years, but I'm just throwing out "what ifs".

Untill someone can convince me otherwise, I agree with Gov. Ventura, once again. I say we should eliminate marriage as a civil union all together. If someone wants to be married and recognized as a couple through church, so be it, let the individual, private churches make those distinctions. We would then simply have civil unions for tax and legal purposes with no hint of the word marriage or definitions for those who can be in a civil union.

Anyone have an argument that might sway me? I'd love to hear people's (non-radical) thoughts on this. I'm a pretty open guy. I just don't know what to think about gay marriage.

I could never work in the ER

2008-10-24T20:31:00.003-05:00

This is just another example of why I respect emergency health workers so much. It also illustrates why I could never ever ever be one.

I got a urinalysis on a three year old. The first two things I noticed were the bacteria and squamous epithelial cells. it's pretty clear she had a UTI. A three year old rarely gets a UTI on their own, although there are instances. A good portion of the time it's because of some kind of sexual abuse.

The next two things I noticed weren't so innocent. I saw sperm that was still motile, and Trichomonas. I can't begin to explain how extremely pissed I was about this. If you really want to talk about "never events" this is one that should never ever happen. This girl had obviously been sexually abused and given an STD. It had to have happened pretty recently for the sperm to still be motile.

If I were an emergency care worker armed with this information, I'd go apeshit. I can't imagine the kind of crap that I would do, especially if the abuser was around. I'm pretty sure whatever it would be it wouldn't be pleasant for him. I'm also pretty sure that I'd have a job for all of about two seconds after that.

Unfortunately things like this occur way too often and these emergency workers have to deal with this crap, and the scum of the earth daily. I can't imagine the professionalism and restraint that it takes to deal with this. So emergency workers I applaud you and your professionalism. I certainly couldn't deal with it.

Cryo, and what it looks like

2008-10-23T23:14:00.002-05:00

I took a pretty funny phone call in blood bank last night, it went a little something like this.

Nurse: Ummm, hi this is nurse blobity blob, I just came and picked up some cryo for this patient and it looks like it has a clot in it, there's this goopy white stuff in the bottom, I'm going to need you to set up some more.

Me: ummm, no it's not a clot. That's the actual cryo. The patient, considering her fibrinogen was ridiculously low, needs that "goopy white stuff."

Nurse: No, it's definitely a clot, I've been a nurse for 15 years and I know what a clot is.

Me: Well, you must not be a very good nurse if you don't know what cryo looks like, or even is, for that matter. I'm not thawing and pooling any more, B cryo is expensive and difficult to obtain, I'm not detroying ten units because you don't know what a clot looks like.

Nurse: I need to talk to your supervisor!

The nurse talked to my supervisor and frankly my supervisor is an idiot, She just wanted to appease the stupid nurse and waste a ton of product. It took every single tech working that night to tell her how stupid that was. It really worries me when a nurse doesn't really have any background information about what she's putting into a patient, it's really no different than if she were to push a drug without knowing the side effects or even generally what it looked like, according to the FDA blood products and drugs are basically the same thing.

Sometimes I wonder about these nurses, I don't mean to put down all nurses because our facility has some great ones, but we're also big enough that we have some WEEEETAAAAARDED ones. I hope I never get sick enough to be admitted, I've been a dick over the phone so many times that I know all the nurses would gang up and let me die.

Man I hope I don't have an email from one of the "important people" about this. The last time I had a problem in blood bank it involved a hospital vice-president that they called in at 3 in the morning, boy was that fun!

My boss is stuuuupid

2008-10-21T20:38:00.003-05:00

I know this is only a small silly example of her stupidity/blind following of pseudo-regulations, but I'll share it with you regardless.

In our chemistry department we have three centrifuges, Two older, larger capacity centrifuges that run for 8 minutes, then we have a slightly smaller centrifuge that runs for 6 minutes. The smaller one is designed to be our stat centrifuge. and because we spent a ludicrous amount of money on it, we are to use it every time we have an ER.

That's all well and good unless your boss is a retard. I walked by the centrifuges to see if I could grab any samples that were just coming down. I see the stat centrifuge running with 5 minutes remaining. I see another ER sitting on top of the centrifuge while the other two weren't being used. I asked if there was a problem with the older centrifuges and she said; "no I just don't have any routine samples to put in." WTF?

I know in the grand scheme of things it only saves three minutes, but seriously, use you're fucking brain. I have a million stories about her that are much worse, but I thought this was the best example of her lack of critical thinking skills. I just don't get her, She was a salesperson for a major reference lab for the last 15 years, yet somehow that qualifies her to be a shift supervisor at a major trauma center that was voted the number 1 integrated health system in America. Who is she sleeping with?

Blood and Cancer

2008-10-18T00:36:00.002-05:00

This is a double post. One rant and one thing I'm actually happy about. Naturally we have to start with the rant.

There are a couple of floor nurses that are about to make me go apeshit. I work a third shift and my night starts at 10. Frequently we have units of blood that will expire at midnight. For years and years and years, as long as it was issued by midnight it was ok for use. The policy remains intact, yet a few nurses have taken it upon themselves to "educate" some of their patients. By educate I mean fill their heads with crap.

These Nurses are informing their patients that the units are going to expire at midnight and that the infusion will probably take longer than that. I don't know when we decided that a patient can pick and choose what unit of blood they want, but I guess these nurses have taken it upon themselves to allow this to be a decision. The expiration dates a largely arbitrary designed to mimic life cycles in vivo. There isn't a time bomb that's going to go off and make the blood suddenly useless or even less effective for that matter, it'll raise you're HCT and your HGB exactly the same way as a unit drawn 2 days ago.

It upsets me because it's a huge waste, at $400 a pop it's no small expense. It's tantamount to allowing a patient to refuse a medication because it expires that night. How ridiculous is that. All because a small group of nurses have decided unilaterally that these patients should be "educated."

We're a pretty large hospital. We have a contract with the local blood center to recieve short dated PRBC due to the high volume of infusions that we have. We're a last resort to make sure someone's donation is being used properly. I now have to deal with returning and destroying these units, and subsequently taking phone calls from Docs asking why it's taking so long to get Mr. so-and-so's blood transfused.

Anyway, The good news that you've all been waiting for.

Working third shift I don't get to stay in one department of the lab like other shifts do. It makes it much harder for me to become really good in any one area of the lab, yet I'm expected to be an expert for the night. Before I came to this hospital the only section I had ever worked in was the blood bank. about 2 years ago I cross trained in hematology. You remember basic stuff from school but it's hard to recognize and remember all kinds of crazy cells that you see from oncology patients.

We have one particular oncology patient that has been in our hospital for about the last year and in and out for the last 5. We save his slides for new employees and for students to look at, basically I've seen every abnormal cell you could possibly have in this patients blood. As I was saying earlier it's difficult to remain proficient in an area working there maybe once a week. During every morning run I do my best to pick this guys slide out of the pile and review it for myself to remind myself what some of these abnormal cells look like. You have to be the person driving yourself to become better at your job I keep up on my own continuing ed by doing things like this.

Yesterday morning I looked for his slide and couldn't find it. The first thing that came to my head, unfortunately, was that he had probably passed away, it's weird that I never new the guy but I felt like I did just because I saw his name so often and I kinda followed how he was doing.

I was doing a little investigating and found out that our system had autoverified his cbc. I asked for a redraw because I was sure it had to be a mislabeled specimin. I started to review his history and his slides had been more and more normal for the last month or so and it turns out it was the correct patient. So congrats Mr. Cancer. It's a big deal when a patient goes from 90% blasts to being within normal ranges so that an analyzer will autoverify your cbc. I'm really happy for this guy that I'll never know beyond a slide with a drop of his blood.

How to really fix health care

2008-10-16T10:53:00.003-05:00

I was watching the presidential debate last night and I came to one realization; either way, healthcare/coverage is going to remain extremely expensive.

Here's my plan to fix our entire system. I know this is an oversimplified plan but it is what it is.

Step 1. Eliminate JCHAO and any other government oversight programs.

There are hundreds if not thousands of private certifying agencies of health professionals in the U.S. For the lab two major ones are the A.S.C.P. and C.A.P. Both of these private/privately funded organizations have the expertise to do a better job of oversight and certification. The added bonus these organizations provide is that they don't use tax payer dollars. The only government oversight committee that would be needed would be a 25 member team that would review each hospital throughout the year and ensure they have up to date certifications from these private agencies.

Step 2. Allow hospitals to reject non-emergency patients with no insurance without fear of lawsuits.

There are far too many people that abuse the healthcare system and there is no good way to prevent them from continuing to abuse the system. We need to allow our emergency health workers, the EMT, the ER nurse and the ER Doc to make educated decisions based on the need for care. If someone comes in complaining of a cough x 2 days, they don't need to be seen let the triage nurse send them home without seeing a provider.

Step 3. Eliminate federal medicaid

Change the medicaid system to a state run system that takes federal money out of the equation. Maybe more people will be up in arms if they really see the abuse that happens and the associated tax hikes that will occur in areas that provide more un-insured healthcare per capita.

As a secondary solution; if you live in a city or near a city with a military hospital and you're uninsured you have to go to these government run facilities. The hospitals can run at a loss and still stay open. there doesn't need to be a profit margin because the workers in these hospitals aren't paid out of any health care based funds. The funds come from the DOD and they pay a brand new soldier much less to do the same job a civilian would do. There's even a possibility to expand the government run facilities and allow them to become specialized care centers. This could also entice the military to expand the education of some of these soldiers.

I can't make a decision to eliminate medicaid because of the fact that people have already put in a lifetime's worth of money before they receive benefits.

Step 4. Larger reimbursements.

With the federal savings from the elimination of JCHAO and other government oversight committees we can afford to offer full compensation for the few uninsured that do make it to local and rural hospitals.

With these larger reimbursements and lowered operating costs that would come from being able to get rid of thousands of middle management jobs whose sole purpose is to ready hospitals for JCAHO inspections hospitals can afford to offer services at lower costs.

5. Have a plan to recoup some of the money that is owed by the uninsured.

The easiest way to do this would be to take money out of any potential tax refund that the unisured may receive at the end of the year. I realize that it does nothing to help with illegal aliens/unemployed abusing the health system. However, if hospitals are given the opportunity to reject care to known abusers of the system these patients can be sent to federal/military hospitals once there, I'm sure something could be done about them being here illegally. If they reject care at one of these facilities our objective is still met. Keeping abusers of the system out of the system. I know the government has the ability to do this, when I got out of the Army I had a military credit card that had a balance of $2.03 that I thought was paid off. The year after I got out of the Army and filed my tax return I got a letter saying these funds would be taken out of my tax return before i would receive a refund. If they can keep track of $2.03 surely they can keep track of thousands that they're owed for health care.

My whole plan is based on trying to eliminate costs that hospitals have to eat, and pass along to patients. If we can lower the actual cost of healthcare services, insurance becomes more affordable/accessible to everyone. This potentially takes many borderline people out of the federal health system. The people I'm talking about are the ones that are close to being able to afford insurance but just can't seem to make the numbers crunch, The people that need help for a short period but are proud, and don't want to be on a free ticket for very long.

If we can start making federal/military/VA hospitals into facilities that can handle these uninsured patients the quality of care in these facilities may go up. If they don't, it may motivate people to find a way to afford insurance. The government isn't going to put up with people using the ER for a cough x2 days. Another benefit could be making some of these hospitals into specialty hospitals that could deal with chronic disease for patients that can't get insurance because of negative health histories. These "specialty" hospitals could also produce more qualified soldiers and soldiers with real specialties that can be more of a help in the work force once they decide to leave the military. The addition of a quality work-force with usable skills that have no student loans could benefit private health systems across the nation in numerous ways.

Should you trust your pediatrician?

2008-10-14T01:03:00.001-05:00

I was over at Whitecoat Rants and was reading his post about pediatric cold medicines that spilled over into a post about the over-prescription of antibiotics. This reminded me of an older post of mine entitled updates skip down to point number three and it'll help explain where this post is coming from. You really need to read it to understand the rest of my post.

A yeast infection is one thing. Killing a kid with lack of knowledge is entirely different. I'll admit I've tended to blindly follow doctors orders, assuming they knew more than I did, but that all changed about a month and a half ago.

We had a known 11 yr old leukemic patient visit our ER a month or so ago. The kid had a super low platlet count. I think it was 5000 or so. He also had a slightly decreased hgb and hematocrit.

The Er Dr. contacted one of the patients specialists in a larger city about 3 hours away and called me to order an obscene amount of blood and platlet products. I called the E.R. doc and he admitted it sounded like alot but the patient was being admitted so he didn't want to deal with it. Fair enough.

I waited untill the child made it to the floor and asked the nurse to verify exactly what the orders were. I don't know if there was a mix-up in communication or if people just follow whatever protocol they make up, but, she read to me that the Dr. ordered 15 ml/kg of both PRBC and platlets. the kid weighed 50 kg. His hemoglobin was 10. Frankly I couldn't figure out why they were transfusing PRBC in the first place but 750 of PRBC is alot for a 50 kg kid. They also ordered the equvilent of 4 plateletpheresis, which is an ungodly amount. Because of the highly concentrated nature of a platletpheresis product normal protocol is to infuse one unit and perform a platlet count. a more acceptable transfusion ratio is about 5 ml per kg. this ratio should raise the platlet count by about 50,000.

The goal in these scenarios is really just to get the patients platelet count about the spontaneous bleeding threshold of 20,000. The goal isn't to reach "normal" levels again.

I realize I've given entirely too much backstory. So I ask the nurse to please have The Dr. call me to hash out exactly what this kid needed. The Dr. that calls me back is my son's pediatrician. I thought pretty highly of her so I was sure this would be smooth sailing. Not so much. It took me an hour to convince her that giving that much volume to this kid would certainly produce Circulatory overload . I had to fax her an entire chapter in the AABB technical manual to help her make an informed decision.

I'll admit a 50 kg 11 year old with leukemia is a tricky situation not knowing wheter to follow pediatric or adult guidlines considering his weight.

I think I was most troubled by the fact that while I was talking with the Dr. she seemed to sway back and forth and really have no idea what I was talking about. I tried explaining the differences in plateletpheresis and random donor platelets, And I tried explaining that 750 ml of prbc would spike a normal adults HGB about three grams and it would function differently in a 50 kg child.

I understand that as a DR. you can't know everything but It just seemed like this Dr. should have known transfusion protocol for children if she's a peditrician, especially one with leukemic patients.

I just swithced to her because of the whole antibiotic mess, I didn't think she was an idiot, and I hope she's not. I just wonder how much I trust my child's Dr. right now. Pediatricians want to take cold medicines off the shelf because they think parents are too stupid to properly dose their child. In the last year I've had two differnet Dr's make equally stupid decisions. Who can you trust if you can't trust you're child's Dr?

Getting what you earn.

2008-10-13T00:46:00.002-05:00

*Disclaimer* This is not unbiased. I have a candidate of choice. Not my first choice, but in this instance definitely the lesser of two evils.

I've been doing alot of research on the health plans that both Sen. McCain and Obama are setting forth.

From What I can understand, the biggest difference is this;

1. Senator Obama supports a system that would provide more government funding/control.

2. Senator Mccain supports a system that is privately run.

My issues/objections to each plan

The U.S. is not a socialist state. It's not the responsiblilty of the federal government to ensure everyone has insurance. It's the responsibility of every individual. At some point and time Americans have lost the attitude that made this nation great. Independece and self-reliance are no long valued. Everyone has their hand out waiting to see what will be given to them.

Sen. Obama's plan to fund another 17 million health care recipients comes from the tax cuts from the bush administration that are set to expire. Many of these tax cuts are for buissness and the wealthy (making over 200,000 per year). So naturally it's okay to take even more from the most heavily taxed bracket, right? to provide for lower income families. This seems like a socialist idea to me. I hardly think it's fair that many lower income families get more out of the system at tax refund time then they put into the system while people in higher tax brackets pay the majority of income tax in america. (I'm not in a higher tax bracket if everyone paid a flat tax percentage that I support I'd actually pay more taxes. But I guess I'm the only one that realizes we all owe our part, and that it's a privledge to live in the U.S.)

Don't get me wrong, I fully support windfall taxes on large companies but I don't think it's fair to overly burden families that have worked hard to do well for themselves. Generating more revenue from this higher bracket with the sole intention of providing (probably sub-standard) care for the poor is not okay.

The obama plan is one step closer to a universal government run health plan that will not be good for patients or health care workers.

The press has gone to great lengths to make people aware of the fact that Sen. Mccain plans to tax health benefits for the first time. He'll then provide a 2,500 or 5,000 tax credit to offset costs. Sen. Biden says the average cost of health insurance in america is about $12,000 per person. I don't know if this is true, personally mine cost about 2,400 for a family of three for just our premiums. I understand that I work for a hospital and I work in a smaller city so my costs will be lower than average. I'm just not sure if 12,000 a year for premiums is a correct estimate.

The government has done similar thing with our income tax for years, allowing you to claim only yourself then at the end of the year claim you deductions hoping for either a refund or a smaller tax bill. They use the money that they collect throughout the year for the operating budget and for investments. Generally these investments have panned out and the government can afford to give some people more than they've put into a system. I don't see the huge problem with the plan to generate extra cash flow without a net increase in taxes for most people.

I don't think universal health care is the answer and I don't think Giving a tax credit on a new tax make a whole lot of sense either. But given the lesser of two evils I pick Senator McCain's Health plan. It puts fewer people on government funded heatlth care and it may give the government a little more flexible cash rather than going with plan A as of late and just printing more money.

I think the answer lies in maintaining privatized insurance with better oversight. The difficult part about this is that I couldn't begin to explain what proper oversight would be. I'm not talking about jchao oversight because those fools have simply made providing good health care more difficult.

I may think I have the answer but I'm probably wrong. I was all for deregulating wall street. Let a free market society work. I can't count how many times I kept telling myself it would all work out, and it will but it'll take some governmental help and oversight which in the past I was all about preventing. I believe in capitalism but every system has it's flaws.

I hope we find a good system for our healtcare. Progress is stimulated by competition and in order to have adequate competetion I believe that the system needs to remain as privatized as possible. Unless everyone out there believes medicare and medicaid have been shining examples of how to run healthcare in America. At some point and time we all need to take responsibility for ourselves and understand that you really do get what you pay for and that we're not entitled to anything free healthcare isn't a right.

My hospital already has policies in place to help offset costs associated with uninsured/medicaid patients. We basically do everything we can within a working diagnosis that we're sure medicaid will pay for. patients will get all kinds of silly workups just in hopes that the volume of tests on a patient will somehow even out the cost, considering how much less medicaid will pay for services.

If I need to explain to you why these are negative things, and how government has screwed up health care I think you should just go vote for Obama's plan that's a step too close to universal healthcare for me.

Yeah, I know I'm a stud

2008-08-25T00:28:00.003-05:00

The wife and I took our little boy to the Dr. for his 18 month check up recently. I've officially given up on the idea of him having any athletic prowess. He's in the 80th percentile for height the 20th percentile for weight and the 99th percentile for head circumference.

What this means is that he's going to be a tall skinny bobble head. It's pretty unfortunate. I reserved some hope that maybe he'll be smart with that huge head of his. So far, it's not looking so good. The Dr. says he should be able to say about fifty words. We're lucky if he knows ten. He knows alot of baby sign language but evidently that means squat.

Anyway, The real reason I felt a need to post today, was because I stumbled upon some very interesting news. I was looking up a story on Cael Sanderson, mostly I was trying to figure out why he wasn't wrestling in these Olympics. What I came across was a list of Olympians that had something in common with Cael.

I came across a familiar face. A female basketball player from another country. We met while I was in Texas and she was on scholarship to play basketball, What's significant about this chance encounter, is that I've never been able to claim meeting a celebrity. While she's a small scale celebrity (she also plays professional basketball in Australia) She is a celebrity, and one I've hooked up with, which makes it a little extra special.

When my friends discuss their chance meeting with celebrities, I've always had to shut up and listen. Now, I'm able to rehash my own story, one where I hooked up with said female, and just to make things more interesting, I even hooked up with her Brazilian roommate. It was fabulous. I sure feel studly right now. I hooked up with an Olympian.

Anyway, I live a pretty boring life I'm married with a kid and work in a job where I do the same thing over and over. It's important for me to be able to relive these memories so that I can remind myself that I really used to be cool. I swear.

Wal-Mart clinics

2008-07-13T03:20:00.003-05:00

I've apologized countless times for not updating more frequently, yet I continue to be lazy. I can't really explain it. I really promise this time I'll try harder. I'm working nights now, and assuming people aren't dying I may have a chance to blog a little more often.

The topic I want to discuss tonight is the degredation of my hospitals values. Now you may say Rob Rob the party slob; Every hospital is losing their values, it's just the line of work you're in buddy. There's only so much you can do. I however, still believe in the off chance that some health systems maintain their integrity.

Recently the lab had a town hall meeting with our VP to discuss upcoming events in the hospital, more often than not it's a big pat on the back to administration and a "look at how wonderful we are" meeting. They also need to remind us every so often that two years ago we were the number 1 integrated health system in America and last year we were number 3 so we need to work harder so they can get their bonus checks. For the most part this one was no different, They discussed all the new building projects, and of course how wonderful our new 100 million dollar facility is. Then they dropped a bomb.

We're teaming up with Wal-Mart to open up several clinics inside supercenters, kinda like the fast-food of health care. Where a patient will come in a complain about something random and another even more random PA or nurse practitioner will write a script and send them on their merry way to an oh so conviently located Wal-Mart pharmacy.

I know most of you already realize several of these have already popped up with Wal-Mart's around Atlanta being the most recognizable of these. I guess I really believed that my hospital was above all of this. For the longest time we had our true mission statement on the reverse of our ID badges to remind us that we're here for the sick and the poor, especially the poor.

The Good sisters that opened the hospital have to be turning over in their graves. This might be the final straw for me. In no way shape or form can I justify opening a fast-food health box in Wal-Mart. It goes against everything our values as an organization used to stand for.

After the sister's turned control over to a board, this place hasn't been the same. We've lost touch with our identity. Recently, We've changed our policies on forgiving the debts of the poor. Instead of understanding our function as a not for profit organization that was built to help the poor and the sick, We've become driven by the almighty dollar, just like everyone else. I guess this proves no one is above the influence of Money. We employ laywers and debt collecters to collect money from people that may not know where their next meal is coming from. citing they give money to the free clinic. I understand you need money to continue to operate, and to pay you'r employess, you don't need to build a 100 million dollar facility with plans to build two more just like it at the expense of losing your identity. and now, of course we've partnered with the devil himself, Wal-Mart.
It might be time for a change for me.

My Quote of the week

2008-05-13T12:35:00.004-05:00

For the few of you who stumble across my blog, I'm sorry I haven't been updating lately. I've been computer-less for the last month and some change. My little boy decided to spill water all over our laptop. Oh well, you can't really get mad at a 14 month old.

"The psychologist is really upset that these tests weren't completed." This is by far my favorite quote of the week. I'll give you a little back story. I got a phone call from our psych unit. The psych tech informs me that several labs were ordered in the E.R. but were not drawn, and therefore not completed. Evidently, Patients coming into the E.R. for psych evaluations have to be medically cleared before being sent to the unit. Part of that evaluation is several lab tests.

The Psych tech informs me that I need to come to the unit and draw this patient NOW!, because the psychologist is very upset. Here is my list of problems with this statement.

1. I don't draw blood, I'm more than willing to transfer you to someone who does.

2. No psych tech is ever going to tell me what to do and when to do it, with any type of authoritative tone.

3. Informing me that the psychologist is very mad about something, is tantamount to telling me that the dermatologist is upset about something. Please explain to me why I care if a fucking counselor is upset about something. A psychologist can't even order lab tests, and There's no way in hell he could even interpret anything beyond a drug level. If someone told me an ER DR. was upset about it, I'd probably take care of the problem. But really, a psychologist?

I guess it's a bit of an ego trip to distinguish between a psych tech / psychologist and a Real nurse/doctor telling me they're upset about something. Oh well, I'll live with the fact that I think I'm better educated than a psych tech, and know more about medicine than a psychologist.

There's a hierarchy in a hospital, and in general I'm at the bottom of the totem poll. We're the worst paid professionals in a hospital. My degree is just as difficult as a nursing degree, in some cases it's tougher, why on average am I being paid several dollars an hour less? No matter how much I hate this little ladder of importance, it exists, but it will be a cold day in hell when a psych tech tells me what to do.

I'm a bit biased to begin with, I really think psychology in general is a crack-pot pseudo-science. And in all honesty, I don't take care of a test as quickly if I know it's just another E.R. visit for a psych evaluation. Why On earth is being crazy a medical emergency? So please don't bring in a crazy retarded adult into the E.R. it just makes it harder for real medical emergencies to be taken care of, besides most of the time people like that don't have insurance anyway, so we're being reimbursed pennies on the dollar by the government. Boy am I glad I didn't take an oath to take care of people regardless of their situation. Boy are docs getting hosed.

Updates

2008-02-12T01:40:00.001-06:00

I've got lots of updates.

1. Heaven's hotties is coming along very nicely I expect to have a beta version soon.

2. Work has banned my site. This kind of puts a damper on my idea to make my blog more of an entertainment center for me at work. This could be very bad. I'm guessing, in a hospital that employs 5000 people my site wouldn't be banned soley based on my usage. Does this mean people at my work are also reading my blog? This could be a bad thing. I say alot of negative things about my job and my co-workers.

3. I'm thinking about switching doctors simply because his nurse is a fucking idiot. I took my son to the Dr. for his 1 year check-up. He was also feeling sick so it was pretty good timing. The Dr. prescribed a broad spectrum antibiotic and called it a day. As some of you know I just happen to work in a microbiology lab so I took advantage and ran several tests on him, on the health system's dime mind you. He came back positive for RSV. By it's self RSV is really no big deal most kids get it at some point. I still needed to call the nurse at my doctor's office for advice on whether or not I should continue to give him the antibiotic. Antibiotics don't do anything for viral infections. As a side note, Superbugs like MRSA are created when people don't finish all of their antibiotics, take them needlessly, or are given the wrong type of antibiotic. I'm not a proponent of giving someone antibiotics just for shits and giggles. Anyway, Back to the nurse. I gave her a ring a ding ding and informed her of my findings and she said she'd get back to me. The conversation we had when she called back two days later went a little like this

Nurse: Hey, this is J from the Dr.'s office. I did a little research and found out that RSV is a virus and the antibiotics probably won't help him very much, well at least that's what the pharmacist tells me.
(No fucking shit. I told you what RSV was, and aren't the worlds Respiratory Syncytial Virus a clue as to it being a virus.)

Me: Well, I knew that, that's why I was calling, should I continue giving him the Zithromax.

Nurse: Well, It might help in case he gets some other kind of infection
(like I said, it's never a good idea to give people antibiotics for no good reason, however, this did make sense for preventing ear infections while his immune system was hurting.)

Me: I guess that makes a little sense. I'll keep him on it.

I think what really pissed me off is that this nurse was unfamiliar with a pretty common pediatric virus. It also bothered me that she seemed proud of the fact that she figured out it was a virus.

My son ended up with a yeast infection because the antibiotics killed the normal flora (the good bacteria) in his body, and allowed yeast to grow uncontrolled.

Never do something because a "Medical professional" tells you it's the right thing. Do you're own research, there are a whole lot of fucking stupid nurses that will tell you to do stupid things like taking antibiotics for no reason, therefore giving you a yeast infection and bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics.

4. My hospital is all about "productivity" it's a rough formula that takes the number and complexity of tests and divides it by the number of hours worked in a particular department. Usually all we do is play with numbers to improve these rates, For instance, if Micro is looking like it may not reach the productivity goal I'll clock into a different department under an alternate rate of pay. So in reality these numbers don't mean anything except to the administration their raises are based on these numbers. Each department this last quarter was at at least 150% which is kind of ridiculous. It either means we're over-budgeting hours or we're working our balls off. Wanna guess which department didn't meet it's goal? Administration.

We also were recently named the number 3 health system in america by Verispan, Wanna know what my reward was? An email. My bosses? a cool 10 grand. wouldn't it make more sense to give that money to the people who earned it by having asinine productivity ratings? Oh well just more motivation to become management right?

Heaven's hotties

2008-01-28T19:13:00.000-06:00

My buddy Dave is 40 and single. Recently a few friends suggested he should try meeting a nice girl in church. I think it's a good idea. Who doesn't love a sweet innocent church girl.

This got me to thinking. We researched all of the churches within a mile from his house. What we really wanted to know was how many attractive young ladies attended that church. I could find no such information. So POW! an idea hit like a ton of bricks. www.Heavenshotties.com a site to rate local churches based on the percentage of attractive young women at each service.

I haven't really hashed out any details. That's where you, my faithful readers come in. I need ideas. How do I compile this information without doing all the legwork myself? I also envision a wikipedia esque format that will allow users who attend those churches to update information at their own church. Any ideas would be great.

Ideally, I could use this site to collect information from all my readers, unfortunately not enough people read my site. That's where you come in. If any of you have bigger blogs with more readers please let people know about what I'm trying to do. I can accumulate stats one reader/church at a time.

I could really see this thing getting huge and extending to schools, and neighborhoods and towns. I just need a little help collecting data. Either send this post to people, link to it, or give me some stats about you're own church. Go ahead fill up the mailbox Heavenshotties@yahoo.com

Think Trip Adviser for churches, with a little sex thrown in for spice

The retarded policeman

2008-01-28T11:08:00.000-06:00

I know this video has been running around he internet for awhile now, and honestly I don't know how I missed it, but I thought you all needed to share in m love of the retarded policeman. Also, my work has recently banned almost anything entertaining. I can't even watch streaming videos. What this means, is that my blog may become a little less about my personal life and more about stuff to entertain me and others at work. Enjoy the retarded policeman.

And for those of you who think it's wrong to "exploit" people with downs syndrome, watch this.

2008-01-24T16:15:00.000-06:00

I've just added a new "Boss" button to the page in the upper right hand corner. If you enjoy my blog at work; all you have to do is click the button and it will take you to a "safe screen". Sure hope it works.

The Plaxico Burress of the midwest

2008-01-23T08:06:00.000-06:00

Those of you who watched the Giants-Packers game last Sunday will understand what I'm saying a little better than those of you who did not. If you really watched that game you know that Plaxico Burress was the best player on the field that day. Every time New York needed a big 3rd down reception or Eli Manning looked like he was confused, the ball was thrown up to Burress. He is the reason the Giants are going to the Super Bowl.

You may be asking yourself why I'm pointing this out. I'm not a Giants fan, and I'm not even really a fan of Burress. I can, however, relate to him. Sometimes, I feel like I'm the Plaxico Burress of my little world. I'm the Go-to-guy, and I don't know that I want to be anymore. At work, home and even my social circle I seem to be the guy who gets stuff done.

During most of my life I've wanted to stand out. I've wanted people to notice. I'm good at anything I've ever wanted to be good at. Normally this sounds pretty appealing, just not to me. I'm at a point in my life where all I really want is to blend into the crowd. I want to do my eight hours of work, without any extra responsibility. I don't want to feel hurried and overwhelmed because everything seems to get dumped on me one way or the other. I want to be that guy in the cubicle that seemingly has no name. He comes to work on time, finishes his eight hours in peace and walks out the door on time stress free.

At home, I'm basically responsible for everything. I'm the only one bringing in an income, I seem to be the primary care giver to our son and I have to do most of the cooking, and if I want the house to be clean I pretty much have to do it myself. All so the wife can go to school for 24 hours a week at a community college. I just feel as though if I didn't try to do so much, maybe no one would ask anything of me.

I'm tired of being a standout. I want to be another face in the crowd, living my day to day life stress free without having to deal with everyone else's problems. Lord knows I have enough of my own. Do you know how screwed up someone has to be to want to go from being the man (without being paid like the man) to being just another guy? I don't know maybe I have multiple personalities, I sure do write as if I do. I can't seem to make up my mind about who I am. or what I want or what I should be.

Plaxico Burress probably doesn't worry about any of these things. He's paid millions of dollars to play a game I'm sure he loves and most dominant athletes are a type A, go-to-guy personality type. But I wonder if he ever feels like he's carrying the team, does he wonder what the hell would these people do without me there to catch that impossible one handed, tip toeing the sideline, sailing out of bounds pass. What would it feel like to take a game off? unfortunately I don't get to take a game off, or even a play for that matter, but I sure do wish I could.

What I really think Of MLK day

2008-01-21T17:17:00.000-06:00

I hate that I always have to preface my posts. I always come off like an immoral jerk, or just a hateful bastard. Nonetheless, I'll do it again. I want everyone to know I support equality, but not having a day reserved to remember one man. I don't have any personal problems with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. but I do want everyone to know what I think of the day set aside to remember him.

I'll start off with the question that I think of most frequently when I think about MLK. What exactly did he do that was so extraordinary? He was a powerful and eloquent speaker and led freedom marches. Other than that, I don't know what I can say about the man. He believed he was being treated as less than an equal in his community. He stood up for the belief that equality was a intrinsic right. I agree, I believe that all human beings should be treated equally. I also believe I'd stand up for my own rights in much the same way. I don't think it was an incredible feat to bring media attention to the fact he felt he and the rest of the black community were being treated unfairly. I know I would have, and still would, say something if I felt my rights were being violated, I think you would as well.

Alot of pundits like to bring up several moral and ethical indiscretions he may have committed. The indiscretions include adultery, plagiarism, and communist involvement. As much I'd like to be able to say those things don't matter, I have to take a realistic view of the world. When history looks back on my life, will it only remember the good things, or will the world remember all of my faults? I know my faults will be remembered, so why are we so quick to forget his? I can't, simply because mine won't be forgotten. I realize that everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone has a federal holiday to remember their lives. I just don't think we should look through rose colored glasses.

Many people will label me a racist because MLK is seen almost as a demi-God in this country. Nothing can be said in a critical light. To me it's as if the federal government feels as though it needs to appease the black community in some way. I believe that we should have a day that reminds us of the fact that all men are created equally, I just don't believe it should be named after MLK, that it should be something almost exclusively black, or that is should be something done to simply appease a demographic. It should be a true celebration of all Sexes, creeds, races, sexual orientations, or anything else that makes anyone a "minority". We should be remembering that our ancestors didn't have it as easy as we do and that The fight for true equality is NEVER over.

I really just want people to take a step back and really examine the world for a second. Too much is made of the differences between races, when in fact we need to remember all the similarities. We need to remember the struggles of every race and generation. We shouldn't single out a day or a month to remember something exclusively as black history, or black civil rights. We need to remind ourselves each day of everything our ancestors accomplished, and not take that for granted.

For all of you white power jackasses that thought this was going to be an anti black post; Fuck you, and to all the black power jackasses; I wish to lend you the same phrase Fuck you. Just remember that life is a struggle for everyone. Do some research and ask yourself is MLK really worthy of his own federal holiday? Is this a man that did anything I wouldn't have done for my own civil rights? If you come to the conclusion that he does, fine. Just think of how many more bullshit holiday's we really should be recognizing too.

While I don't want to tarnish the legacy of what MLK has been made into, I still feel as though he's overly praised. I also think the "Idea" of MLK is far greater than the man himself. Maybe we need the "Idea" of a civil rights leader more than we need to celebrate the man himself.

Using religion to your advantage.

2008-01-14T14:45:00.000-06:00

I want to preface this with the fact that I'm a much nicer person now, than I used to be. My wife, and alot of my friends have a hard time understanding what a dick I used to be. At work, people can see glimpses, I don't like things to awry. For the most part, I'm a big softy. Having a little boy has changed my life. I can't claim to have had any big Epiphany. I just decided to be a different person.

I was living in D.C. and having the time of my life. I didn't make a ton of money but I really only had to pay for my cell phone and dating. I blew money like I had it, and went through women even faster.

I found a little niche in D.C. an untapped reservoir of sexual frustration, Their name; Mormon girls. I've had alot of success with Mormon girls over my lifetime. I think it's because I can act like a nice guy without really being a nice guy. A normal skeptical girl could see through my bullshit, but these Mormon girls were naive. They didn't see game. They still believed in real love, big love. A street smart girl in D.C. would have laughed at my nice guy routine, but they ate it up.

Some small piece of every woman wants to have that one last fling before they get serious about their life. That's something else I had going for me. I was fun, attractive, smart and funny, but not marriage material. I'd be that guy you'd have lots of fun stories about wonderful dates, but in the end you knew you needed to settle down with someone more ambitious. In the case of the Mormon girls, a little more into God.

I met a girl, her name escapes me right now, who was a civilian at the hospital I was doing my clinicals at. She also happened to be a good friend of one of my good friends. It turns out she was Mormon and had a bit of a crush on me. I hung out with her a few times but nothing formal. While I was hanging out with her one night I got a phone call from
Heather and she's wanting to get together. Most people would either tell the other person they were busy or they'd blow the original girl off in some nice way. Not me. I saw the chance to get two girls in one night and went for it.

Things were progressing quickly with the first girl. We were in bed in no time. I wasn't in the mood for "Making love" it was her first time and I'm pretty sure she wanted it to be special. Because this is a family blog I'll leave out all the crude details and tell ya it was a two minute job. I stopped suddenly and told her I felt too bad. I felt like I was taking advantage of her. It just wasn't the right thing to do. I played it off like I hadn't gotten mine, but I did.

I went to see Heather later that night and we had a good time. Not only did I get to spend time with both girls but I got to be the nice guy, the one that respected girls. In the End being completely selfish, getting mine, then leaving turned out great. She told all of her Mormon friends what a nice guy I was and that "respected a girl's boundaries". I ended up being the last fling for at least 20 of the girls in the Chevy chase singles ward in D.C. God really does bless those who use religion to their advantage.

Christmas Fun

2007-12-18T15:23:00.000-06:00

I'll start off by reminding everyone how much I hate Christmas. It's all so fake. I'm not nice the other 364 days (365 in a leap year), why should I pretend to be nice on Christmas? For those of you that are politically correct, it's the holiday season and not Christmas. I think the political shit is enough for me to hate the whole damned month of December.

That little rant aside, I need to let the world know something. If one more fucking person asks me to donate money for some cause, or for a needy co-worker, or buffing Santa's ass, I'm going to go bat-shit crazy. Everyone seems to have their hand out during the holidays. Let me let you in on a little secret. Yes, I have a degree from a great university, but no, I don't use it, I'm stuck in a mindless, processing job because a job that utilizes my skills hasn't opened up and because I've made a few mistakes along the way. I only made $25,000 last year. Granted I live in the Midwest where the cost of living is manageable, but still, I'm fucking poor. With no goevernment assistance, I don't let the government buy my food and formula.

The last three requests I received were understandable, but still undo able. Someone at work approached me about donating money for our housekeeper. I'd like to be able to help, but in the grand scheme of things, We probably made about the same amount of money. The biggest exception, is that I have three mouths to feed while she has just herself.

The second request was for my boss, She put up a lien on her house so that her husband could open a restaurant that didn't pan out. She just lost her house in kind of a messy ordeal and they are having to go through a bankruptcy, She is 40 and now has no retirement. Again, I'd love to help, but I still remind myself that she makes at least $60,000 per year, I'm not in a position to help someone making 2 1/2 times what I make.

The Third request was for a program that the lab runs, instead of picking a needy family in the community, everyone in the lab chips in and helps three or four families in need in lab. First of all, I'm sure I'm the poorest family in the lab, I have the lowest paying job in the lab and have three mouths to feed, Everyone else that works with me has a spouse that works. Secondly, I think the pathologists that make $300,000 a year can pick up this tab, 6 of the 8 are single, and the other two are married to one another without kids, you know they're rolling in dough, How dare they even ask me to "Dig deep this year", because it's a tight year for everyone.

The last thing I'm going to bitch about today is the mismanagement of funds here in our lab. There's an ongoing rivalry between the first and second shifts, The first shift hates us because we're given a shift differential of $2.00 an hour more than our base pay, We hate first shift because, They leave us work they should have completed some days, and on other days they stay to finish work, eating up overtime, forcing managers to cut hours for other people. My hours are secure because I'm one of the few full time employees, I split my time between several different sections so it'd be impossible for them to cut my hours, What management has proposed is that we send people home from second shift early to save money.

I'm pissed off for two reasons, There is an equal workload on each shift, but They have twice the people, Secondly, They only eat up overtime because they take too many breaks during the day, they're given a 30 min breakfast break, a 30 min lunch break and another 15 min break. I get one 30 minute break, that is if I have time to take it, this time is automatically deducted from my paycheck and it takes an act of God to correct it with payroll. Basically if first shift had more people like me, as opposed to lazy old women, the work would get done in plenty of times and you wouldn't have to take money from the pockets of part time employees.

By the way, I have a friend who accidentally got two wii's this holiday season, he and he dad both waited in line and somehow they both got one, and they're looking to sell it, if you need a wii hit me up and I'll see how much they want for it.

Happy holidays, and remember hay-zoos (Jesus) would want you to have a good time and get bombed at his b-day.

More Drama... So what's new?

2007-12-12T12:07:00.000-06:00

The stupidest fucking thing just happened to me. My wife thinks we have a shit ton more problems than we really do and she also thinks I've cheated on her. I'm the type of guy that wouldn't cheat on anyone. I was cheated on while I was in Iraq, and frankly I don't care enough about anyone or anything to live a lie. I'd leave someone before I'd cheat on them.

All these new accusations stem from an IM conversations I had with a friend from Utah. I'll give you a little backstory. This girl had been dating this guy for about five years and left a stable home life and great job to live with him in California so that he could pursue a teaching/coaching career. I guess Things have turned south. Evidently they're on a break but she's still living in his home. I don't know every detail but it seems a little messed up to me. It sounds like there's another woman in the picture that he wants to feel out but doesn't want to eliminate the possibility of staying with his girlfriend. In other words, She's his fall back girl/plan. I understand the theory well, I've pulled the same asshole stunt many a time.

I started talking this girl through all of her options and none of them frankly sound all that appealing. I also made a pretty vain attempt at making her feel better. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's ever done this, but I exaggerated my own problems to try and make her feel better about the fucked up situation she was in. I wrote that my relationship could fall apart at any moment. I also wrote things about me cheating oh my girlfriend so that I'd sound like a bigger ass than her boyfriend so that she'd be able to reevaluate things a little more clearly. Like I said I know I'm not the only person to ever use this strategy with a friend.

Somehow, someway, she came across the transcript from this IM conversation. Frankly, I'm a little pissed, it's kind of a violation of my privacy, I don't snoop through her messages, I don't care that she keeps in touch with random guys, it doesn't bother me. Maybe I'm just a little more secure. Maybe I feel as though trust is important. All I know is that I'm pissed. I think I have a right to be, maybe I don't, regardless, I'm still pissed.

If I were going to leave, It'd be pretty damned obvious, I don't beat around the bush, I'm not shy, I'm not passive aggressive. I'd just be gone. Do I have a right to be upset? does She? I think the biggest thing that upsets me is; she's passive aggressive, She won't really tell me how she feels, she'll just be a little brat, and do things like wake me up to say "So you've cheated on me at least four times huh?" then sleepily I'll reply "huh?" not remembering the conversation from the previous night. She'll say "You know exactly what I mean." Then she'll walk out the door making a big show of leaving her ring on the nightstand, then come back for it ten minutes later when she has to go somewhere because, of course, she can't be seen in public with a child and no ring.

She's so fucking simple minded sometimes. I think all the problems I exaggerated may have just turned in to real problems. I don't know how much shit I can deal with, I really do love her, and I love my son more than anything in the world, but I'm not a problem solver in relationships, I run away, I find something new. If the issues are more than just superficial problems, I can't deal with them, It's not the way I am programmed, and it's not the way I roll. It's so much easier to just say, sure you're right, have a nice life alone.

Liberty dollars

2007-12-10T16:06:00.000-06:00

I realize that I'm going to sound like a complete lunatic for writing this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm not some left wing nut I just think that this idea is soundly reasonable.

For those of you that haven't heard, There is an alternative currency in the U.S. it's called The Liberty Dollar. Go ahead and click on the link, I don't really have the time or the expertise to explain the whole system to you. Done reading? The principle of having a dollar that is actually backed by a measurable amount of gold, that can only appreciate in value seems like a pretty solid idea to me. I know you think I've gone off the deep end but I haven't.

I briefly touched on my issues with our economic system two posts ago when I mentioned rising inflation and the ratio of money the government is spending as opposed to how much we're receiving in tax allocations. It seems silly that we print more money, but don't acquire any gold or silver to back it. Pretty soon, the U.S. dollar will be worth about as much as the Yen.

Do you remember when gas was less than a dollar and penny candy was a penny? I think the rise in prices has less to do with foreign dependency on oil and greedy executives, as it does the devaluing of the dollar. Think about how much money the war in Iraq is costing us, then compare how much money we brought in, in taxes last year. I don't think it all adds up to well, There has been too much "creative math" in the last 50 or so years to make everything add up. I'm just not okay with it anymore.

The government has decided that the liberty dollar is illegal, charges have been filed for counterfeiting money. This bothers me, What's the point of capitalism without the benefit of competition, at the very least I hope our treasury department looks at it like a wake up call and realizes there is a problem.

On a side note: PTBG was allowed to train the new girl, whom I haven't referenced yet. It was damned hilarious. I've never heard so many "Like"'s, "Whatever"'s and "oh my gosh"'s. The first day I met the new girl, without having said a word to her, I knew I wouldn't like her. She's ditzy and skittish, she seems to be afraid of her job. I'm not okay with that. All in all I can't hate her though, she has a great rack, at least I get to stare. I'll get over my dislike by not talking to her. You can't hate someone you don't talk to right? Especially if they're hot. So much for first impressions.

Ghetto fabulous

2007-12-06T23:28:00.000-06:00

I know I've written about this several times, but obviously I need to say this again. I HATE people who use/abuse welfare.

I was in the grocery store the other day and in the checkout line. I was chit chatting with my wife, but trying to sneak a peek at the very attractive woman in front of me. I don't know why, but I find the "high mantinence" chicks extremely attractive. I see nothing wrong with the girls that get all dolled up to go to the store. She was carrying a $800 hand bag and was wearing manolo blahniks. They're really expensive fucking shoes, they probably cost what I make in a month. Don't ask why I even know what they are.

I start talking to her because she was there with her son who was about the same age as mine, and because we were both purchasing the same beer. I know it's a lame excuse. My wife was busy entertaining our little boy so I needed someone to talk to. Grocery store girl tells me that she's a waitress at Denny's and her husband works for a local landscaper cutting grass.

The wheels in my head slowly start creaking. How in the hell can she afford the shit she's wearing waiting tables? I don't think her husband bought it for her, how lucrative can cutting grass be?

I also notice that she's buying only name brand foods. Buying name brand food has always bothered me. I adhere to the theory that for the most part it all tastes the same why spend twice what you need to, just because one company has a marketing budget. I kinda dismissed everything, convinced she has rich parents or a sugar daddy.

Later, I hear her tell the cashier she'd like to pay for her Sam Adams seperately. This seems a little funny to me, so I look up just to see how much she's spent. Her total was 206.49 and her cart wasn't even full, then, I look a little further down the screen and notice the words "EFT payment". She just bought all this shit with fucking food stamps but she can afford shoes that cost $2500 and an $800 hand bag. This is some fucked up shit.

I have about $150 left at the end of each month after all the bills are paid and we've done our grocery shopping. I qualify for food stamps but don't get them, I could also have the government buy formula for my kid. If I were to take government assistance I could save $800 bucks a month.

Unfortunatly, for me, I have something called pride, and a christian work ethic. I've given up hope for all humanity. I pretty much fucking hate everyone. Am I the only person not getting free money from the government? Where exactly does all this money come from anyway? I realize most of us pay taxes but if a huge percentage of the population is getting a check for more than they pay in taxes and others are getting back more money from tax refunds than they put in, What money is the government using for this.

Pretty soon people will realize that the money we have is no more valuable than monopoly money, the government seems to give it out at will with no regard for where it's coming from, or inflation. I realize this is a little off topic but seriously, where the fuck is all this money coming from?

I hope I never see the grocery store lady again, but if I do, I'll forget that my mother taught me it was wrong to hit women. I'll punch her right in the face, steal her shoes and send them to The charming hedonist.

Dr Drew and loveline

2007-12-01T00:26:00.000-06:00

I was driving home from work the other day, listening to Love Line on the radio and Dr. drew had some general advice about long distance relationships. Obviously I'm not in a situation where long distance relationships matter to me because I have a Son and a live-in girlfriend. I know I've called her my wife here on the blog before. It's mostly because we as a married couple and I work at a conservative Catholic hospital. Work doesn't need to know I live with a girl I knocked up.

The caller Dr. Drew was talking to was 19 and vaguely mentioned long distance relationships. Dr. Drew didn't give him any advice specific to hie problem. Wfhat he did say, shook me up a little bit. He said that relationships in our teens are meant to dissolve, to date multiple people, and not to take your formative college years for grandted. What I took this was that early teenage relationships are basically practice for your "real" life. You also need your college years to form your personality, you're finally away from your parents and need to develop your personality as an adult.

This worries me because my girlfriend was 19 when she got knocked up and were forced into a relationship more serious than either of us were ready for. It was especially tough because we weren't even dating when all this went down. We were friends who made a mistake. I wish I could blame it on alcohol, but we were both sober. We moved in together because it was the only way I could afford to provide for my little boy. I wasn't making very much money (I'm still not) and can't afford all my own bills and child support. I can, however afford to take care of my son if he was living with me.

My girlfriend didn't get the benefit of these "practice relationships". What happens when she starts to resent me for not being able to have her fun college years. Does she leave me? Does she take my little boy with her? How important is it for teens to have these relationships dissolve. I know it taught me alot about life. It taught me that life is short, but so is my patience. It taught me What my buttons were, and how easily they could be set off. I learned that there's no such thing as a perfect relationship. Most importantly, I learned that no matter how hot any girl is; some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit. What if she hasn't learned these very valuable lessons?

I wonder if there's a way to let her try to live life a little without moving out and telling her to go date other people. Would she still want to be with me? I'm on my second marriage and my priorities have changed. I'll never leave her because she's such a good mom. At some point in time "Good Mom" jumped to number 1 on my list of of qualities I find most appealing in a woman. Fuck, how boring am I.

I guess I expect help from some of my female readers on this. How important were your wild years in college in the formation of your personality and the formation of your priorities in relationships? What's the over/ under on her hating me five years from now for taking away that part of her life. What's the over under on her leaving me?

Adsense was actually useful?

2007-11-30T00:09:00.000-06:00

I found this link as an ad from fucking adsense... can you believe it... adsense actually showed an ad that I wanted to click on...

2007-11-29T02:18:00.001-06:00

Lately I've been posting pretty infrequently but I promise that will change soon. I still have lots of great stories, If you'd like, and I'd like you to, subscribe to my blog so that I can send you an email anytime I post. That way you can save your time effort and energy. Why check the blog if there's nothing new?

Why I'm in trouble at work

2007-11-28T15:22:00.000-06:00

So I get a dirty little note in my mailbox at work today. Normally I don't even look at them, They go straight into the recyclable bin. (Yes, I try to do my part to save the environment so long as it doesn't require any real work.) I ignore them because 99.99999% of the time it's just silly stuff. In most cases it takes longer to write the note than it does to actually fix the problem. Today, I read it. It was about two paragraphs long and it detailed the fact that I told someone to draw an incorrect specimen for a particular test.

There are a few things you need to know about me. I don't like to be told I did something wrong. I'm able to recognize I'm not perfect, but I make few, if any errors at work. Secondly, I do not tolerate condescension in any way shape or form. Lastly, I'm confident that I won't get fired. I'm just too valuable. I'm so ridiculously overqualified for my job that it's not funny. So I do and say what I please.

I decided to confront the person about the note. What it all boils down to, is that I gave someone the specimen requirements for something they ordered. Evidently the nurse ordered it incorrectly, yet some how it's my fault. I guess I should have known what she meant.

This woman that works the day shift thinks she's in charge. She's been here forever and her word is taken for scripture amongst the people that work in the client services department of our lab. I couldn't care less what she thinks.

Our conversation went roughly like this

KD: The doctor wanted PCR added to this test. It has to have a different specimen. Now, because of you, we have to stick the patient again.

Me: My first point is you have no real idea what's going on. It's not my job to magically know that the doctor wants something other than what was ordered by the nurse. Secondly, PCR isn't something that's done in addition to a test, it's the methodology for the test. Do you know what methodology even means?"

(A side note: PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. Very simply put it's a methodology in which the DNA of whatever you happen to be looking for, is replicated then amplified in vitro so that you can more easily identify substance in low concentrations in blood.) Wikipedia explains it better HERE

Me: If you don't even understand what the test is, or what it's for, how exactly are you going to lecture me about it?

KD: I was just trying to help I thought you might like to know what you needed to do in cases like these.

Me: If you compare the two of us, only one of us has an education who is more likely to know what's actually going on with a test? That's right, me. If you really want to be helpful, you can tell me how to seem to know everything so that I can know everything too.

KD: Well it's not as if I can make a list of every test we've ever done and copy the specimen requirements for it.

Me: Of course you can't, I just want to know you source of information because we both know you're not smart enough to memorize all that information.

KD: you don't have to be rude.

Me: Evidently, people around hear don't take me seriously when I'm nice so I guess I have to be an asshole in order for people to listen to me.

I know she's not intelligent enough to memorize even the simplest detail. I really want to know where she gets her information for all of these obscure tests no one has ever heard of. I'm damned sure it's just that she has the phone number of the reference lab we use. They actually staff people during the day time. If I try to call after five all I get is an answering service. I want to show her up and prove this theory, but it's not worth me coming to work during the day. I'm pissed that she has everyone convinced she's so good at her job. She doesn't want anyone to know the source of her information so she just tells our bosses that she searched and searched and just happened to find all the right information. She couldn't let everyone else in on the big secret, she wouldn't be nearly as valuable.

I got called into the bosses office and got another slap on the wrist and told not to "rock the boat". I was reminded how long she'd been here and that I didn't need to be rude when I address people. Of course there was no mention of the fact that I'm the only competent person that works in my section. I guess it's an unsaid truth that allows me to keep my job. Man if I didn't have a family to support I'd quit today.

The mighty blog

2007-11-23T12:11:00.001-06:00

well I've been avoiding this for quite some time because he seems like such a creepy bastard but I guess if I am reading this guy every day I should share it with you. Please don't think less of me because I read The Mighty Blog.

I'm going out of town for the weekend to see the in laws. I'm not so excited but I guess I have to deal with it for the sake of my son. I guess he does need to hang out with grandma and grandpa. After that I have to hit the books hard. I have a test for a specialty certification which should give me a nice 5 dollar an hour raise, obviously, that's priority number 1.

Holiday cocktails

2007-11-22T14:20:00.000-06:00

For the most part, The holidays tend to be joyous. Well at least for normal happy people. For me, all they do is create stress. From having to hang out with the in-laws, to being reminded of how poor I am when I go shopping for gifts

Tip: If you maintain purely superficial relationships with people, you don't ever have to actually buy them gifts.

Look at me, Aren't I a regular Martha fucking Stewart. Tell me that's not the best cost saving tip you've heard all year. Think about how much you spend in pointless gifts.

There's alot to hate about the holidays, and I didn't even get into having to clean up all the messes. Why must we be slobs to have a good time? Why do we have to have 10 grand worth of wrapping paper for a pair of socks? Why do we have to find tinsel behind the couch in June? Frankly decorations piss me off. If these thing bother you half as much as they bother me, you might find yourself needing a cocktail to take the edge off. In my case I need the cocktail(s) to get hammered so I forget all the madness. So I've decided to give you guys some of my favorite cocktail recipes.

Before you leave a dumb ass comment like you've already heard of this crap, I'll completely concede that some or all of these drinks are well known. I just decided to make a compilation for your convienece.

Napoleon Dynamite. This actually has several different forms but I'm just going to tell you my favorite. If you don't like it fuck you.

1. Take a can of jellied cranberry sauce and slice it thinly to line the inside of a martini glass (mostly just for looks and effect).

2 Mix 3 oz of Bailey's
1 oz of tequila rose
1 oz creme de cacao
3 Shake on ice and pour into martini glass. It's a little girly but tasty.

Holiday scotch and sour

1 1 1/2 oz of scotch
1 oz cherry brandy
1/2 oz of sweet vermouth
1 oz sweet and sour mix

Shake on ice, strain into an old fashioned glass over ice and add lemon as a garnish

Christmas hangover

1 Crush up half a candy can and add it to the ice in your shaker

2 Mix 4 oz of light rum
5 oz of Sprite
Strain into a high ball glass and garnish with a candy cane. Kinda tastes like a mojito but candier ( is candier a word?)

Brandy Alexander

1 1 1/2 oz of brandy
1 oz creme de cacao
2 oz of egg nog

Shake with ice and strain into a martini glass

Hot Tottie - I know it's simple but who doesn't like it on a cold day

1 Mix 5 oz of hot tea
Honey to taste
Lemon to taste
3 oz of Bacardi 151 or your favorite whiskey

French 75 I hate the frenchie toads.. but I like this drink

1 Mix 1 1/2 oz Gin (I prefer Bombay Sapphire)
2 oz lemon juice
2 tsb of powdered sugar

Shake over ice. Strain into a Red wine glass. Fill the rest of the glass with your favorite champagne. Garnish with a lemon

I'm sure I'll think of more in the coming days but until then tell me what your favorite holiday drinks are. I always need new ways to get hammered to forget my family

Mr. Scrooge

2007-11-21T01:32:00.000-06:00

I know it's not even really the holidays, but I'm sick of it all already. My wife is already putting up christmas decorations, Work is following suit and it's not even Thanksgiving. I just put on my happy face for a few weeks, then I get to go back to being a grumpy old bastard the rest of the year. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a real life Mr. Scrooge. That is, without all the money and my own Bob cratchett to push around.

In other news; The army has a saying that deals with a lack of leadership in a given situation. If you act like you're in charge eventually people will just follow. In some ways this has been true at work. I'm not in charge of shit, but without a direct supervisor I've become the de facto boss. I like it. Although, I'd like the paycheck alot better. I've been assigned to train the new guys and they come and report to me every night. All I have to do now is stay in this dead end job another ten years and I've have my own drone of minions that will do everything the way I think is best.

Lately I've been checking out alot of new blogs for inspiration, I've hit a little bit of writers block. I need to steal ideas, so sue me. Any way I've come across Bottle blonde. She's pretty damned hilarious (said with an extra emphasis on the "I"). She's perverted and sarcastic. I've always found sarcastic women kinda sexy. I'd rather have a loud sarcastic bitch than a quiet June Cleaver type. Anyway, go read her blog, hopefully she'll never know I have an internet crush on her even though she didn't really give me any ideas about what to write.

I did come to the realization that I'm getting a little older now. In my day (yeah I really said that , and no I'm not eighty years old). I could pack em away. Sunday I went over to a buddies house to watch football and burn stuff, can't really say which was better. Living in the ozarks definitely means burning shit, especially when fireworks become involved can rank right on up there with the NFL. Anyway, I digress. I drank a six pack and about about five mixed drinks, several of which were egg based. My friend and all of his buddies seem to have some weird fascination with egg nog and anything else they can put an egg in. It's really quite scary. After consuming my drinks at 20 I'd be just getting started, ready to party till dawn. Now, I went home at 8 30 exhausted barely unable to keep my eyes open to feed my child. Getting old sucks, and I'm not even thirty, I just live and old lifestyle now. I've finally been drug into the "real" world.

For all the advancements medicine has made, it can't do a damned thing about getting old. Sure we can keep you alive untill you're 906 years old. but in that condition is it really any better than being eaten by worms? Didn't think so. My wife is doing her clinical rotations for nursing school and she keeps coming home to tell me stories about feeding people or changing their adult diapers, or dressing them. My guess is that she wants a pat on the back. She wants me to tell her how wonderful and caring she is, in reality, all I can think is "Are my tax dollars seriously being spent on a 96 year old bitch that can't pull up her own pants, can't wipe her own ass and can't fucking feed herself. How does it help society to keep this kind of person around?

Like I said I'm a real life Mr. Scrooge but isn't it about time for us to look at the world a little more realistically? Isn't it more important that something have utilitarian value rather than just aesthetic value, or in the case of my wife's patient, any value at all?

A movie?

2007-11-13T08:24:00.000-06:00

I know it seems like I abandoned the blog, but between studying for a specialty certification, work, my family, and the computer finally dying (btw we have a brand new mac book that I think I love) I haven't had much time to even hear myself think. that being said I'm sorry if you're one of my few regular readers.

About two weeks ago a coworker came up to me and asked me if I knew anything about putting a catheter in someone. I said I was vaguely familiar with the idea. While I have spent most of my time in the army as a lab tech, I had to go through what was 91 B medic school. I think they changed nomaclatures and requirements shortly after I finished. I've inserted exactly two catheters in my life, once in school, and once in Iraq when I was forced to fill in for a medic. So ha ha ER nurse I probably really do have a broader knowledge base than you. I know emergency medicine from my days in iraq and I have the knowledge I've acquired as a lab tech.

The reason she asked, is that she got a creepy phone call early that morning. She said the man on the other end of the phone wouldn't identify himself, and asked "I heard you were a nursing student and I was given your name as someone who might be able to help me." Confused she replied with a sheepish "with what?" His son had a drug test that morning and he needed someone to drain his bladder and fill again with someone's clean urine. Evidently he made it clear that money wasn't an issue either.

From the sounds of it she unable or unwilling to help them. I'm pretty sure this is straight out of the movie the Program so I'm not entirely sure how accurate or truthful it is. That being said I think I believe her. Even if it was just a prank call from a friend

She didn't seem to be all that concerned with the legality of it all, just that she was convinced it would give him a bladder infection, and she said she was just a student and couldn't do anything without the guidance of her instructors. I totally disagree. Student or not, for the right price I'd do it in a second. I wouldn't think twice about this guy's health. It can all be done in a sterile environment and as long as the clean urine is fresh it should be sterile as well. He's someone that is avoiding jail time. I'm pretty sure he's aware of the inherent risks. Besides, does he really have a case if he wants to sue you.

This got me thinking about a few things. For the most part I'd say I have a solid values system but then I wonder. I'd be more than willing to drain someone's bladder replace their urine. What else would I be wiling to do for the almighty dollar? Where does my want for money become less important than my values? in the grand scheme of things, I volunteered to go to Iraq for the large paycheck, not because it was my patriotic duty, or even that I had to. When I say I volunteered I mean it, I took someone else's place, otherwise I would have stayed at WBAMC in El paso. In essence isn't going to war for money borderline sleezy?

I know I don't have a whole lot of regualr readers but it would really help me out if you'd leave me a comment on where you think your own moral limit would be. Would you kill someone else for the right price? would you help a guy avoid jail time by replacing the urine in his bladder. Would you put an ampule of blood under someone's skin so that someone could get out of paying child support due to inaccurate DNA samples. I just want to know if where I stand is near the moral majority or if maybe my values are a little skewed.

The sweet sweet smell of lab work

2007-10-24T11:30:00.000-05:00

I'll be honest. I really can't think of anything to write about, but it's either blog some random crap or watch "Barney and Friends" with my little boy. You can guess which I decided to do. Don't worry if I suddenly break out into song and dance while I'm writing/you're reading this. Barney is playing in the background. When Exactly did Barney become "and friends"? Did they not think Barney was a big enough freak? Did they really have to add three more little dinosaur freaks? Oh well.

I was thinking the other day that there are a lot of odd smells in the lab, not all of them bad either. If you walk into the micro lab the first and only thing you'll smell is a pungent odor similar to that of old wet gym socks that have been in your gym bag for roughly the last quarter century. But there are actually a few pleasant smells.

Way back in the day, honestly I don't know how far back, physicians would test the urine of a suspected diabetic by dipping his finger in and touching it to his tongue. If it tasted sweet, They were diabetic. Until the 1930's diabetes was a sure death sentence until a physician basically started to grind up pancreas from normal Dogs and inject it into his patients. He didn't understand what it was doing and it only prolonged life for a short time but in essence he had found the first form of insulin therapy. A sweet, fruity odor from urine is still a pretty good clue for a lab tech as to whether someone has diabetes. I guess it's a little weird to think we just go around sniffing all the piss that comes into the lab. The causative agent is acetone in your urine, which is a symptom of diabetes and ketosis.

The next one is even stranger. Pseudomonas aeruginosa emits a "grape-like" odor when grown on sheep's blood agar. Unfortunately I don't know what chemical it produces to make the odor but I do know it's a good presumptive identification. Pseudomonas aeruginosa usually only invades the body of immuno-comprimised individuals, but is unique in it's ability to be pathogenic to both Humans and plants. It has minimal nutritional requirments and can be seen growing in distilled water. It even has resistance to many simple antibiotics.

I know this post is really random but I'm a bit of a closet geek if you haven't noticed. Plus I thought maybe people would enjoy random tidbits of information rather than my last few stories of debauchery. If you happen to come across this post and you have any questions let me know. I know more random knowledge, especially about lab work than most people and it'll give me stuff to write about, so leave questions in the comments for me.

Real friends

2007-10-22T15:34:00.001-05:00

I've always considered my self a pretty good friend. I'd give my friends my last dollar or the shirt off my back. I've also been blessed to have great friends. I guess I have to say this with a bit of a disclaimer. I'm not the same friend drunk. I'm loud, rude, and obnoxious. Worst of all I do things like having sex in my friends bed and hooking up with their sisters.

The only two guys I would feel comfortable calling my best friends would be Chad and Danny. Chad was in San Antonio and you can read about the story with his sister in law here.

Danny was in El paso and he was definitely my favorite person while I was there. He was a reservist from Arizona. Danny and I had lots of great times. One of them included his sister. His little sister, who was actually my age, came down to El Paso to visit for the weekend. I decided I'd go out with them to Gay bar named the Old Plantation or the O.P.n for short. I'm not sure why We always ended up there, but We always had a good time. We all walk in the door and I'm immediately impressed. The first words out of her mouth are "who wants shots?" Normally I expect some fruity shot like a jolly rancher when a girl utters those words, but not her. It was vodka, chilled. I don't remember much after the 8th chilled vodka in a row but we were obviously having a good time. We ended up dancing, sorta. By dancing I mean me performing a delicate balancing act that kept me from puking and falling at the same time. Long story short, we started making out, out of the sight of Danny and the rest of our friends.

I went up to Danny afterward, obviously feeling bad. I apologized profusely for making out with his sister, or at least I think I did, I slur pretty badly when I'm drunk. I guess it wasn't a real apology though, I had every intention of trying to sleep with her that night. But I digress. Danny kind of shrugged it off and said what a real friend would. "Well, She makes better choices than I do. What do I care?" These are the things a real friend would say in such an awkward situation. It's by far my favorite quote of all time.

In conclusion, If you hook up with you're best friends' sisters', and yes That is a multiple, You're a bad friend. If you shrug it off and accept that you're best friend is a dick and he just made out with your sister in a gay bar, you're a really really good friend. I guess it turns out I'm not really as good a friend as I once thought.

By the way, I did go home with them that night, She was crashing at her brothers, and I had every intention of hooking up with her on his couch. I think she had the same ideas but we both passed out after coming home a finishing a bottle of Cutty Sark. Boooo for cheap scotch.

Polygamy

2007-10-19T16:33:00.000-05:00

I found out something interesting today. It turns out that I work with a polygamist, Well sorta. The piddler (you can read about her here

I found out that The piddler allows her husband to have two girlfriends at any time. The weirdest part is that she openly embraced the idea, bragging about how progressive she was. Obviously I was a little confused. It also turns out that one of his girlfriends is someone else who works in our hospital, a Little Laotian girl. Obviously He likes asians.

I got to thinking and realized I don't even have the time to keep up with/track of even one woman. How the hell can a man successfully juggle three women. I'm not talking about three fuckbuddies. These are three distinct relationships. I know he and the piddler have children together as well. He must not sleep is the only logical conclusion I can come up with. I wonder how confusing it is for those kids.

Maybe there's something I just don't know about the Vietnamese culture. Is this common practice? Maybe they're part of the reformed LDS church. Whatever their reasoning for this little arrangement, I just can't seem to get on board with the idea.

It's been said that the only thing better than pussy is new pussy. For the most part I agree. But is it worth the added drama. I can only image. You'd have to have subservient women or your life would be a living hell. They'd all have their menstrual cycles at the same time, They'd all be vying for you're attention constantly. Not to mention you'd have extra mouths to feed. How would you decide who you slept with. Would they're be a sex schedule. Plus you'd be three times more likely to have kids whether you wanted more or not. What if they all ganged up against you one day?

I honestly don't know if I'd even have time to cheat on my wife with someone who knew I was married, didn't care, and helped me to hide it. I couldn't even have a fuck buddy on the side sans a relationship. Between work, My kid, My wife, And occasionally getting to the gym I have about 15 minutes to myself every day. I wouldn't waste that precious time on some random hookup, I'd much rather waste it watching scrubs and drinking beer.

Turns out the only polygamy I like is Polygamy Porter

The ultimate sacrifice

2007-10-17T19:12:00.000-05:00

As a Man, more specifically as a wingman, There is an ultimate sacrifice. This sacrifice is hooking up with the loud fat cow, so that your friend may bag the hot one.

I can remember one instance above all others because it was probably my most shameful moment. Alot of this story is second hand. I was a little too drunk to remember so I had had my buddy Danny email me his version of it all.

My buddies Danny, Matt, and of course myself, Were celebrating another Thursday night that by some miracle of God we were still alive. We went down to Cincinatti Street in El paso Tx. I can't remember which bar we specifically went to but it's not important to the story. We met three girls that night, their names escape me, and again, are unimportant to the story. One was incredibly hot that my friend Matt somehow convinced he was interesting. One was an average girl, who was a little dull. The other was a 300 llb cow from Juarez. Can you guess which girl is going to end up being the most important to the story?

After the bars closed, we went to their house near UTEP, on a street immediately west of and parallel to Mesa street. It was a big house that had been converted into four apartment flats. The hot girl was originally from Juarez, and she had her student visa to attend UTEP. She didn't have a visa to live there, but the apartment was in her aunts name and she stayed there most of the time.

Mat started talking to the hot one so Danny and I supported his futile effort to get laid. Of the two girls remaining, Danny started chatting up the average girl and I Went outside to smoke. Of course the cow followed me outside. When we got outside somehow we made it around to the back of the house. She asked if she could kiss me, I said I didn't think it'd be such a good idea. She said no no I mean down there, of course all this was said in broken spanglish but I still understood what she meant. Even I'm not going to turn down free head.

I guess at some point we made it back inside. Danny says that his conversation with the average girl wasn't going so well. It was repetitive and boring The following piece is taken directly out of the email Danny sent me;

I went to check on mat. That mother fucker was just sitting there holding hands and talking about traveling to Europe or something and all there clothes were still on! I then walked towards the back to take a leak. The bathroom was at the end of the hallway on the left, there was another door directly across from the bathroom but I didn't look into it at first.
When I walked out of the bathroom into the dark hall, my eyes were still adjusting from the light of the bathroom and I saw movement in the dark room across from the bathroom. Squinting and looking closer, I saw you and the nastiest fat ass fucking in the dark! It looked like you had her penned up on the dresser or something and you were doing her from behind. I didn't really want to look that close so I walked (fast) down the hallway and back towards the boring girl.
In the end, our support efforts were useless. I just got bored out of my mind by this girl, you made the ultimate sacrifice that any friend should make, and Mat's penis remained flaccid and unused. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe that you ran into the hot girl about a week or two later and took her back and fucked her with minimal effort. So I don't know what the fuck his problem was, if he would have just shut the fuck up about Polish trivia and pulled out his dick he probably would have been laid that night.

In conclusion I made the ultimate sacrifice for a friend and he did nothing but hold this girl's hand. If you're ever in a similar situation, please, please, take advantage of your friends help and bone the hot girl. Yes, I did run into the hot girl a week or so later, and yes I did fuck her, but Matt still isn't off the hook. If I'm ever in LA again it's his turn to fuck the cow.

My crazy ass mother

2007-10-15T15:09:00.000-05:00

I've really debated whether or not I wanted to post this. It may be too personal. Since none of my family reads my blog I figure it's pretty safe. I've also learned a long time ago not to be ashamed of who I am or where I came from. Don't hold me accountable for any mistakes or confusion. She rambles on alot. I think she might have some schitzo tendencies.

Dearest Rob Rob the party slob
I finally was able to to find your e-mail amongst all the spam.I'm very happy to hear from
from you. Of course Tony and Grandma sent the pictures to my sister. And I did receive the
the pictures of you and your girlfriend with the baby. I've surrounded my bedroom with them and sleep very peacefully with them all around me.As far as any diseases are concerned
Dickie just has a very weak heart. When I last spoke with him I asked if he could possibly make it to see you before you went into the army. I had no idea if I would ever see you again
if you were ever shipped overseas. It was then that he told me that he was too weak to make the trip.I was so releived to know the you were working at Walter Reed in the States and am very happy to know you've been able to to find a job in your profession.
As far as your Mother tracking him down, I too would like to know where he is. His own sister doesn't seem to be in touch with him as often.I really would like to see him once more
before he dies. I have always loved him and I always will. And as far as him not ever meeting
you...He and his adoptive Mother were right there in the waiting room the day you were born.
He helped me raise Tony until he was three and you were very much a part of both of our lives for your first year. If you'll remember, I was furious when the first place Tony wanted to bring you was to Anna's house. The fact is that you may have very well been David Eugene's
son;Davey's natural father. We never spoke of it ever before and Ben was Davey's great Uncle. He never knew about you.Your ultrasound determined that you were conceived within the 24 hrs that Jabo was there and Dickie coming home that morning. Yes..I know that our being together was wrong but, he and Anna fought so much. Initially he wanted to marry me
but, decided on Anna. When Anna learned about that one night she always swore you were
his natural child. He called me from the boat off shore and wanted very much for us to just take Davey, Tony and Me as I carried you to Italy where we would have been safe until he could divorce her but, the three of us decided that though there was only one chance that you were his there was no need to break up their marriage. Sometimes I wash I had listened to Jabo then..because if it hadn't been for Dickie being there she really would have been glad to help make me miscarry you. And beleive me...one way or another it seemed that she was determined to take you away from me. Dickie saved our lives and his Mother Camile swore you were Dickie's. And I must admit you looked very much like Christopher; Dickie's son from his first marriage. You see son, I was very glad to hear you had the HLA done on Warren. I would very much like to settle the family fued for once and for all. Dickie's sister Dianne adopted Christopher and raised him with her own. She finally gave Christopher back to his natural mother and she's finally remarried. However Christopher is currently incarcerated somewhere in Florida. I just wanted to find them so that when you match
it will settle things once and for all. I may be wrong...and it may be easier to ask Davey
but, this can't be done with her knowledge. And if I am wrong and your not Dickie's I'll never hear the end of it. If I had to spend any money on the test in case of a life threatening situation, I would prefer to spend it beleiving you were Dickie's. I've been spending alot of time thinking about about this. I don't know how willing you are to find out..but, I'm tired of
looking in Jabo's neices eyes and seeing a likeness there too. Dickie had almost a neon green hazel eyes that you could see clear across a football feild.And of course Jeff, Jabo's brother just had to bring up the fact that the Steelman's can make green eyed baby's too. But, that was Jeff and as much as I loved Jeff and his brother...Jabo's eyes were blue. So whether or not you're willing to find out I want you to know that my losing you had alot to do with a vendetto between she and I. But, Jabo left her and had Davey with him. Both Tony and Davey slept in the same crib that night. And he may have stayed if Dickey hadn't returned when he did. But, he did. And the kind of passionate love we had for one another at the time cannot be ignored.Jabo should have chosen to marry me from the beginning. He was given a second chance. Somehow though after Dickie had been away at his sister in
law's house for the past week he suddenly apeared out of nowhere. And quite frankly when I really think about it...I have to admit there's a resemblence to him and the Carraras boys.
If you don't know who they are, I'll tell you now. Claudia's first husband was a man named
Fred. Everyone knew him as Fico. But, Claudia fell in love with Manual. Mr Fico was Anna's natural father with Claudia...I know there's not enough time to go over all the details but,
apparently she legally adopted two other children from her sister Marijo because she didn't think she could have any children of her own. Well, to get to the point, Mr Fico remarried
Anna's stepmother Janet. She didn't legally adopt the children because Claudia never gave up her right to them but, never the less Fico and Janet had two boys of their own. Those boys looked very much like Dickie and Camile did say that that she adopted him from a
two people who were very much in love, very good looking woman but, apparently the other
was not available at the time. And though Mr Fico's mother swore I looked like Mr. Fico's
child she swore I wasn't. It really never bothered me before but the resemblences between Dickey and Janet's kids are uncanny. It's just a hunch...but, there is a way to be sure now.
There wasn't then. And as for Tony...I think I amy have already been pregnant before that black man got ahold of me; too. Yeah baby..I've had alot of time to think about what you did
to be sure that baby was yours. and I may not be able to afford the final test when it comes to me. But there sure was alot of baby swaping going on between Esperanza Lopez's three boys. And quite frankly I wouldn't be surprised to find that the two people you think of as your grandparents; aren't. I was emmancipated when I was 15 yrs. old. So...they're only family by proxy technically; that is if they want to be. But, you are indeed my natural child as well as Tony. And all this natural law may cause some feelings to be hurt. So, please be ever so polite to consider their feelings first before you discuss this if ever you discuss this with anyone but the two of us. I quite frankly couldn't stand for anyone to stand between
the fragile relationship we're able to develope now. And Robert..you probably will always be the baby. But, just in case I should ever have the opportunity to marry...it may be my only saving grace left besides my talent. The virus is absolutely undetectable now and I could stop the medication if I have to but, then there's always a chance for a relapse if I don't complete the program. I was able to develope an immunity to the B series now the C series
is at it's final stage. My right hip is irrepairable but, I can walk. I'm weak but, I'm intelligent.
If I can find a job worth risking another fall for..I'll do it. But, I do know that I can slip fall too easily in the snow. And as much as I want to be a part of your life heading any further north
doesn't seem like a good idea. I finally contacted the Mayor of Nashville to be sure that, though their non-emergency staff say they can't find the case file of the shooting incidence
in the '80's, I asked them be sure that there was nothing further that they need from me.
As far as any counciling I've sought here...one opinion was that if I ever had any disorder
I'm in remission now. And the other thinks I just need speach therapy for my southern drawl.
But, other wise....if I have to have a competancy hearing I can probably dispute the case well enough. The third report from Mississippi hasn't arrived and we both know that in scientific method two out of three will be the final decision. So, I'm not too worried about
about sticking around long enough for the mayor to find the case file..and wherever I can find
a job in my profession I would probably relocate to. But, I still don't have a car. And quite frankly wish you'd come pick me up and only if you care or you don't care about settleing the family fued..I'll understand either way. I'm pretty sure the coast is clear now. All I can do here is find a job making less than 1600.00 a month in the snow using the job access program in this county till Jessica graduates. Until then...all I need is the clearance letter from Vanderbilt once I've completed the interfuron. and I'll only get that 6 months after my last injection.All the radiactive residue has to be gone. But, then..I would very much like to hold that grandbaby of mine. I will not want to miss one more minute of my life without you in it after that.Till then...I'm snug as a bug in a rug. Love you, Mama Vicki

I'll try to clarify the best I can first, Tony is My biological half brother who is black but no one in the family will admit it. Dickie is the man most of my family thinks is my biological father. Christopher (the one in jail) would be my half brother also if dickie is my father. Jabo was my aunt anna's husband who my mother believes could also be my father. Yeah I know it's strange my uncle could also be my Dad. As for the rest of it, it's just rambling that I don't think I'll ever understand. No one really ever knows if she has hepatitis, and no one recieves interfuron for it anyway. You just can't trust anything that comes from her mouth.

V over at Violent Acres seems to think she had a shitty childhood, try having this crazy bitch for a mother Add a little drug and alchohol abuse and I think I win the shittiest mom award cause you know it's a competition right?

I don't want anyone coming away with the idea that I'm having some kind of pity party. I just want people to get a better idea of where I'm coming from. I want people to understand why I strugle with empathy. I have a family with a history of drug and alchohol abuse and mental illness but it's never stopped me from making the right choice for me. Yeah I've had my own history of substance abuse but about three months before my son was born I had a choice to continue being a worthless drunk or to try and be a good father who wouldn't have my kid taken away by the state. In one day I decided to stop drinking. So I don't feel sorry for people who ruin their lives with drugs and alchohol.

Is it possible that I'm a rapist?

2007-10-12T15:25:00.000-05:00

I was over at collegecallgirl.blogspot.com and she was talking about the times she had been molested or raped or taken advantage of. She did a good job of illustrating how a girl could be ashamed of what she'd done and not realize a crime had been committed. She also told how she blamed herself.

This brings me back to a New Year's eve party. I was home on leave from the Army for the first time. I was 19 and was pretty sure I was invincible. I had been dating a girl on and off for awhile. Her name was Sarah. She really meant the world to me. I can't tell you if we were, or weren't dating at the time, It was a confusing relationship to me. Later in life I've realized I was way more into her than she was me. I even told her I'd compare every girl I was with after her, to her. It's still, in some ways very true. Unfortunately now, She's a lesbian, and I'm just an afterthought to her.

Sarah and I weren't able to meet up that New Year's and I was upset. I went to a small house party a few of my friends were throwing. I ended up getting extremely drunk along with one of Sarah's friends. She and I went upstairs to an unoccupied bedroom and had sloppy drunk sex.

I got a phone call about two weeks later when I was back in San Antonio, Asking me what the hell was wrong with me, and why I'd ever sleep with her friend. Apparently her friend was still a virgin and still in high school so it was kind of a big deal. When The rumors started to fly about us, She started telling people she got drunk and passed out and when she woke up she was naked and I was on top of her. She was telling people I had basically raped her while she was passed out. No police reports were ever filed and no charges were ever brought against me. I felt shitty for treating Sarah that way but was pissed about being labeled a rapist.

I was always 100 percent sure that we had consensual sex. We were both wasted and no one at the party remembers me having to coerce anyone, especially her, (she wasn't all that attractive) into having sex with me. Not to sound cocky but I was an attractive guy, I could have done much better.

Now, after reading collegcallgirl's blog I wonder if I really did rape her. I'm still 95% sure it was consensual but that 5% worries me. Hopefully it was just a situation where she was a virgin just trying to save face. What if it wasn't? We were both incredibly drunk. Is it not rape if I can't understand that she's saying no. Is it rape if I'm too drunk to realize she's passed out while we were making out, and I continue anyway. People are prosecuted for murder if they're drunk. I just worry about whether this is something that may actually haunt this girl. What if I'm the guy she has nightmares about because I really did rape her? Is it possible that I'm really a rapist?

Entitlement

2007-10-11T16:10:00.000-05:00

I was over at ER nurse's blog and she was talking about how sick she was of people feeling as though they were entitled to anything and everything. I have to whole-heartedly agree. I'm relatively young, but with old school values. Sometimes I just don't get it.

The People who piss me off the most are the people who feel entitled, for seemingly no reason. I think little disrespectful things piss me off more than major incidents. Most of the time I can blow someone off if they're in my face yelling at me. I can either chalk it up to them having a bad day, having a death wish, or just being generally ignorant.

A good example of "the little things" happened today. I had just come to work and was cleaning up the previous shift's mess (This in and of itself pissed me off.)When a gentleman with a specimen to drop off decided to come up to my window and my counter and start moving things out of the way so he'd have a place to put his laptop so he could start filling out the order for the specimen.

Problem Number 1. Don't ever move shit that doesn't belong to you. Especially when someone is working in that exact area already

Problem Number 2. If you don't work somewhere, respect the area you walk into, We're not Fucking burger king, it isn't always you're way, right away. Guess what The Customer isn't always right at a hospital.

Problem Number 3. You need to have everything you just did on my counter completed before you come to the lab. It's not okay to label a specimen when it's already to the lab. Per protocol you need to label that shit bedside, or at least not when you're standing if front of me.

The one decent thing about working in a hospital, and not having to do patient care, is what I mentioned earlier, we're not burger king. We have written established protocol. There should be zero gray area. If I say you're specimen is unacceptable, it's unacceptable. There is no, "I want to speak with you're manager" bullshit. Written procedures back me up, as opposed to a manager's discretion. If I put my name on a result, I have the right to accept or refuse anything based on my own discretion and established protocol.

As much as I'd like to empathize with ER nurse, I have a hard time. Many times, the people who make my life difficult are the nurses, mostly because I rarely, if ever have to actually deal with a patient unless it's over the phone, in which case I'll just hang up. Sometimes nurses feel entitled to results, right now. It just can't happen, we have an established pecking order, just because you or the doctor you're calling for want the results before you go to lunch, doesn't mean it's going to happen. They're also the one's who want to call and bitch me out when I say I can't or won't take a specimen because it's hemolyzed or incorrectly labeled. The only thing calling down and bitching accomplishes is it pisses me off and takes time away from me completing your test. You're really only hurting your patient.

What not to say to women part deux

2007-10-08T17:14:00.000-05:00

There are times that I've been incredibly lucky with women and incredibly un-lucky with women. The following story is a pretty good illustration of both times. It's amazing how, what you thought was a sure thing could slip through your fingers so quickly.

I was stationed at Ft. Bliss in El Paso and was in the middle of a joint project with a local blood bank. They were helping us with a study we were doing concerning filtering blood and platelet concentrates. I was the point of contact for the Army for this project so I was there practically every day. On my first trip over there I met their point of contact. Her name was Vanessa and she was everything I thought a woman should be. Super model good looks, plenty of brains and she liked my geeky profession. Before we go on, I can't just let you think this was just some hot girl, She was by far the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on.

A week passed by and I was officially in lust. I couldn't stop telling all the guys I worked with just how damned hot she was. The trips to the blood bank started with me but quickly became two, three, four, until we were an entire convoy of men dropping of one unit of blood, just to see Vanessa. Needless to say, she made our work lives a little less productive.

I was busy with something else one day and asked another soldier if he'd run the blood over that day. He happily obliged. While he was there, he did something I thought I'd never forgive him for.

He came back to the donor center beaming with pride. He obviously thought he'd just done me a huge favor. He decided to pretend we were all back in high school. He gave my number to one of Vanessa's co-workers. I really don't know why he decided to do this. Basically my value dropped ten-fold. Suddenly, I was a loser, so afraid to talk to women, I needed a friend to pass my number through one of her friends. It's the old, I have a friend who has a friend who really likes you business. I might as well have kicked her in the shins on the playground.

After some thought, I decided I could do two things, pretend it never happened and hope she actually calls, or I can man up and apologize for my loser friends.

The next day I went over and apologized. She agreed that the stunt was a little lame, and thought I was pretty immature. We had a little laugh about it and I started to walk away. I got about halfway down the hall and she called out to me to wait up. She said "Are you kidding me?" confused I asked her what she meant, she replied "After all this you're really not going to ask for my number?" Me; Ummmmm....
She saved me and said "Well, do you want it?" holding out a piece of paper. Of course I accepted the piece of paper. I smiled trying to contain my excitement. I said I'll see you tomorrow and walked out. I'm proud I was able to walk away without looking like a retard because I was so giddy.

At this point I'm thinking, I'm so in, she obviously wants me. This is my example of how incredibly lucky I am with women. I am/was a reasonably attractive guy but she was way out of my league and whe was practically begging me to take her number.

That night I broke the unwritten rule that you should never call the same day. I was leaving for Arizona in the morning for about a week and I wanted to make sure I got to go out with her before that. I give her a call and she says she's free, She even sounds excited about going out with me. I tell her to meet me at the Mesa street bar and grill I get there before she does. I'm only waiting a few minutes, My jaw drops as I see her step out of her Dodge Ram with a 6 inch lift. I don't know why chicks in big trucks are hot, but they are. She's wearing this little black dress that fits her form perfectly, leaving just enough to the imagination. She did a quick twirl and asked "You like?" I didn't say anything but there were a few dirty thoughts going through my head.

We go inside and are seated quickly. While we're waiting for our food I notice every guy in the place glancing over at her. It's so nice to know you're with the hottest girl in the room. Things were going perfectly, she was giving off a great vibe, she was twirling her hair and nervously playing with her straw. I was sure I was in. I started making a little small talk. This is the conversation I regret to this day.

Me: "I know this sounds a little weird but it's nice to finally go out with a hot white girl in El Paso. The Hispanic girls just don't seem to like me."

Her: "You realize that my last name is Gonzalez, right?"

At this point my heart sunk. All of her expressions changed. She gave me eyes that let me know I wasn't going getting any from her... ever. I kinda quit listening after this point but she went on to chastise me for something. and explain that Mexicans in the southern part of Mexico have blonde hair and blue eyes, like her, and that they take more after their spanish decent rather than the native Mexican. My shot to hook up with this amazing girl went right out the window because of one stupid statement. I think this pretty well illustrates how un-lucky I can be with women as well. Just as a point of reference don't ever bring up race, in any way on a date.

Work and pickup basketball

2007-10-02T11:00:00.001-05:00

In a game of pickup basketball players there are some players you just want to avoid checking at all costs. We have the sweat hog, the big fat sweaty guy who always seems to be "skins", The dirty old man, The guy with all the tricks like kneeing you in the thigh as you blow past, The marathon runner, you'll be running up and down the court all day trying to keep up with this rabbit, and the worst of all, The guy who tries too hard. You know, the guy who's hustling way too much, recklessly throwing his body around for some mythical pickup basketball championship of the world. Lately my hospital has become this guy.

At first this guy seems like a guy you want on your team, you admire his hustle and enthusiasm until you realize how useless this hustle and enthusiasm is with a lack of talent. My hospital is like this guy. They seemingly trying so hard to make a positive work environment. In reality, all they're doing is creating new, even dumber surveys and trying to find solutions to unimportant problems.

I wrote about the last survey I did, being sure to include how stupid the questions and how poorly we scored in certain areas. I'd like to expand on that a little. We just got back letters about how they'd like to improve these "problems".

1. I have a best friend at work

Solution: From now on, we'll all make an effort to to celebrate each other's birthday, and to celebrate it outside of work. As many co-workers as possible will make an attempt to attend these celebrations.

This is practically a direct quote. I just can't understand, with all the problems hospitals face that this is genuinely a concern that needs any time spent on it at all.

2. In the last seven days I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

Solution: Administrators will make more of an effort to verbalize a "good job". Lunch passes will be handed out for doing a good job, error free weeks.

Are you shitting me? Am i in 3rd grade again? Am i the only person who recognizes this as a waste of time for administrators to take time out of their busy days to tell me "good job"? The only praise I need is my pay check every two weeks. Secondly, can they really expect to bribe me with food. Is this like a teacher giving a student a piece of candy for getting an answer right in math class.

I think all this crap was was initially a good thing, just like the hustle of a no talent jack-hole who plays pick-up basketball. It's all turned out to be annoying so much so that you're ready to crack the guy's jaw because that last flailing elbow just hit you right in the solar plexis.

Continuity of back woods thoughts.

2007-09-28T08:33:00.000-05:00

Anyone who knows me or even reads my blog knows that I'm not exactly a sensitive guy. It's just not me. I have no problem with attacking someone's deficiencies but I think it's wrong to group an entire race, creed, or anything else. Anytime I give someone shit or attack them it's purely for behavioral or work ethic deficiencies.

PTBG girl decided to use the term "Indian giver" several times last night and when I tried to correct her, she just didn't get why it could possibly be bad. Here's why; you're associating negative connotations with an entire group of people, Native americans, Indians, or whatever we're calling them these days for the sake of political correctness.

I tried to compare "indian giver" with "nigger rigged" to make my point. She just didn't seem to get it. It doesn't matter what race you're associating with negative ideas, it's still wrong. "It's not even close to the same thing" says PTBG. It's exactly the same thing. Just like V over at violent acres points out, while I may not be offended by any of the terms myself I'm still able to recognize that's they're unprofessional at work. The things you do, and the shit you teach your children at home are you're own business. Just don't bring that crap to work.

I think the part that really pisses me off, is that any time I visit friends in large cities there's a thought that I'm "back woods" with stupid ass ideas about race and they way the world works. Because of idiots like PTBG anyone born in a small town in missouri is going to be considered a back woods hill-billy. I'm well educated and professional. I'm tired of having to deal with small town back woods idiots that think it's okay to say things like "indian giver" or "nigger rigged" or "porch monkey".

It's time to move back to the big city. Except this time I have a little ball and chain keeping me from moving how and when I want. Damned kids, That little shit better realize how lucky he is that I love him so much. .

Gallup pole

2007-09-27T18:19:00.000-05:00

For those of you in the medical field you know what these gallup poles are. For the rest of you, it's basically just a survey about how you feel about your work environment. It's pretty damned cheesy and a waste of time.

I thought I'd give you a couple of examples of the questions that were asked most of which were areas we performed poorly in.

1. I have a best friend at work

This has to be a joke. What's weird is that my particular area scored well below the hospital's average for this question. I guess we really do hate each other. The last time I checked you're at work to work not to make "best friends". While I understand the value of being cordial it's stupid to think you'd have a "best friend at work

Our average 3.29 out of 5
Hospital average 3.92 out of five

2. In the last seven days I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

Again we're at work to work not to coddle each other. Jesus fucking Christ, if you need a pat on the back every time you take a shit find a new line of work, you work at a hospital where one mistake can and will get you fired. Just be glad you still have a job.

Our average 2.79
Hospital average 3.75

3. My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person.

The last time I checked it wasn't my supervisor's job to make sure I'm cared about. My supervisors do a good job of making sure I have the shit I need to do my job and they always have my schedule out weeks in advance what more can you ask for. I don't care about them as a person. Why should they care about me.

4. At work my opinions seem to count.

Why the fuck does everyone need so much coddling? The last time I checked there were people who were paid to think, and people who were paid to "DO". Leave it at that. Quit thinking you're more important than you are. You're not gonna cure AIDS so shut the fuck up.

Our average 3.07
Hospital Average 3.68

I'm sick and fucking tired of being told I have to be sensitive and care about people's feelings at work. If you do good work I won't chastise you. If you're lazy stupid or slow. I'm going to give you so much shit you'll want to kill yourself.

One last side rant:
Don't ever tell me how to raise my kid. I had my 7 month old come visit me for lunch. I came back with a banana stain on my scrubs because I was holding him and feeding him. Piddler decides to give me a lecture about how gross it was and that she thought my little boy would catch something. Guess what bitch, it helps him to build immunities. The last time I checked I didn't have a little pimply faced allergic to everything in the world little ass wipe of a kid. Don't give me advice about how I take care of my child when you haven't won any mother of the year awards. Need I remind you, you're the same stupid bitch who came to work for a party on your day off with your kids and basically let them run free in the lab and asked someone to watch them while you ran to get some ice? Now that's bad parenting, not feeding my kid with my scrubs on.

new findings

2007-09-26T12:21:00.000-05:00

In my constant quest for entertainment I've found a new blog that I'm in love with. I can't describe why but it's the first time in a long time I've gone through all the archives of a blog and read them all in one night the new blog is karlababble.com there's a link on my blog roll... enjoy

I'm no better

2007-09-24T17:24:00.000-05:00

I finally have to admit that I'm no better than my co-workers, the people I complain about day in and day out. I wish you understood how hard that was to write. I've seriously contemplated not writing this, as there are a few people that I work with that read my blog.

I was in a hurry about a week ago processing specimins, not being as careful as I know I need to be. One of my co-workers put about ten specimin in my area so that I could process them to be sent off. Nine of them were for a little boy with the last name of Jones. The other was for a little boy named James. Alot of tests have the same specimin requriments so I was hastily pouring off serum and plasma into the appropriate tubes to be sent off when I realized that I had the requisitions and blood for two different patients

I'd like to say for sure that I know I sent the right blood with the right patient. But I don't know for sure. The appropriate course of action in the case would have been to fess up and deal with the Dr. or nurse after telling him I may have screwed up. Instead I said nothing. I don't know why. This is probably the only time in my life I've not done the ethical thing.

My best hope now is that both of these specimin either come up positive or negative, preferrably negative. If one is pos and the other is neg I'll probably have to come clean and lose my job. I don't think I could live with myself if a little boy was misdiagnosed because of something I did. What if the little boy with celiac disease goes untreated becuase I screwed up. What if the other has to take unneccesary medication because of me. Please oh please let both results be negative

Why it's hard to get anything done

2007-09-20T15:06:00.000-05:00

I get this memo from the lab director yesterday and I'm still not sure what to think of it. The gist of it is that in sept of 08 they want to standardize the color of scrubs in each department. In and of itself it doesn't seem too ridiculous but the way it's being handled and the reasons for change are a little silly

Let me give you a little background information the reason we need to standardize our scrubs is that, suppossedly, patients have been complaining that they can't distinguish the professional staff from the houskeepers or maintinence. I don't buy that for a second.

Point A Houskeepers wear maroon scrubs while the professional staff can wear any colored scrub they'd like

Point B the maintaince staff wears civilian clothing

Point c we're required to wear our name badges at all times if you can't read my namebadge natural selection should be allowed to take over and you don't deserve care (just a joke, sorta)

While changing the color of your scrubs isn't really a big deal it just doesn't seem fair that I should have to buy all new uniforms for work When the hospital is the one mandating that I need new ones. The army mandateded that I needed new uniforms so they gave me a clothing allowance the same should be true for any job. If we have enough money to start a 500 million dollar construction project we have enough money to provide scrubs.

The money isn't my only issue, we've actually been told not to go purchase new scrubs. The reason? Administration will mandate the color for the nursing staff first then department heads can select any other colors. If you remember they don't plan to initiate this for another entire year. It's going to take them a year to decide wheter the nurses should wear light blue or Navy blue. I'm not joking, I'm not exaggerating, I'm not leaving out precious details. I'm 100% serious that it is going to take a year to decide What color the nurses should wear. I don't remember signing up to work for the federal goverment again. It looks like they're taking their business model. I guess it's always nice to know you work for a well oiled machine

Why I hate working with women

2007-09-19T10:16:00.000-05:00

I want, more than anything, to be able to tell you I'm not sexist. In reality it's just not true. I have a problem with female authority. I also have a problem working effectively with women. This isn't a decision I've made, it's just kind of happened. Every conflict I've ever had at work have been with women. From the Army until the present. Every female I worked with or for in the Army seemed to be extra bitchy as if they had something to prove. Every female I've worked with in the civilian seems to be extra sensitive. I haven't figured out which I think is more annoying. I'm not trying to come off as though I hate women because it's not true. I like to date strong intellegent women. I just can't seem to work with them.

I bring this is up because last night was a perfect demonstration in why I can't work with women. We had a female specimin courier come into the lab and the first thing she said was I need to speak to the boss. That in and of it's self pissed me off. I thought to myself "Who the fuck are you". Her problem ended up being pretty trivial but since she wanted to talk to the boss, by God I was going to let her. I guess I should remind you that it's been about three months now and I still don't have a direct supervisor so all the problems we have on our shift go to another department's shift supervisor. Brilliant I know. This shift supervisor also happens to be a woman but had no idea how to solve this problem. Naturally both of them are both freaked out. you wanna know what about? A specimin got sent to us from another hospital on the wrong requisition. Here's a thought. I bet that hospital doesn't have our specific requisition because it's a different hospital.

I guess the part that really pissed me off is that the shift supervisor refused to accept the fact that she didn't know what she was doing, that three other women from my department have zero problem solving skills and that this courier made a huge problem out of something that wasn't a big deal. If she had just done her job and left the specimin the way it was, everything would have been fine. One of the women in my department would have come to me and asked if I knew what to do with it and I would have told them how to solve the problem in about three seconds. Instead there were five women standing around doing absoloutley nothing. Freaking out about something simple. making about 30 phone calls. I still don't know what they were trying to figure out. They were seriously standing around for 20 minutes.

My sexist half comes out in situations like this. Men are not indecisive. I understand that sometimes that can be a fault but in most situations I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's a asset. I have a pretty old school work ethic. I think you're stealing from a company if you're standing around doing nothing. I think you need to do, not plan unless your job is to be a planner, I gaurentee no one I work with would ever be hired to be a planner. I hate being at work thinking I'm constantly cleaning up other people's messes. I admit if I knew what to do with this problem I should have stepped in said something. I just had to let it play out. Otherwise what would I have to write about? Have I mentioned how much I hate my job?

What not to say to women

2007-09-18T20:37:00.000-05:00

I've had my ups and downs with women. While I was in the army I was hot. I'm not being conceited but I was ripped and I basically could have any girl I wanted. Well at least that's what I thought.

I think the fondest memories I have in my entire life are probably the time I spent in D.C. doing my clinicals at Walter Reed. Everything seemed to go exactly as planned. I was happy and healthy and always entertained. I met a girl her name was heather. We had the perfect relationship. We basically spent the entire weekend together, never saw one another during the week and always had a good time. What made it even more perfect was that neither of us wanted to label the relationship. We were in sort of a limbo. I could date other people freely, as could she, but we were always a priority for one another. Everything was perfect. Until one day.

*I'd like to donate the following conversation to VH1's "The pickup artist" as something you shouldn't say.

Her: Hey I wanna talk, got a minute?

ME: Sure What's up?

Her: I've been thinking alot lately and I feel the need to tell you something.
I think I love you
Me: That's nice. I really like you. I bet we feel the same way about one another but I think I just hold the word love in higher esteem than you. I really care alot about you but I can't say I love you.

Her: silence... Ummm I meant I loved you as a friend.

The damage that I did here was two fold. First I told her I didn't care about her as much as she seemed to care about me. Which after alot of thought ended up being a bold faced lie on my part. I probably did love her. I just loved my freedom alot more. I got greedy thinking I could have any girl I wanted. The second Jab came by me basically telling her she didn't know her own emotions how can I quantify her feelings? Basically what I said was stupid. I wish I could take it back but I can't. I hurt someone I really did care about just so I could look cool and keep dating other people when in reality I didn't want to date anyone else. Nothing would have changed we already had a great physical and emotional connection. Oh well what can ya do.

We made a vain attempt at a friendship but it didn't last long. I made one last failed attempt to make it right but in doing so I just made it more clear what an ass I was. She was scheduled to go out with another guy that weekend but cancelled for me. He was a good guy who really deserved a good girl like her and vice versa not an asshole like me. I scheduled a trip to mount vernon in D.C. and then dinner and theatre tickets. The dinner ended up being a little more romantic than I had anticipated. All I could do is keep reminding her that we're just here as friends, and say I'm sorry everything about everything I didn't mean to make it look like I was trying to win your affection back. When in reality that all either of us wanted.

I want to be your hero

2007-09-18T09:43:00.000-05:00

I pretty much have the worst hero complex in history. If you don't know what that is, it's basically wishing harm on others so that you have an opportunity to be a "hero". yeah it's fucked up, I know. I don't know how to explain it and I really don't know where it stems from

I was in Iraq and I thought surely I'd have an opportunity to fulfill these messed up fantasies, but no. I was stationed at a hospital as a lab tech. Absolutely no opportunity to be a hero. I did my part though, I went on medevacs as the medic just to have an opportunity to be a hero. Mind you I was grossly under-qualified to be doing this. It didn't matter to me though, I didn't care if someone would be hurt because I wasn't up to par on my life saving skills. After-all all the command really cared about was having a warm body there to say they sent someone in the unfortunate case one of my fellow soldiers would die. I did my fair share of breaking ribs during CPR, but I can't say I was responsible for actually saving anyone's life.

I don't want people to think I'm too twisted, I don't ever wish harm upon the people I love for these opportunites, but I do sometimes wish I could pass a horrific car accident and save everyone involved. I want to drag people out of a burning car or building. I want to be in the newspaper with a big headline. I want everyone to say how brave and wonderful I am. I want everyone to shower praise on me. No way I'm being an anonymous hero. What's the point in having a hero complex if people don't know how great you were.

before people get all judgmental about it, don't pretend you haven't had some delusions of grandeur. Don't pretend you haven't said I want to be famous and loved by everyone. you know you have. The only difference is you want to be famous for acting or singing or for most people with blogs, writing and I want to be famous for being a hero. An all american man who braved the dangers of every situation to ensure other people were safe. When I say it like that it doesn't sound so crazy. Maybe that's how I should it to my non-existant therapist.

I think this complex may be why I always stop to help stranded old ladies. It's the same reason I'm always looking to help people in any way I can. I guess that means it's not all bad, right? If I complex leads you to do something good for other people is it really a complex. I'm not mentally ill right?

Rape

2007-09-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

Are hot girls the only one's to get raped? I know this seems like an odd question but it's something that ran through my mind last night. I realize that the "experts" say rape is an exercise in power and rarely has anything to do with sex, but honestly, If I were to rape a girl I think I'd want her to be hot. Why ruine my exercise in power by raping an ugly girl.

This thought came to me after a conversation I had at work.

Piddler: "T and I Are going to the mental ward to pick up a urine specimin."

Me: "Since when does it take two people to walk over there? do you need to hold each other's hand?"

Piddler: "We can't go out by ourselves since someone got jumped in the parking lot last year, there was a work memo"

Me: "That's what the tunnel is for" side note; the building they were going to was less than 100 yards away from the main hospital

Piddler: "That takes too long"

At this point in the conversation I gave up on trying to rationalize. But if I were to have made points this is what they'd be

1. The building is 100 yards away in a lit parking lot
2. If you feel uncomfortable going out by yourself after dark we have an locked underground tunnel system
3. Neither of you are worth raping.

I know that last one seems a bit harsh, maybe I can clarify a bit. I guess what I mean is if I were to abduct and rape someone is sure as hell better be worth my time. Neither of these women are what you'd call ugly but they're sure as hell not what you'd call hot either. Definitely not worth going to jail for an extended period of time.

I guess I've kinda gotten away from the original question though. Are hot girls the only one's that get raped? Are all rapists mental cases that attack with seemingly no rhyme or reason? or do they think it out enough to say; Hey if I'm going to jail she'd better be hot?

I think I'm just sick and tired of working with women it's so damned frustrating. Also I miss the army. There is none of this male-female bullshit. A soldier is a soldier is a soldier they all get the same shit details and they all do tasks just becasue they've been told to do so.

A remix

2007-09-12T16:27:00.000-05:00

this is one of my earliest posts that I don't think enough people got to read so I'm reposting it. It's my view on racism

This has pissed me off for a long while. The world is entirely too sensitive. While I understand that there are real issues with racism in the world and that some people honestly have been oppressed, ya know what?... The worst of it was 200 years ago. GET OVER IT! I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I'm tired of not being able to be critical of anyone of a different skin color. Just because I'm a white male I'm evidently incapable of of disliking someone because of anything other than race, sex or anything else that may make you a minority. here's a thought maybe I don't like you because your annoying or your personality disgusts me. I'm tired of having to be overly sensitive because of crap I had nothing to do with. I definitely believe that you're a product of your environment and that poverty has more to do with "disadvantages" that most minorities claim to have. Well guess what, I didn't have it any better. everything I have (which isn't much) I worked for. I served my country and didn't get the benefit of scholarships because of the color of my skin or my gender or anything else that I couldn't control. This little rant has been because of something that happened at work. There is an asian chick at work who is pretty much the most annoying person I've ever met.I won't go into any details but basically we had an issue with miscommunication. This reminds me of one more tangent I have to go off on. If you can't communicate effectively in the language of the area you live in... don't take a job where it's of the utmost importance that people understand exactly what you're saying. Alright back to the story. So this lady and I have this conversation

her: so you mean "this"

me: no I mean exactly what I said

her: so you mean "this"

me: NO! I mean exactly what I said

this went on for about five minutes when i was super busy. basically I ended it by saying What the fuck is your problem. She's one of those people who want to be right about something dumb just for the sake of being right. The whole situation is obviously my fault. here's a thought if someone knows English better than you, He probably knows exactly what the fuck he just said.. Ala me in this situation... The next day I was in my bosses' office being written up for "not respecting the cultural differences of other people" It kinda pisses me off I don't hate her because she's a woman or asian, I hate her because she annoys the shit out of me, constantly mixes viatnamese with her english, and generally doesn't communicate effectively... Please world... understand I don't hate you because of differences you can't control I hate you because you annoy the piss out of me.. and you CAN control that!

A few observations

2007-09-10T20:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, for the few who care. Things have been kinda rough at home for me. The girlfriend and I haven't been seeing eye to eye on many things and everything seems like it's ready to be a fight at any moment. Have you ever felt like you give everything of yourself and there's nothing really left to give? I feel like that all the time. At least I have my little boy to cheer me up.

Anyway, enough of that pouty boo-hoo crap. As I'm sure you've all heard, a McDonald's employee in GA has been arrested, basically for making a cop's burger too salty. If you haven't heard this you need to spread this story. Copy and paste this link since I'm still too dumb to figure out how to embed links.

http://digg.com/offbeat_news/McDonald_s_Employee_Arrested_for_Making_Cop_s_Burger_too_Salty

Have you read it. Okay, Good. Can you say WTF? Can we all collectively say abuse of power? This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. It's fucking SALT people. There are probably 10 cases in the last century of hypernatremia (too much salt in your system) causing any serious ill effects in people. There is no way in hell That if you ate an entire salt block anything would even happen to you. It's just some cop thinking they're Too important, that how dare you try to poison him with salt. I really can't even collect a decent thought for this. I just don't get how his supervisors and a judge could ever think that it would be okay to jail a 20 year old woman (who's life is obviously not on track if she's working at McDonald's) for making a hamburger that was too salty.

Believe it or not I buy her story that she just spilled salt or whatever seasonings they use on the meat and served it anyway. Alot of us at some point have worked in a restaurant whether it be five star or McDonald's, managers will do anything and everything to lower food costs and salvage any scrap of food they can. It's not her fault it's McDonald's fault for putting her in that situation. Oh and the Petty narcissistic police officer.

Topic number two; Have I ever mentioned how much I hate my job, NO? you must not have read much of my blog. I've come to terms with the fact that I work with lazy old women that I have nothing in common with, and who are waaaayyyy too secure in their jobs. What I can't handle is being given two days off for the birth of my child and being denied a third day, When ptbg is allowed to take a week for a cruise while we are three people short and another co worker is about to leave to have surgery which will put her out of commission for about six weeks. Maybe I'm just not as good or valued as I thought I was. I'm disgusted by the fact that my bosses have no spine when they talk to minorities or women, I don't know what they're afraid of. The last time I checked you're not entitled to vacations, unless you'd like them to be permanent. Do I just have a view of the world that is too idealistic? Do I honestly believe life is fair? Who knows, but please please please let Karma exist. One more thing God, Could you please find two competent people to replace me so I can move to another department where I get to work by myself. (That would be the microbiology department in my lab). I was granted a transfer but they've been dragging their feet. They haven't even hired anyone and I don't get to leave until two people have been hired they're fully trained. Turns out they've finally realized I do the work of two people around here, well not really, they'd just rather have two part timers than one full timer.

One more thing. I had a buddy tell me that he got pulled over for speeding on a bicycle the other day. How the hell does this happen. Is he bullshitting me or can this really happen. he said he got caught for doing 25 in a 15 can a bike even go that fast? One more example of how our men in blue are keeping us safe. Way to use your better judgement guys.

My Jerry Springer day

2007-08-22T07:04:00.000-05:00

We've all had one of those days, you know, You're life feels like a cartoon, well unfortunately my life feels this way all the time. We've also all had a "Jerry Springer" day. Don't pretend don't know what I'm talking about. You've had a day where there is some weird, loud, and totally inappropriate for public event in your life.

My Springer day came while I was in San Antonio in AIT for the Army. I was a good looking kid, I mean ripped like a wrestler and big like a football player with All american good looks. You've seen a soldier they all pretty much look alike. Along with these good looks I was cocky I thought I could have any girl I wanted and at any time. For the most part, this was true.

Army girls were a little too easy so i liked to mostly only dabble in the locals. There was this girl, her name was K and she was a tall blonde haired blue eyed bombshell. She played me like a fiddle. Looking back on it it was all kind of silly but I was so pissed off at the time. We hooked up a few times but she really wanted nothing to do with me. She invited me and another guy to a club (yeah I was a douche that went to clubs). I didn't know she had invited the other guy and she kinda publicly blew me off for this guy. That's not really the story though, I'm spending too much time on K.

The real story starts with her friend J she was hot, half irish half native american and curvier than sports car test track. I got blown off by K so The only logical thing my stupid little 19 year old mind could think to do was fuck her friend and roommate. Technically I went home with K that night. I fucked her roommate six ways from tuesday. I made sure K could hear it all.

I found out later that J was a good catholic girl. She had gone to private all girl schools all of her life, and of course I had taken her virginity. It was kind of sad that she had to lose her virginity to an asshole that was just using her to piss off another girl. J was kinda cool but a little too naive for me. I was sure this was going to be a one and done thing. She had different ideas. I guess she thought we were now dating, unbenounced to me. We hung out a couple of times in the coming weeks but I didn't really care about her at all. She was just a little creepy.

I blew her off the following weekend. I told her I was going to just stay in and try to get some studying done. In my defense I did plan on studying. It just didn't happen. I ended up going to my buddy Chad's house to study that weekend. Nothing happened that weekend that resembles studying. Within about Ten minutes we had broken open a bottle of VOX and had a few martinis. his wife's little sister was in town and we had a good time that weekend. That's a story I'll tell you tomorrow.

Sunday we decided to stumble out of the house in our drunken haze and go out to the river walk for lunch. We ended up at some steak joint. On our way back through the mall I see J coming down the escalator. She sprinted down the escalator in a time that very well may have been a world record. My buddy chad's wife was standing next to me. She proceeds to lay into me and Chad's wife Kristina thinking we were together. Kristina was a super nice girl but she wasn't going to put up with some ignorant bullshit. I swear to you, this girl was screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs in the middle of the mall She just kept yelling "you fucking liar." Eventually I get her calmed down and just keep assuring her we'll talk about it later and we don't need to make a scene. She decided to shoot an evil look at kristina once again. This was her last straw. All I heard was "fuck you bitch." and then a cartoon ball of hair and claws. There were at least 5 large adult male soldiers there and it took us at least 10 minutes to break up this fight. Kristina beat the shit out of this girl. She made her Ugly.

We got out of that mall as fast as humanly possible. On the way home I was trying to talk to kristiana's little sister kat, who I had hooked up with the night before. She refused to say a word to me. I assumed she was pissed about the way I had treated that girl, Wrong. She was pissed I didn't just tell J off and tell her I was There with her. What the fuck. you just can't win with women. You're an asshole, and chicks think they're on springer in the middle of a mall. You're nice, and they just blow you off. I don't get it. I was actually kinda excited about Kat. I knew she lived in D.C. and that I was moving there in a month or so. She was really cool. Her being a bitch about it all kinda turned me on. She was pissed I didn't just tell another girl to fuck off for her. I liked this. It didn't work out, obviously, at least I got to hook up with her at a wedding a year or so later.

I guess I should have been more careful about who I put my penis inside

What the hell is the pope thinking

2007-08-19T20:28:00.000-05:00

Normally I keep my nose out of religious events and the going ons of whatever people decide to believe. This being said I want everyone to know how irresponsible I think the pope is.

I grew up a hard-core practicing catholic, to the point where there is a pretty high profile pro-life award named after my grandfather. I don't go to church too often any longer and I generally don't care what goes on. Recently Rome released a document signed by the pope that in essence declares that the catholic church is the only one true church and that other churches don't have the "keys to salvation" or in essence they're now taking the Pentecostal stance that everyone else is going to hell.

Generally I don't have a problem with them saying that the catholic church is the one true church. I've reasoned that if there is such a thing as one true church of God I honestly believe it's either the Jews or the catholics. The jews, because no matter what christian religion you belong to it's almost universally accepted that the jews are "God's chosen people". The catholics, because They're the only Christian religion who has a direct lineage to Jesus Christ, and the only church That would have the power of the priesthood, or The responsiblilty to act on christ's behalf on earth. I believe he bestowed the priest hood on Peter, who was essentially the first catholic pope.

What I do have a problem with is the undoing of all the work of pope john paul 2. While he was pope There was so much progress made in helping to unite christian religions of the world. I think the point of what the one true church is, becomes a moot point when such an irresponsible comment is made by a man who is supposed to be infallible in matters of morality. I have a hard time believing that God, Assuming there is a God, would be vindictive and would hold people accountable for the fallibility of man. Especially the ability of men to sway the thoughts of others. If you've been a person, An honest, hard working person who have lived their lives with a proper code of ethics, you're not going to hell, whether you have "the keys to salvation" or not.

While I understand in the grand scheme of the world I'm not all that important and I really have no right to question the pope. What I can say, though, is that I think the pope needs to understand his awesome responsibility in leading the worlds largest religion. Making such an inflammatory comment after so much work has been done to unite christian religions is purely and simply irresponsible.

I'm afraid that my church is starting to leave me behind. I'm thinking about becoming a Jew for Jesus. No seriously. look it up.

Inspection time

2007-08-17T16:27:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the lack of posts lately, not that it really matters all that much, according to blog patrol I really only have three or so regular readers. That doesn't matter to me though. I just write as a release.

Our lab is gettting ready for our CAP inspection. This inspection occurs every four years and they give you plenty of notice. That would lead me, and any normal person to believe we'd have plenty of time to prepare, right?

Evidently, my superiors seem to think it's okay to wait till the last moment to get ready for everything. For example, The floors have somehow become the most important thing in the world. The need to be scrubbed and waxed. I can't explain why it seems to be such an important thing. I can't see a lab being shut down because the floors aren't shiney.

In most places scrubbing and waxing a floor isn't too big of a chore. it can be done in a night. you just clear everything out in the middle of the night and go to work. In a lab, we don't shut down, EVER especially with the doctors who have become increasingly dependent upon lab test as primary means of diagnosis. As important as I Think lab work is I still think that it should be only a means of verifying a diagnosis. As a side note if you go to the doctor and they run a battery of seemingly random tests, They probably have poor diagnosis skills and generally have no idea what's wrong with you. Now, back on topic. The lab managers have decided that they'll get the floor done during second shift, They'll block off an area and try to scrub and wax the floor one small chunk at a time. The only problem is that there are parts of the lab that are vital and have to be accessed all the time. The solution, walk on wet soapy floors while they're scrubbing the floors and then relocate you're entire work station while they wax. Normally I don't bitch if I don't have a better solution, but this time I will. What a waste of time energy and money.

All of this could have been avoided if we were run a little more like the much maligned military. I know this will be a pretty revolutionary concept but here goes. Everyone should clean up their own area and their own mess. Phew, there I said it. I think the earth may shake. Lord knows you don't ask someone with an education to clean. In the army it doesn't matter how well educated you were. You cleaned your own damned area. I hate having to coddle people and worry about whether I've offended them or not. I may actually hate when people worry about offending me more though.

I think I've come to a realization about myself this last week while the computers at work have been down intermitanly. I hate lazy people a whole lot more than incompetent people. At least I can tell an incompetant person to sit in the corner and fiddle their thumbs and be okay with it. A lazy person sucks because you can't really tell them to sit in a corner, They'll get all uppity saying... I know how do all this, don't tell me what to do.

One more side note. Hopefully work will become a little more bearable for me. They're kind of screwing me over but it's better than What I'm doing now. There is a part time position in micro that I've accepted with a higher rate of pay. In order to keep my full time status and benefits I still have to work my current job for the other half of the week. In order to keep my full time hours, though They're making me work at two different rates of pay. How jacked up is that? is that even legal?

2007-08-11T13:52:00.000-05:00

I came across this yesterday:

Doulglas W. Bel Jr.

Douglas Warren Bel Jr., 71, Bolivar, went to be with the Lord on Thursday, Dec. 30, 1999. He was born Aug. 15,1928, in Springfield to Douglas Warren and Margaret Kelly Bel and was married Sept. 6, 1952, to Carolyn Ann Conrad. Doug served more than19 years in the U.S. Navy, during which he graduated from Officer's Candidate School and served tours of duty in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He ended his military career at the rank of lieutenant. He also was a graduate of the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies, where he earned his captain's license. He was a retired merchant marine. Always one to encourage and guide his family, especially by example, Doug was a firm believer in the lifelong pursuit of knowledge. He had completed the course of study of surveying. He also had several years of study at the university level, working toward becoming a financial planner. Doug was an active member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Bolivar. He was also a secular Franciscan and a fourth degree member of the Knights of Columbus. However, what he would most want his family, friends and all who knew him to remember about him was his spirit-filled belief in the sanctity of life for everyone, especially for those unborn. He was preceded in death by his parents; his first wife, Donna; their infant daughter; two brothers and one sister. He is survived by his loving wife of 47 years, Carolyn; nine children, Kryschell Bel of Bolivar, Laura and her husband, Randy Lips, of Tickfaw, La., Douglas W. Bel III and his wife, Jenny, of Eugene, Ore., Denise and her husband, Max Baer, of Bolivar, Teresa and her husband, Thomas Gidus, of Oviedo, Fla., Matthew Bel of Bolivar, Mary and her husband, Frank Lopinto, of Amite, La., Frances and her husband, Kenny Haralson, of Bolivar, Patricia and her husband, Robert Price, of Bolivar; 33 grandchildren; and two sisters, Imeldia Bunselmeyer of Ozark, Ala., and Carolina Decker of Republic. Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance (James 1:2). This is how he lived his life and would want those who loved him to also live.

It's the Obituary for my gradnfather. He's the man I most looked up to and he's the man I've always been most worried about being dissapointed in me. The saddest part of it all is that my son will never get to know the greatest influence in my life. I don't know how I'll be able to compare to this man when it comes to raising my little boy. I hope I can be half the man he was.

Why I'm such an ass.

2007-08-10T16:43:00.000-05:00

A lot of people ask me why I'm so cocky and such an asshole. They wonder why I think I'm so much better than my coworkers, and why, if I hate my job so much I don't do something else. I don't have a really good explanation for any of it. What I am going to do is give you a brief review of the last year and a half of my life. Hopefully, this will clarify why I write the way I do.

I left Utah after divorcing my first wife. (I'll talk about that later). I moved back to my hometown with a great job in hand. It was pretty much the perfect job for me. It's what I went to school for, I had lots of experience, and I was set to make about 60 grand a year. That's a lot of money for the area in the Midwest I live in. This was the perfect chance to start my life over and I was still young enough to really enjoy life and put the past behind me.

The first six months of my life back home were amazing I was supervising a small lab at a blood bank, making more money than I knew what to do with and working prime hours (from 2 till 10) There was more than enough time for me to get off work and go party, especially considering my favorite watering hole was just across the street, and within walking distance of my apartment.

I made new friends left and right, got in touch with old friends, and always had enough money to buy whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I was still going to the gym, I looked great, I felt great, everything in my life was perfect. exactly what I pictured five years ago in school. I could have any girl I wanted, and more often than not went home with any girl I wanted. I was hanging out with models and partying like a rock star. To top it all off I even loved my job.

This all came to an end in basically one day. I went to the lake with a friend over a holiday weekend and got hammered beyond anything half-way reasonable. I drank on the way there, I drank in the sun all day, and I even cracked open a few beers in the way home. I realize this was horribly irresponsible and reckless, but I thought I was invincible. I made it all the way home on ridiculously curvy roads and decided I was going to Toast God for allowing me to make it home safely. I make it to my favorite watering hole and see a closed sign, shit! What am I going to do now. Most responsible people would call this a sign and say go home and sleep it off. Oh no... not me. I took this a symbol from God to finally go exploring the bars of downtown. I found an upscale martini bar and spent the rest of the night drinking $40 a shot Johnny Walker blue label. My tab ended up being about $1000 bucks. I talked to and hit on every over the hill, used to be hot, wanna be socialite I could find.

The night came to an end and I thought it was a good idea to drive even though I don't really know if I had an understanding of where I was or what I was doing. I ended up passing out in my car and running into a huge granite sign in the middle of a cemetery. I don't remember how I even got there. The cemetery was on the other side of town and nowhere near my apartment. I honestly believe it's a miracle that I am alive. I hit a 5000lb granite sign head on, it broke in half with one piece slamming into the driver's side door pinning that door shut. When the police arrived I was conscious and outside the car. even though no one can seem to explain how I got out of the car. my door was pinned shut and the passenger side was shut and locked.

The police gave me the option of going to jail or to the hospital. I chose to go to the hospital. They talked with me for awhile, and even called my family for me. when they were going through my wallet looking for an ID they found my old military ID and and old military insurance card. They asked if I was still in. I said no. They asked about my time in Iraq. I didn't give them many details, just that I'd been back for about a year. They said Thank you for your service. That comment kinda pissed me off, I thought they were patronizing me. They weren't. I actually got out of about 9 tickets that night and a DUI. Thank you officer Parks.

I went back to work a short time later and was told I no longer had a job. I asked why, and was told that I violated a character clause in my contract. I was working for a non-profit organization that had a reputation to keep. They told me they found out about the alcohol involved in the accident because of myspace. I know... how dumb. I wrote a post about how how I felt after the accident and how disappointed I was in myself.

A friend of mine at the time who was going to school about three hours away came down the next weekend to take care of me. She was a good friend, and now an even better mother for my child. That's right. I knocked a girl up the weekend after all this. So here I was, jobless, moneyless (I didn't save a penny), and about to be a father. The organization I had worked for had contracts with all the local hospitals. I couldn't even get an interview anywhere for the longest time, despite being overqualified and having a a letter of recommendation from the surgeon general of the army.

I was blackballed.

The only job I could get that I could make immediate cash was waiting tables or bar tending. I worked several jobs waiting and bar tending for the next few months. Until my ego got the better of me. I thought to myself; I'm too well educated to be waiting tables, and having redneck pieces of crap talk to me the way they did. This was probably the low point in my entire life. I was living in a shitty apartment that only had a bed and a t.v. with no cable. I would make money that night and spend every dime I had getting drunk trying to forget how much my life sucks. All the while, I still had a baby on the way.

I was an alcoholic piece of shit.

I quit waiting tables and started stocking shelves for minimum wage. (Huge improvement, I know.) It was a little better at least I didn't have cash to waste at the bar. Eventually someone gave me an interview. I've never interviewed for a job that I haven't been offered. This was no different. I started working at this hospital about seven months ago and I hate it. I hate it because I went from having a secretary to being a glorified secretary (I'm not kidding myself I'm a glorified secretary, I shuttle specimens to the appropriate departments and get pissed on all day long). I went from having everything to not being able to buy a new pair of shoes for myself. I went from partying all night. to staying up all night trying to get my little boy to sleep. I hate it but I can't quit.

I'm not bitching so much as I'm just informing. I have no one to blame but myself for everything that happened. In reality, I can't complain. One day I woke up and basically stopped drinking and smoking and being a worthless loser, because of one thing. My little boy, When he was about seven months along something clicked. He probably saved my life. I don't know where I'd be without him.

No I don't like my job. I'm overqualified for it, but it doesn't matter. It's my fault that I never took my lab certification test. and it's my fault that I tarnished my image enough so that I couldn't get a call back for a job interview. hopefully, This explains my arrogant attitude a little. I've gone from having anything and everything I could want to having to choose between a new pair of shoes for work or baby toys, I've chosen baby toys every time.

Where's the service

2007-08-06T20:25:00.000-05:00

Before we begin I just want to let eveyone know how much I love the show "Rock of Love". Usually I hate anything reality based, but it's easily my favorite t.v. show in recent memory. Brett Michaels has to be the most straight forward rock star in history.

That being said I'd like to make a little proposal. I think that every healthcare professional should have to spend a year waiting tables. It's just weird to me to work with so many people that have an inflated sense of self worth, even people with little or no education seem to believe they are irreplaceable. It's almost comical to see how important everyone thinks their job is, no matter how menial the task.

I guess I'm not sure if I learned this in the Army or waiting tables, but somewhere down the line I've learned that "You're just not that important." and you can be replaced pretty easily. If I hear one more person say "It's not my job" when they are asked to do something well within the scope of their abilities, I may just blow my brains out. When did it become so difficult to just do you're damned job?

This rant comes from an incident that happened a few weeks ago. There is a section of our hospital that deals with outpatient labs and it closes at 8 p.m. Evidently everyone ceases to be able to help anyone at this point. I received a phone call at about 830 one night from one of the urgent care facilities in the area saying they had a 3 year old that had been bitten by a tick and they were wanting to do a Panel of tests normally associated with tick bites but were unable to draw his blood. They wanted to know if they could send her up to us and see if we could stick her. Normally we'd send this patient down to our outpatient area, but being that it was past 800 we couldn't. I told them to go to the E.R. and have them register her as an outpatient and send her up to the lab with explicit instructions not to let them register her as an E.R. patient, otherwise she'd be sitting there for hours, and she'd be charged for an E.R. visit. At about 10:00 I get a call from the same urgent care, saying, "the patient was still waiting in the E.R". It's asinine to wait an hour and a half just to get some blood drawn from an obviously sick child. I call the E.R. and ask for registration trying to figure out what happened. I get some nameless retarded they've hired and ask her what's going on. Her response was this; "Oh that's not my job I'm just here to register E.R. patients." So I ask are you able to do it? She says "yes". So I question her as to why she didn't just do it. her response once again was "It's not my job. I decide to end the phone call by telling her to just send the patient up to the lab and we'll take care of it. I ask "is it your job to talk to patients, are you going to be able to do that alright. I know it'll be hard to get out of your chair, but please, just this once?"

At 11 (when I'm supposed to go home I start wondering if she ever made it up to the lab to be taken care of. I call the E.R once again and ask if she's down there. Evidently someone in the lab (I later found out it was the piddler.) told her she had to go back to the E.R. Eventually I convince someone to hand the phone to the patient's mother and I tell them to come back to the lab and I'll personally take care of it. She makes it up to the lab and I grab one of our registration girls, right as she's leaving, and explain the situation. She doesn't really know how to register her, but the one bright moment of the day for me was when she said "I'm not sure how, but I know I can at least figure it out." It takes her all of about five minutes after calling someone else to find out how. We take her to have her blood drawn and she's out in ten minutes.

Everyone has seemingly lost what the idea of customer service means. Hospital's have adopted this attitude that as long as they're not bleeding right now they'll be fine to wait until we decide to get around to you. Unfortunately most people don't have alot of other options and they can get away with this kind of crap. This poor lady with a three year old who is visibly sick has to wait for two hours just to get blood drawn so she can wait another three days for results? It just doesn't make sense to me. She waited purely because of other people's laziness.

I don't deal with a lot of patient care but in the few instances I do want to treat people the same way I would hope they'd treat my grandma. It's almost sad When I rush and make sure a patient gets in and out of the phlebotomy room as soon as I can, and they seem amazed that they could go anywhere in the hospital and be in and out in fifteen minutes. All it takes is someone just going a little out of their way. I'm a firm believer in Karma and that it doesn't only effect you. Every time you pass some old lady broken down on the side of the road, every time you pass a beggar, every time a friend asks for help and you're "Too busy", Is one more time you're grandma will get passed by, or you're friends and family who are having a hard time won't get help. I try to live by the mantra that If I do my best to help someone, that favor will be returned, either directly to me or to my family that can't help themselves. What if my girlfriend and My little boy broke down on the side of the road and no one would go out of their way to help?

Top Health system?

2007-07-31T11:32:00.000-05:00

This past January my hospital was named the #1 most integrated health facility in the U.S. That sounds like quite and achievement? right? Our hospital has taken this designation and run with it. putting up signs all over the facilities, hanging billboards, making shirts, practically everything you can do in the advertising world. Every sign says this; #1 integrated health system. That statement makes you think it's the top health system in the U.S. when in fact, it's just the most integrated. I know this is a little confusing, it was confusing for me as well, so I did a little investigation.

Verispan evaluates health systems based on the level of integration in eight categories: integration; integrated technology; contractual capabilities; outpatient utilization; financial stability; services and access; hospital utilization; and physicians.

It sounds to me like they're really just evaluating how integrated the computer systems are. Which makes me wonder a couple of things.
A. Is it a lie to proclaim the status of #1 integrated health system? should they have to say They're the most integrated health system?
B. How crappy are every one else's systems. The army's information management systems are better than my hospitals. We run 15 year old programs on brand spanking new computers, we have multiple programs that aren't interfaced, and Nothing "crosses over" so there are workers who have unnecessary jobs like transferring information from one system to the next. It's all terribly inefficient.

Don't get me wrong I think That we're a very good hospital. But, Honestly, I've worked at much maligned hospitals in the military (think Walter Reed) who were far superior to this place. It just makes me wonder how liberal these processes are. Can you basically give your hospital any title you want. While it is a great a achievement to have a supposed top computer system, I don't think you can translate that into actual care.

(Now a Side note)
Anyway, I'll remind you that I don't really get to see patients. The only thing I get to see are test results, Lab requisitions, and a diagnosis. so sometimes it's pretty funny Like last night i got a requisition for a 97 year old man that came into the E.R. With The diagnosis of "misbehavior" Are you shitting me? He's 97 he can do whatever the hell he wants. It also turns out that his drug screen was positive for THC. This old guy was high as a bird. let him do what the hell he wants he doesn't have that much time to live anyway. The point seems to have gotten lost in this last paragraph Though. I see these weird diagnoses all the time and I'm going to start keeping a record of them to share with you. I think it'll be damned funny and it'll give me alot more material to write about. I can only write PTBG girl is an idiot so many times.

My bubble

2007-07-30T10:40:00.000-05:00

I'm normally a pretty out going and likeable guy. That being said; Don't fucking touch me. No, really, I'm a nice guy. I just don't like to be touched or smacked or patted on the back or punched in the arm. If I don't know you please don't randomly give me a hug.

Ptbg has decided recently that it's okay to slap me across the across the arm or to kinda back hand my stomach after she says something usually when she thinks she's said something funny, which by the way, probably wasn't funny. I don't know about you, but at work I just don't find this acceptable behavior. Especially if I've made it clear I don't particularly like you.

Ptbg announced to everyone she was taking 2 weeks off to go on a cruise and then take her son to college in minnesota. I announced how I thought that individuals, especially ones, who aren't fully (or in her case even partially) trained should just up and take a vacation after being at a job for less than 3 months. She responded by playfully slapping me on the shoulder and saying "you're just jealous."( No, bitch, I'm not jealous I just think you'll become even more useless.) I Think this is a good time to tell her not to invade my bubble, at work my personal space is just that, my personal space.

Evidently she thought I was joking and spent the rest of the night marking on me with pens or rubber stamps or just generally finding ways to touch me inappropriately (not that there is any appropriate way for her to touch me). It's been a few weeks now and she hasn't stopped. I've even sat her down to talk to her like a 2 year old and say "this isn't appropriate work behavior, we're not buddies, don't touch me."

At what point would I need to get my boss involved? when exactly is a situation supposed to get so unbearable that you have to enlist outside help. Maybe I should say that it's sexual harassment and she'll be fired. I honestly think that she just creates more work than she completes. I think I'm going to start a new revolution of men filing sexual harassment claims. Maybe I'll get a big paycheck. I'm the only male in the group I work with, and The next three people above me in the chain of command are all women. Hmmm I'm starting to believe this could work. The first pay day is always the biggest, I'll be the first male to successfully sue a company for sexual harassment. Or has it already been done?

She said what?

2007-07-26T12:42:00.000-05:00

This post will be about dumb-ass. you can read more about her in my post "co-workers part 3" I'd imbed a link if I knew how.

One of the ladies from transfusion came running into the main lab. She was visibly upset and was having a hard time verbalizing what she was trying to say. All I could make out was "j needs help" and "She's just sitting there." This didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me, I followed c into our break room to see J laying face first in the middle of the break room floor with broken glass laying all around him, looking as though he's having a seizure.

The first things you always need to do is call 911 right? well not so much in a hospital. You'd be amazed at how difficult it is to get a rapid response team to another part of the hospital. Anyway, while we were waiting for the rapid response team, We proceeded to check his responsiveness, breathing, and circulation. He wasn't responding, there was foam coming out of his mouth and there was a piece of a broken plate embedded into his head. but at least he was breathing and he still had circulation. Since he didn't need CPR, all I could do was wait.

Imagine my surprise when I see dumb-ass out of the corner of my eye, eating her baked potato as if nothing had happened. I guess everyone kinda looked at her at the same time with a WTF look. So she volunteers the following statement "I just thought he was sleeping. I thought it was a little weird he was lying on the floor but I didn't want to disturb him." Are you seriously shitting me? Who in the name of God thinks that to themselves. After hearing that, What C said earlier made a lot more sense. "she's just sitting there." From what I can figure out she let him lay there undisturbed for about 10 minutes.

A lot of people that don't know me say i must be exaggerating when I tell them how stupid I think a lot of the people I work with are. If this isn't proof of my previous assertions, I don't know what is. Can you imagine someone you know just sitting there continuing to eat while someone was on the ground having a seizure? I'd also like to remind everyone that this person was supposed to be a healthcare professional. I hope you all have lots of faith in the professionals taking care of you family the next time they have to go to the hospital. I'm still kind of dumbfounded by all of this so the only think I can think to say is WTF? seriously... WTF?

Anal Sex

2007-07-24T16:07:00.000-05:00

That's right, I said "anal sex". This story is about ptbg, and her possible love affair with anal sex. The conversation started innocently enough. I was basically bitching as usual. This time about an unnecessary change. Is it just me or have you noticed that every time you get a new boss they have a tendency to change things just for the sake of change? This time someone thought it would be brilliant to have everyone in my section rotate jobs every 2 and a half hours. There is no point to this. The conversation went something like this.

Me: "This destroys my continuity of work. It doesn't seem like it's be a big deal but it takes several minutes to log out of this computer then log into the next computer and to try and convey to the next person what I'm doing. This is a worthless change"

Piddler: "How do you know you won't like it unless you try it?" (Mind you this system is perfect for the piddler. She'll be able to constantly look busy just by moving around.)

Me: Well I don't like anal sex and I don't have to try that to know I don't like it.

ptbg: "I love anal sex... but only when my husband does it." (yeah I know wtf... who shares information like this)

Things kind of got quiet after she said that, and remained so for the rest of the night. I'll admit that what I said was highly inappropriate. But seriously, would you just volunteer your love of anal sex to coworkers you've known for maybe 2 months? I didn't think so.

About a week later I made some off color joke about a stool specimen sitting on the counter, and ptbg proceeds to inform me how disgusting she thinks I am. Then, I proceed to tell her that after the anal sex comment she's lost her right to distinguish the difference between what is and isn't disgusting. She goes on to defend her love of anal sex for the next week or so. Bringing her profession of love for anal to about two weeks long.

The next week she decides go on a rant about using the lord's name in vain. As a side note; When I have nothing left to say about a particular subject I say, "Well at least Jesus still loves me" I understand that it's making a mockery of what is supposed to be an all encompassing love but I'm not really bothered by that fact. Back to the point. I got a little tired of her rant and retorted; "You realize that God frowns upon sodomy, right?" She replied with a curt, I'm not a sodomite. To which I replied. You realize Sodomy and anal sex are the same thing right. She responded with a look of disgust and then panic as she either realized her mistake or had realized that she needed to cover up what she had said earlier. Oh my God, No! I got confused, I thought you meant oral. I really love oral not anal, That's disgusting.

This shows me one of two things.

1. She's a liar that will lie simply to avoid looking bad or

2. She's really just THAT stupid.

I honestly believe that she's now just trying to cover up, but if she really is that stupid, as she's like to lead us to believe, it would make me wonder if she's mentally handicapped. Honestly, how, as a forty something year old woman, who works in the medical field, no less, not understand the difference between oral and anal sex? It beats the hell out of me.

I could just be judging her too harshly, maybe she's been a stay at home mom for too long, Do people this naive/stupid really exist?

He stuck what; Where?

2007-07-19T20:13:00.000-05:00

It took a long time to decide if I was going to post anything about this next event. It's kind of sad why this kid does what he does, but after a long hard deliberation, I've decided that the comic value far outweighs anything else.

I don't get to enjoy all the really good stories that the E.R. has to offer, but once in awhile I get a good one. About a week ago I was processing a specimen who happened to have the diagnosis written on the label it read as follows;

"FB in penis"

"What the hell?"

It turns out that FB in penis means foreign body in penis. When you're in the lab you don't actually get to see patients and you don't really ever know what's going on with them all you can do is guess based on test results and diagnoses. As you can guess my mind went crazy trying to think of what the hell this person could have stuck inside his penis.

My first thought was well, maybe it's just a little kid who doesn't no any better. Nope!. My second guess, well maybe it's a perverted old man who got a little too into his self love fest. Nope!. It turns out it was a fifteen year old kid. Definitely old enough to know better and I would think young enough to not have developed those kind of perversions. I guess I was wrong.

We had a surgery tech come in the lab some time later in the day and filled us in. Obviously, our first question was what the hell was it. It was the little plastic button on his patient ID bracelet. What the hell? I asked what he was originally in here for and it was the same thing. He shoved a plastic thermometer cover inside his penis. I don't even think I want to imagine how painful that was or why the hell he'd ever do it a second time.

The O.R. tech stayed around for a little longer and gave us a few more details. She told us that he's actually a pretty regular customer. He's in about once a month for the same thing. I also learned that it isn't all that uncommon. The O.R. gets about five "foreign body removals" a month. Is it just me or does that seem a little high?
I guess all I can say is thank you, perverted freaks, for helping to keep me employed

The sad part of it all is that evidently this kid had been abused, it's unclear whether it was sexually or not, from the time he was about five. I have no doubt that he's experienced a lot of suffering in his life, but guess what kid? not all of us decided to stick crap up their penis to cope. Seriously. I know life sucks, but you're not the only one with problems. At some point in time in your life you're gonna need to learn that who you are and what you do is ultimately you're decision no matter how much you've dealt with as a child. Hey, I should be a counselor... I'm totally headed back to school for psychology, I've obviously missed my calling

I'm not a mooch

2007-07-19T19:49:00.000-05:00

The following conversation I had a work started because I made some joke about government cheese. You know, like government peanut butter, and cheese and dry milk. I made some joke about giving someone some government cheese. The exact joke escapes me right now but it went something like this

Girl 1: "So, girl two do you have any of that cheddar cheese left for sale." (I know it's strange.)

Girl 2: "I'm not sure"

ME: "I got some gov'ment cheese I can sell ya... but it's not that cheddar crap just good ole American, the way it's supposed to be."(obviously joking)

Girl 2: "Why do you have gov'ment cheese?"

Girl 3: "Oh are you guys like on wic or food stamps... do they even still have the gov'ment cheese program?"

Me: "What?, I have no reason to be on food stamps or WIC"

Girl 2: I bet you'd qualify, you're wife doesn't work... right?"

Me: "Whether I qualify or not doesn't matter" I'm an able bodied man of sound mind There's no reason I can't support my family, I don't need money from the government

Girl 2: Why don't you take the money you'd save by getting food stamps and start a college fund for him.

Me: "He doesn't need anything I can't provide for him, and have you ever heard of raising your children the right way so that they don't need the governments money either?"

This exchange, in and of it's self, didn't bother me so much, What did bother me is why no one seemed to understand why I thought it was wrong to take government money without actually needing it. When did we all come to believe that we're entitled to "free money".

It's pretty amazing how much money you can make and still qualify for government assistance I have a buddy who makes about 40 grand a year and his wife probably makes another 12 to 15 and they have one child and they still qualify for government assistance. We don't have a ton of money left over every month but we have more than enough to pay all our bill without wondering if they'll get paid, we have enough for food, and enough to feed our child. So why exactly do I need the government to give me money as well?

Nursing homes

2007-07-16T22:13:00.001-05:00

I"m going to preface this blog with the following disclaimer: "Yes, I realize that I am going to sound like an asshole for what I'm about to say, and NO, there's nothing I care to do about it.

I don't think nursing homes should exist. I think they're a complete drain on the health care system and a complete drain on money. I can personally guarantee that at least 75 percent of the people in nursing homes are not there on there own dime, or even the dime of their families. Their "care" is being paid for by you and I, through social security and medicaid/medicare Personally I can't see how the government can justify spending billions each year to barely keep people alive.

I'm not saying that I should be the judge of when quality of life becomes more important than life itself. But what I can say is; what's the point of keeping a 97 year old women alive on a machine or what's the point of drawing labs and analyzing every possible bodily fluid just to make sure parts of her haven't stopped working, i.e. renal failure. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Normally I'm a big fan of capitalism and competition, even in health care. The competition drives us to develop new technologies to help with the diagnosis and care of patients. This isn't the case with nursing homes. Nursing homes are strictly a business. Most hospitals are non-profit organizations.

We have a contract with a company who has contracts with nursing homes, they'll go out to a nursing home and draw blood or take urine samples. Next, they send these samples to my lab for analysis. We charge this company for our services and they in turn charge nursing homes any fee they feel like charging them for a service that they don't need. The reason companies like these have popped up is because nursing homes continue to employ under qualified people. Why pay a nurse 20 bucks an hour when you can pay an aid 8 bucks an hour. It's all about the bottom line for these people.

Not only do the pocketbooks of whomever pays for these services suffer, but general health care of everyone in the community can suffer. I've been told that company's like the one I just described to you (let's call them B&B) are the reason I have a job, they keep us in the black. So guess what. We basically have to suck their collective dick and process everyone of those specimen stat. The get pushed ahead of patients that have just had heart attacks, they get pushed ahead of the patients in the I.C.U's, and they even get pushed ahead of the patients in the E.R. Simply to make a buck.

I've stated this before, but why do I give a fuck if some 97 year old grandma who can't bathe herself, is completely devoid of use to our society, and who uses the money I'm putting into social security and medicaid live? The answer is I don't. at 97 you've lived a full life, why are you trying to prolong death. I think it's time we start investing money into people who are productive members or at least have the potential to be productive members of society. (Think scholarships for the best and brightest).

I'll give a couple groups a break though. I think if you're a veteran and have war related injuries then the government should take care of you until you decide you're ready to die. Secondly, If you've been smart enough to invest you're money well, and save enough so that you're still paying you're own ticket, by all means stay alive as long as you'd like. I don't care if you prolong death till the year 2050 waiting for the fountain of youth, as long as you're waiting on your dime. I'm all about giving things to people who have earned them. If you've worked hard to provide for yourself into your golden years then you should be allowed to do whatever you want. Even people with old money, If one of your ancestors had the foresight to work hard and make a fortune so that his descendants could live well, then good for him.

The only thing I'm trying to say here is that we're pumping money into a useless system. It's not an investment in any way. AT least the war in Iraq has the potential for some positive impact. I know many of you are not supporters of the war, but in 100 years history is going to look back and see a democracy being established in the middle east as one of the most significant events of the last 200 years. That, or it really is the beginning of Apocalypse.

Nice

2007-07-15T20:33:00.000-05:00

Somebody forwarded this to me.

The what if I.... game

2007-07-15T18:03:00.000-05:00

I was over at the violent acres site and was reading one of the stories in v's "best of" section. Basically, this is how it went. She just wanted to see what would happen if she tried to buy 25 bottles of nyquil... then return them for 25 boxes of sudafed. Hilarity did ensue... even though she seemed a little dissapointed with the results.

This has prompted me to start a little what if I... interactive game... basically I want anyone and everyone to give me ideas on what I should do for the what if I.... game. I'll do the most absurd suggestion, as long as it's financially feasable, and it's borderline legal. So please... give me a few ideas.

Coworkers part 3

2007-07-14T20:18:00.000-05:00

I've already written about ptbg and the piddler, my last installment of the "coworkers" series will be about The girl who does whatever the fuck she wants. I can't really come up with a clever name for her so I'll just call her dumb ass (classy, I know.)

Dumb ass is dangerous because she looks very competent, it's almost impossible to tell a competent worker from a dumb ass. She always gets rave reviews from her supervisor for her productivity. She's completes tasks quickly, with one small hitch, She completes tasks in any manner in which she deems appropriate. She completely ignores established protocol, and becomes confrontational if you try to point out a problem with her work. The only way you can tell if your coworker is a dumb ass, is of you're the one who has to constantly clean up her mess.

You can quickly see why dumb ass is so dangerous. Other coworkers rave about the speed in which she completes tasks, buy you know better. Unfortunately, anytime you say anything negative about dumb ass, it's ignored because she supposedly works so proficiently.

Normally, you'd think that not following established protocol would be detrimental, especially in a medical lab, oh no..., not here. I come from a military lab background, there are standard operating procedures for everything, up to and including how to scratch your ass. This place is the most ass backward organization I've ever been a part of. The beauty of having a standard operating procedure, is that nothing goes unresolved for very long. Got a problem?... look up the answer. An s.o.p. sounds like a good idea... right? At my hospital, this is the answer I got whenever I questioned what the established procedures were. Oh, well everyone is going to do it there own way. Well that makes a whole lot of fucking sense! I'm kinda of a hard ass stickler about things being done correctly, and this attitude does not fly with me.

I'm not sure why, but it probably has something to do with my need for everything to go smoothly, but, I always end up having to be the one to clean up the mess from the haphazard way the dumb ass does everything. I don't like going to work and feeling like I spent most of my time cleaning up someone Else's mess. Especially when when I don't get paid the big bucks to do that.

Maybe I'm a little too organized when I go to work. Maybe I'm just a control freak. Or maybe, I'm just sick and tired of everyone else around me (save a select few) being relatively incompetent. I'd much rather answer a question about how to do something than clean up the mess after you fuck it up. There is a reason that we have a fancy computer system that you can put orders into, and it will spit out every little piece of information you could ever need to know about that test. We, unfortunately need these computers, because hospitals continue to try and save money by hiring under qualified people, and by shaving costs anywhere they can.

The one problem that I will never be able to solve or at least have some idea as how to solve is why the hell is health care so expensive? It's a lose lose situation, pay professionals less, and fewer of the top students go into those fields, hire under qualified yahoos and you get sup-par care. What can ya do?

Just so everyone doesn't think I'm just some egomaniacal jackass, I've give you 2 examples of how dumb ass makes my life harder. The first one is vintage dumb ass. She get's in such a hurry, that instead of ordering the correct test in the computer she just orders a misc. test and writes the name in the free space on the label. This doesn't sound all that bad except for the fact that when someone (namely me) catches this, they have to go back and find out what test was actually suppossed to be ordered, cancel the one she ordered, reorder the correct test, then submit the sample for analysis. It doesn't seem like a huge deal but that shit gets annoying when it interrupts you're work flow... I'm all about the flow. The second example I have really really really annoyes the piss out of me. Don't leave half-completed work laying around, amongst completed or non completed samples. The reason you have standard operating procedures, and the reason everyone does things the exact same way is so that when someone does leave a half completed sample laying around, you can pick up right where they left off and complete the task at hand. Dumb ass, has a bad habit of doing it any fucking which way she pleases, and leaving it laying around for me make guesswork out of it.

I honestly hope none of you have to work with this type of person, but I know you do. That's just how the world works. Sometimes I wonder why I work so hard and care so much. In the end I just remember two things a buddy reminded me of in the army.
1. "I don't get paid enough to care that much",
2. "I don't get paid enough to think, just do"

Jaded

2007-07-06T14:27:00.000-05:00

last night something happened to me to make me realize just how jaded I've become. One of the new girl's at work comes up to me while I'm busy with something else and says, "hey I have this specimin that needs to be done right away, the nursing home says he's been bleeding internally and they need the results as soon as it's finished." You want to know what my response was? Well, it wasn't the correct response. I said "I'll get to it when I get to it. they guy is like 90 years old why do I give a fuck if he lives a couple more days, everything we get from those assholes (the client) is suppossedly a stat, what, is everyone fucking dying over there. If it were a real emergency they'd bring him to the hospital." As soon as I said that my heart sunk, I couldn't believe what I had just said. Needless to say I proccessed it immediately.

I began to think about how I became the way that I am. What would I do to someone else if they had said that about my grandfather as he lay on his death bed. The man who was everything I aspired to be. I tried to do some self-relfection after I got home from work last night searching for an answer to how I may have become so desensitized to the world. When I say desensitized, I'm not talking about the bullshit they talk about on cnn or msnbc where they tell you there's too much violence and sex on t.v. What I'm talking about is a lifetime of internal and external suffering. having to be around things and see things that no other human being should ever have to witness.

Most of you know the story of my childhood so I won't go into why my child hood was so terrible. I have had lots of problems dealing with emotion and I have severe attachment disorder. But I think what really made me the person I am had alot to do with the army. There I was fresh faced and 18 in the army, learning to be a man. Everyone talks about how important the first few years of life are in forming a personality, but I think 18 19 20 are just important. You're finally away from your parents, trying to learn how to be an adult. Anything can affect how you view the world and what type of adult you are going to be. I want to talk about being desensitized by watching a man being shot in the head and immediately knowing he's dead. I want to talk about performing CPR on a fellow soldier for the first time and realizing you've just broken his ribs in what will probably be a vain attempt to save his life. That's true desensitization.

I understand that who and what I am is my own choice, but being in an environment like I was, while I was trying to form my "adult" personality was harmful. The next time you meet someone who just seems angry at the world, stop, and wonder what might have caused them to be that way. Many of us have seen and heard things that no other human being should have to. One last thing, please thank a veteran if you know one. How many of those men and women had to suffer through their formative adult years, becoming jaded, so we could all feel a little safer.

My coworkers part II

2007-07-05T22:12:00.000-05:00

This is the second installment of the "my coworkers" series. In this blog I will write about the infamous "pass the buck girl" referred to as PTBG from now on. The PTBG always finds a way to pass her work on to you or someone else. Somehow, she conveys and image of competence to her boss but enough incompetence to her coworkers that they're willing to just complete her work for her.

We've all been in a situation where PTBG comes up to you and asks "Can you help me with this?" then proceeds to leave the project laying on your desk or whatever work surface area you're using. After awhile, naturally, you get tired of this so you decide the show PTBG how to complete said task so that at least from that point forward she won't ask for your help with that. Good idea, right?... WRONG What occurs next is either the manifestation of complete genius covered up extremely well, or It's a moment that you honestly wonder if they are mentally handicapped. All of a sudden They don't remember how to do anything. Even simple tasks, like step 1: log onto computer. What you've all read is ptbg's go-to move. Feigning ignorance, I can't count how many times I've been so frustrated with they're stated lack of knowledge that I just give up and realize I'll be able to accomplish more by myself.

My particular version of PTBG is particularly bad because she's has never shown competence in ANYTHING. So you can't call her out. It's possible that she really is just kind of slow. Unfortunately I work in a place that regularly does charity hires. I'm not saying this because I think everyone I work with are mentally handicapped (althought it is a possibility with a few). I'm saying it because that's what actually happens. They hire people with mental defects to do what are supposed to be menial tasks. These "menial tasks" somehow, end up being the most important things in the world. It's amazing how fucked up your work flow can get because of one stupid mistake, that could have been avoided by hiring qualified applicants.

My PTBG hasn't been working here too long, so I guess I'm not allowed to get overly frustrated with her yet. I recognize that I'm overqualified for my job. This means that not everyone I work with will have the same knowledge or ability to learn as I do. Honestly, though, I think we could do a little better than plucking a 40 something year old career cafeteria worker and putting her in a medical lab.

While I do hate the "piddler" I might hate PTBG even more. The piddler creates more work for me, as does ptbg girl, but the most apparent trait difference is that the piddler will do work if you stay on top of her and she knows someone is watching. It doesn't matter how much you stay on top of PTBG, she'll always just frustrate the hell out of you, to the point where you'll just say "fuck it, I'll do it myself."

Side rant about ptbg: If you ask me if it's okay to do something and I reply "Other people do it, but I wouldn't do it, it seems dishonest" That doesn't mean sure, do whatever the fuck you want. One last thing, I love when you say "You're not my boss." Please continue to to act like a 12 year old retard, so that When I am your boss I have plenty of examples of why you should be let go.

My coworkers part 1

2007-07-03T12:29:00.000-05:00

I'm going to start a mini series on my coworkers. What's funny about this, is that no matter where you go, what industry you're in, you're going to have people with these exact same traits I'm not going to name anyone but I gaurentee you'll be able to relate someone you work with to all of these.

The first coworker we'll examine is "The Piddler." The piddler is someone who always appears busy, but never really is, Sometimes it's hard to point the piddler out. The reason I started noticing was because of the volume of work I had to complete whenever we were short staffed and I had to work alone with her as oppossed to other people.

I first stared to really pay attention to the piddler because it's the same person that had basically called me racist. Just so we're clear, I'm not racist but I HATE lazy people, no matter what the color of your skin. I yelled at you because you're lazy, not because you're asian. Sorry about that side rant, but it needed to be said.

The piddler is especially dangerous because she looks like a good worker, and she's especially swamped when the boss is around. This may lead the boss to believe that they are a better worker than you are, thus diminishing your credibility in case of a conflict later.

I've picked up on a few of her tricks. Her "go-to" move is to work on "problems" first so that she's not having to do any actual work. She's always on hold with a "very important problem" This really irritates me because all those stupid little things can be solved in about five minutes if you save them for the end of the night when the bulk of your work is completed. Another good tactic is that she'll walk back and forth between lab departments with a specimen in her hand so that no one will ask her to do anything. This reminds me a lot of another piddler from another job. The only difference was that I liked this guy so I guess it didn't bother me that much. But his go-to move was to put on a lab coat and walk around with a clipboard with random papers on it. I don't know how it worked so well, but it did, until my other buddy danny caught on to it. He wasn't as forgiving. He called him out on it pretty quickly.

I hope that you can't label a piddler amongst the people you work with, if not, you're pretty lucky. Maybe you should be on the look out from now on.

An actual phone call

2007-07-03T12:01:00.000-05:00

This is a phone call I received while I was working last night. I want to remind you that the person on the other end of the phone is an RN, she's not supposed to be an uneducated idiot.

ME: ST. John's lab; this is Rob

HER: Hi, This is v, over at such and such clinic, I need some results for a patient that should have been completed friday.

ME: No,problem can I have her ID number so I can look it up in the computer.

HER: Well. I Don't need you to look it up in the computer I'm looking at the computer with the results right now. I just need them faxed to me.

ME: (By now I'm thinking "what the fuck is wrong with you") Ma-am I have to look up the results on the computer the same way you do in order for me to send them to you.

Her: NO, I just need a hardcopy

ME: Well if you're looking at the results on your screen, can't you just print them off? It will be the exact same piece of paper I'd have to fax to you.

Her: Well, they always fax us all the results and I don't know why it didn't happen this time (she seems a little annoyed now and I can't figure out why)

ME: Fine, I'll fax you these results but I still need her ID number so I can look it up the exact same way you are.

Her: You don't have to get smart with me, if you had just faxed over the results on friday when it was done we wouldn't be having this problem

ME: Point A; I didn't work friday. Point B; I have nothing to do with your results getting faxed. And point C; if you can view the results in your computer you don't need us to fax you those results. We fax results as a courtesy to clinics we have contracts with, that aren't on our computer network.

Her: Whatever, I'll just print the results myself, What if I didn't know how to print results?

Click.

The worst part of daily questions like these is that they never come at a time when you're not busy and you can just laugh it off. It always come when you're super busy and don't have time to deal with it. Oh, and one more thing. Our hospital has a policy that we don't release test results over the phone. Deal with it. A lot of times doctors will order a test and then schedule an appointment with that patient two weeks later. The results have been in our computer system for 2 weeks. Just because your patient is in the office right now, does not mean that this is an emergency. If you really needed those results you would have called and gotten them before you're patients scheduled appointment. If, as a patient, you ever have to wait for lab results while you're waiting in the office, it means that office probably has a horrible office manager, and maybe you should think twice about the doctor you're seeing, I know it seems a little petty, but if your doctor isn't organized or in incapable of hiring organized people you might want to think twice about using him... who knows where' you'll be on his priority list when you get sick.

Pay attention

2007-06-24T19:44:00.000-05:00

I stole this from the new blog that the girl from "strip club server" has started writing. I think it is time we paid attention to how we're spending our money. It got me to thinking about why the hell we have security deposits. I was in kind of a rush to get out of my last apartment and decided not to clean it. I figured I'd forfeit my $200 deposit and be done with it. My time was valuable to me. about 3 months later I got a later with a bill for over six hundred bucks for cleaning up my old apartment... What the hell was that deposit for then???... anyway... read this.. it details certain things better than I ever could

America, we have a problem.

Well, to be completely honest, we have more than one- but this is a really big problem that is affecting me in my life; so therefore it's the most important problem.

It's not the economy (although it could be better), it's not welfare (although it could use some reform as well). The problem which is paining me this evening is greed. Good ole' plain greed.

Now, I'm not talking about individual greed. No conspicuous consumption here, however if you're looking for an article that will completely disenchant you on the state of people, check that one out. What's even scarier is that it was written in 1902. I'm talking specifically about "big business" greed, and how it is affecting our nation.

Slowly over time we have allowed the nameless, faceless corporations, and even our own government, to anally rape us while we smile and pitifully ask for another like a bizarro Lifetime version of Oliver Twist. Gives a whole new meaning to the name Charles Dickens... heh.

But I digress...

It started rather simply, an energy rate hike here, an income tax increase there. Next thing you know everything is being dissipated by the powers that be.

Case in point: I went to Sam's Club last week to purchase insulin and other necessities for the home front. Insulin is tax exempt, so you will always pay a .99 on it. If you're buying from a smaller chain (Walgreens, USA Drug) you will pay around $34.99 for a bottle of Novelin R insulin. Sam's sells the same bottle for $19.99. At two bottles a month, these savings far outweighed any feelings of guilt from shopping at the mega-chain which is destroying our nation. Don't believe me? Check out "Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price." It will shock you.

Again, too much digressing....

Continuing on, I picked up the insulin, grabbed some toilet paper, and some cases of diet soda. I proceeded to the check out, showed my receipt to the door nazi, and headed out to the car. It wasn't until I got into the car and checked the receipt that I realized I had been had. Twice.

First of all, the purchases were rung up at the same time. Then a seven and some change percent sales tax was charged on the subtotal. Meaning the insulin was charged a sales tax. Big no-no. After that, another subtotal was rendered (adding in the seven percent sales tax) and then a smaller tax was charged again, on the second subtotal. A so-called "soda tax". This means, that I was taxed on a tax-free item, then taxed again on the tax I paid the first time.

It wasn't so much the out of pocket expense that pissed me off. It was the principle of the matter. How many people check their receipts for the tax information? Most people I know don't even bother checking their receipts to make sure they were charged the right amount at the store. I am not one of those people.

They did a "seven on your side" feature a few months ago on Kroger International foods. The investigative reporter went shopping, and then compared her receipt purchases to the ones advertised in the store. There were differences. Many differences. Close to ten dollars worth of differences. Although, for one person, ten dollars here and there doesn't add up to much, but think about how many people shop for groceries and purchase one brand over another because of the posted "sale price?" I have vivid memories of my mother staring at the register machine, noting each price as it was rung up and stopping the checker if something was different than what was posted. This in itself is a ridiculous hassle for the consumer and the cashier. The cashier then has to stop, get on her little mega-phone, call for a "price check," verify the price, then call the manager over to void/refund/adjust the price rung into the computer. Meanwhile, this drives the other people in line crazy while they impatiently wait for their turn to leave.

The bigger question here is this: do you really think the manager went back and fixed the posted price after my mother left? Hell no. She's probably more aggravated that someone noticed the difference. After all, she's thinking not of the consumer, but of the bottom line. Many of these stores either pay their managers on a scale basis, or judge the amount of their end of year bonuses based on the overall profit margin for their district. Loosely translated: the more their store sells, the more money goes into her pocket at the end of the year. Customer service is now a thing of the past.

These kinds of scams affected me in a very large way about six months ago. I lived in an apartment complex before Boyfriend and I moved into the home he was already renting. Upon first leasing my apartment, the office manager sat down with me and covered, in detail, the terms and conditions of my lease, including my thirty day notice, should I decide not to renew my lease. This thirty day notice does not cover intentional breaking of the lease, this is just for when your lease expires and you decide to vacate your apartment.

One year later my lease expired and I was offered a renewal. I decided to renew my lease and continue living in my apartment for another year. Mind you, the renewing of my lease hiked my rent up over fifteen percent, but I didn't care at the time. Now, this is not the "scam" that affected me, but it is a rather shitty thing to do. It would have cost me less to give them notice and then sign an entirely new lease rather than to renew my lease for another year.

Just so you know, I called and spoke to the apartment manager, who informed me that my original rental price was a "move in special" and I would now be paying the actual price per month on my town-house. Whatever.

Regardless, I continued living there for another year. My lease expired in August, and just like clockwork my rental offer came at the end of June. I declined their offer (yet another price hike- by the way. This time up twenty-five percent from the already increased fifteen percent) and filled out my thirty day notice form, promptly turning it in on June 30, one month and a day before my lease expired (July 31).

Six months ago I received a letter and a bill from my ex-landlords. The bill was for a full months rent, and the letter enclosed stated that I had violated my lease agreement by not giving them a full sixty-day notice. Because I only gave them thirty days, I was required to pay them rent for the month of August. Even though I didn't live in the apartment in August.

I called and spoke to the apartment manager the next day. The conversation went something like this:

ME: I'm calling in regard to this bill for a full months rent?

HIM: Yes, you were required by your lease to give us a full sixty-day notice. Since you only gave us thirty days we are charging you another month's rent.

ME: I'm looking at my lease right now, and it doesn't say anything about a sixty day notice. It requires a thirty day notice.

HIM: You're looking at your original lease. Last year we changed it to sixty-days.

ME: Then why wasn't I given a copy of the new terms?

HIM: Because you renewed your lease, rather than sign another one.

ME: So then, wouldn't I still only be required to give a thirty day notice, as applicable under the terms of my original lease?

HIM: No, we changed the policy last year.

ME: Were you able to rent the apartment out?

HIM: Yes, the apartment was rented.

ME: So, you want double rent? You've got someone else paying rent on that apartment and you want me to pay rent as well? For a month that someone else lived there?

HIM: The policy was changed to sixty days. You only gave us thirty days, so you are required to pay another month's rent.

ME: But if the policy changed to sixty days, why wasn't I given my renewal notice sixty days before my lease was up? Why only thirty days?

HIM: That's not our policy.

At this point I hung up.

America, it's time we started paying attention to our receipts and reading the fine print. This has got to stop. Big business has enough money already, they don't have to cheat the little people out of what small amount they have left over at the end of the month.

I'm no radical, but sometimes I wonder if the revolutionaries aren't on to something...

cliche abortion

2007-06-21T01:43:00.000-05:00

I came across this bulletin; it's a little cheessy and a little dramatic but you get the idea. I was also reading in a medical journal seeing as I have to do my continuing education anyway. I read a story about a 14 week old baby that was delivered early and survived. This is far earlier than many partial birth abortions. I think it's time we re evaluate our definition of life. I understand that I'll probably never see a time when abortion is illegal in the world but I abhor you to at least reconsider partial birth abortions. Don't respond to this saying that a mother has a right to do what she wants with her body. It's a load of crap. What she does have a right to do, is make a choice about whether or not she's responsible enough to have sex. If you think you're responsible enough to have sex... especially unprotected sex, then you're responsible enough to bear a child and at the very least give it up for adoption. (I'm proof that the adoption system can work)

Body: Month One

Mommy
I am only 8 inches long
but I have all my organs.
I love the sound of your voice.
Every time I hear it
I wave my arms and legs.
The sound of your heart beat
is my favorite lullaby.

Month Two

Mommy
today I learned how to suck my thumb.
If you could see me
you could definitely tell that I am a baby.
I'm not big enough to survive outside my home though.
It is so nice and warm in here.

Month Three

You know what Mommy
I'm a boy!!
I hope that makes you happy.
I always want you to be happy.
I don't like it when you cry.
You sound so sad.
It makes me sad too
and I cry with you even though
you can't hear me.

Month Four

Mommy
my hair is starting to grow.
It is very short and fine
but I will have a lot of it.
I spend a lot of my time exercising.
I can turn my head and curl my fingers and toes
and stretch my arms and legs.
I am becoming quite good at it too.

Month Five

You went to the doctor today.
Mommy, he lied to you.
He said that I'm not a baby.
I am a baby Mommy, your baby.
I think and feel.
Mommy, what's abortion?

Month Six

I can hear that doctor again.
I don't like him.
He seems cold and heartless.
Something is intruding my home.
The doctor called it a needle.
Mommy what is it? It burns!
Please make him stop!
I can't get away from it!
Mommy! HELP me!

Month Seven

Mommy
I am okay.
I am in Jesus's arms.
He is holding me.
He told me about abortion.
Why didn't you want me Mommy?

Every Abortion Is Just . . .

One more heart that was stopped.
Two more eyes that will never see.
Two more hands that will never touch.
Two more legs that will never run.
One more mouth that will never speak.

Don't ring the damned bell

2007-06-19T22:35:00.001-05:00

As you know I work in a lab. In this lab is a large window. In this window is a little bell. This little bell has caused more headaches for me than anything else in the last five years of my life. Yes, it's a shiny little bell, NO you don't have to ring it. If I'm standing right in front of you and you're handing me a specimin to process; don't ring the fucking bell and give me a shit eating grin. Thank you. Exactly how old are we. we're all healthcare professionals and most of us have a college degree. Why, oh why, must you ring my bell. Is it really THAT entertaining? While we're at it don't ring the bell even if no one has helped you. 99% of the people who come to my window know the protocol, you probably don't need help just drop your non-stat specimin at the window and we'll get to it when we have time. you don't need me to coddle you and tell you that you're doing the right thing. guess what just happened?... that little fucking bell... this better be good.

My birth mother

2007-06-19T17:24:00.000-05:00

Last night I was blogging about not forgetting where you're from and how sometimes I lose faith in the human race. This got me to thinking about an email my birth mother wrote to me awhile ago. I'll just give you the gist of it because it kinda disgusted me and was a little too long. She told me that she had some incurable liver disease (no doubt brought on by drugs and alchohol), if there even were a disease. Skipping ahead past all the formalities, knowing I had just had a child (mind you she's had not contact with me for the last year or so), she asks if we banked the cord blood. She asks this referencing an experimental therapy that utilizes t cells of a matching donor. I don't think I had a problem with her asking about the cord blood. Honestly, I would have given it to a stranger if it could help them live, so why not her. I'm on every organ and bone marrow donor list there is. I figure if I'm willing to donate anything I have to a stranger surely I can find it in my heart to give the woman who gave birth to me an opportunity to live.

What did disgust me though is what she went on to say were her alternatives if she couldn't find a match. Her best shot , she thought, was to have another child just so she could have the cord blood from the child and thus his t-cells. I can't describe how much this infuriated me. In essence, you're saying that you're willing to sacrifice the life, at least the quality of life of this child for a last ditch effort to save your own life.

I'll never again underestimate man's will to live. It's pretty sad that the will to live can overshadow any semblence of a rational thought. What confuses me even more is that my birth mother is writing me almost asking for my approval. She's demonstrated that she's unable to take care of a child in a few ways. The first and most obviously apparent way to me is her first two sons were taken away from her by the state because of inadequate care. The second is if you really are that ill and this treatment doesn't work what do you do with this child. Did I forget to mention that she lives in a women's shelter right now? I don't think that's what anyone would consider a stable home. How dare you ask me to accept such an assinine thought.

I couldn't let this child that she'd be creating, basically for a science experiment, go into foster care like I had done so many years ago, but how could I be responsible for this child. I just had one of my own and I'm hardly a perfect father. I do my best but I know my shortcomings. I honestly wonder how anyone could ever be this selfish.

I look at my own son today and sometimes I have a hard time going to work because I don't want him to miss me like I missed my family. The world just seems right when I see him smile. He doesn't know we're poor, he doesn't have a care in the world. How could I or anyone else for that matter think it's okay to leave a child you've created.

I'm not writing this for sympathy. I got over everything a long time ago. At some point in time everyone needs to realize that everything you do is a choice. Your childhood may have sucked, but guess what, everything you do from this moment forward is a choice. Don't be a victim. No matter how hard your life has been, someone else has had it harder. I was found in a dumpster and had a little pot belly like a malnurished african kid, but ya know what, at least I was born into the greatest nation in the world and have an opportunity to make my life better.

The selfishness I see every day of my life makes me sick. I know my birth mother is an extreme example of this selfishness but it still makes me wonder how much hope is there for the world if a mother would consider having a child just to have a chance to save her own.

I havn't written too much about my personal life on here yet, this is just a sample and maybe it gives you an idea of why I call it my cartoon life. The things I've seen an dealt with just seem like they belong on a cartoon.

Remember where you came from

2007-06-18T22:21:00.000-05:00

There are days I genuinely lose a little faith in the world. I lower my expectations for how people should act, I lower my expectations for what people should be accountable for. In other words the lack of good decent hard working people in the world kills just a little bit of me each day. Then I hear stories of random acts of kindness it renews my faith and affirmation that people are generally good and want to do good. I read a story of what Charles grant did for some ladies and it went like this

In Saints camp on the last day of the off season program, defensive end Charles Grant called over the club's vice president of communications, Greg Bensel, handed him a wad of $100 bills -- 20 to be exact -- and told him he wanted to buy lunch for all the women who work in the team offices. "Can you make it happen?'' Grant asked Bensel. He did, handing the $2,000 to GM Mickey Loomis' administrative assistant, who organized the luncheon field trip for the 20 women in the building. Way to remember where you came from, Charles.

While this isn't some great charity work, it does tell me one thing. That some people really do remember where they came from. It made me smile to know that a few people like to share the wealth and good fortune they've had with others. I don't understand why it's so hard for people to "remember where they come from." This doesn't just mean wealthy people giving back, it means so much more. Why do people think they can treat strangers with disrespect just because of who they are.

Don't call my lab demanding things, Don't call me unwilling to admit any fault, Don't talk to me if you can't understand that a mistake on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Don't treat waiters and waitress like crap because they serve you food. Don't talk down to or demean The people that work at the stores you go to. Please, everyone, realize that no matter how small or unimportant you think your job is, or you think someone else's job is, they are, in some way a vital part of the way society works (assuming you're not a worthless bum that collects welfare without a job and pops out kids for the hell of it) . Think about how inconvenient it would be for you to do things that you take for granted. Maybe these things are things that you can afford to pay other people to do. The general thought I really want to get across is please, don't forget where you're from. Would you parents, grandparents, kids, grand kids, or anyone that looks to you for guidance be proud of you and your actions.

I haven't always been proud of everything I've ever done but as a whole I've never forgotten where I'm from. Through the extreme highs, and extreme lows. Why is it so hard for people to stay grounded? Anyway, I realize that no one really reads my blog, but if you do come across it just let me know if you've heard of a random act of kindness. It makes me smile a little. Sometimes just a little smile is worth so much in an otherwise cartoon life.

Darfur

2007-06-07T11:46:00.000-05:00

While it has become a little cliche to "have a cause", I guess this is mine right now. While I do support the basic premise of why we're supposed to be in iraq, I have little faith in "the liberation of iraq and the prevention of genocide." being the only reason we're there. I do believe we're doing lots of good. I understand that there are huge benefits to have an oil producing democratic ally in the middle east. Yes, we're getting something out of ousting a sadaam. I'm okay with that.

In all fairness, if we say we're a country that supports democratic ideals and has a presidency that's willing to help oppressed people, we need to take a long hard look at what's going on in sudan. I understand that there are no economic or militaristic benefits to having a democratic ally in Northern Africa, what I don't understand is how we can allow what's going on in sudan to happen and the national media, government, and for the most part the american public, don't say a word.

I'm not advocating police action, although sometimes that is the only effective course of action. All I'm trying to build here is awareness, just understand what's going on over there. If the presidency wants to build a facade of an altruistic government intent only on doing the right thing in the international community we need to press the issue of darfur.

Don't get me wrong. For the most part. I like president bush, I know that doesn't seem to be popular amongst people in my age group and financial bracket, But in all honesty I think he's handled the the most things pretty well. I do think we stretched a little when we went into iraq. I am, however, pleased that we had an "action" oriented president in office that didn't waste too much time after the sept 11 attacks. I think we needed someone with kind of a "cowboy" attitude in office at the time.

Anyway I've gotten a little off topic. please check out the site I linked to on the side of my page. I'm sorry I don't know how to imbed links yet. if anyone actually reads this thing and knows, please tell me.

Welfare abuse

2007-06-06T10:38:00.000-05:00

I was reading something on violent acres that reminded me of something I've been going off on for years. To preface things I'll let you know that, yes, when my girlfriend and I had an unexpected pregnancy, we did use resources like W.I.C. and the pregnancy care center, and no, we did not take free crap like milk, eggs, cheese or formula.

What we did use those things for was the counseling, We went to child birth education classes, parenting classes, and just about anything else you could think of. We learned that breast-feeding is not only better for your child but that it's much cheaper. The one thing I can say we did use was W.I.C. offered a program that rented breast pumps for $50 bucks for as long as you'd like to use it. It still wasn't like I was having the government buy formula for me.

With the background information out there about me I'll continue with my rant, most of it stems from what I saw while I was working as a cashier in a little market in Logan UT. I can't count how many times people would come in and buy candy, soda, cookies, all kinds of crap with their food stamp card. If you've noticed lately they've gone to a system, where they use a card, that's discreet, and kinda looks like a credit card. If you ask me; I think if you're taking money out of the pockets of everyone around you so that you can buy crap like cookies and candy and what not, it should be obvious what you're doing.

The worst things I remember seeing was people who I know were better off than me; (at the time I was being paid 7.25 an hour to cashier at a market, and I worked as a cook in a bar and grill at nights.) using food stamps to come in and get their hourly fountain drinks and bags of penny candy. I also remember seeing people come in buy a bunch of frozen dinners and other random crap with their food stamp card, then buy beer and cigarettes with cash.

NEWSFLASH: if you have money for beer and cigarettes, then you have enough money for food and other necessities.

I used to wonder how I could ever afford a kid, Ya know what it's not so hard. I don't make a ton of money, but guess what I figured out. If you stop smoking and limit yourself to a couple of six packs of sam adams instead of a constant flow of beer in the fridge or if you just don't go out to the bar anymore, you have more than enough money for diapers and to buy your own food and formula.

While I do understand that there are people who genuinely need help, I also understand that if you're an able bodied male with average mental capacity, you're not one of those people. I don't care who you are. If you want to work, you'll find work. I've had more than one job for much of my adult life. When things got a little tight I got a second job or I cut back on things I didn't really need, i didn't get food stamps so that everyone else can pay for my food while i spend my money on beer and cigarettes.

If I ran the world, I wouldn't eliminate welfare and I certainly wouldn't eliminate W.I.C. because they have so many programs other than just the free food and formula that people can take advantage of. What I would do, is make welfare more like a second job. Yes, you'll get food stamps, but no, they won't be free, you'll work a government job. You'll help road crews, you'll clean public buildings, or anything else that needs to be done. I can't count how many friends have had to take a second job to support their families, this program will, in essence, be a state sponsored second job. You can work any time you're not at your primary job. You know you've all seen road crews working in the wee hours of the morning. I think this will do two things, it will weed out the people that don't really need welfare, and it will save an already strained goverment program millions of dollars.

Stupid Mediacom

2007-06-01T22:21:00.000-05:00

I'm posting this because of a recent post on elguapo, go check it out I'm linked to his site. I looked at my mediacom bill this month and decided something, internet and cable tv are not worth 100 bucks.

I sat down to review all the charges and see if I could save a few bucks. This thing is harder to read than the koran. It has about 900 different charges and is impossible to decipher exactly what you're being charged for. I finally came to the conclusion that the movie package that my girlfriend got when she first signed up as part of some kind of package needed to go. I told my girlfriend to call them and cancel the movie channels since we never watched them anyway.

I call my girlfriend from work and ask if everything went smoothly, of course, it didn't. Somehow they managed to convince her that she's only paying 2 bucks a month for these channels. This could very well be the truth seeing as how I couldn't read the damned bill anyway. The point I want to make is that whether it was costing 2 or 200 bucks I asked for it to be cancelled so cancel the shit already.

I decide it's probably best if I just call mediacom and let them know I don't care how much it costs. It looks to me as though it's costing me 24 bucks a month. Like I said before, though, I could very well be wrong. I call mediacom and this is how the conversation goes. (roughly)

Me: "Hi my account number is blah blah blah and I'd like to cancel such and such movie channels."

mediacom rep: Well sir, according to my computer you're currently only paying $2 a month for this service.

Me: I don't care how much you say it's costing me, I told you I wanted to cancel it

rep: well sir, it's a very good deal

Me: I don't watch those channels, EVER, and I want to save those $2 a month.

rep: well sir, would you like to subscribe to one of our other movie channels instead.

Me: NO!, I made it very clear what I'd like to do.

rep: and what was that?

Me: Are you kidding? do you really not remember I wanted to cancel such and such services.

rep well sir, I'm sure we can go ahead and do this, I just need to confirm your name and address and the last four of your social.

ME: blah blah blah

rep: I'm sorry sir but you're not listed on the account, you're not allowed to change any account information.

Me: What's the name on the fucking check you recieve every month. I think that puts my name on the account!

rep Click.

I seriously couldn't believe a customer service rep hung up on me. I'll admit I deserved it I was kind of being a dick. I understand that she had a job to do, and I didn't make it any easier. However, When I say I want to do something don't try to talk me out of it for ten minutes. I know what I want and of what concern is it to you? Here's the point in a nutshell. Mediacom sucks and why does changing such simple things have to be such a chore. When did we really lose the idea of what customer service means?

How to get a free dessert

2007-05-30T21:50:00.000-05:00

This is another good ole army story, frankly, I think I just had too much time on my hands. My friend tamara and I were driving around the quiet streets of el paso with nothing to do. So naturally, our minds started to wander. When out of the blue the best idea in the history of the world came to us, kind of at the same time, okay, well maybe not the best idea ever, but a very good one.

Me: "Let's go eat."
tam: "okay, where?"
Me: "The next place we see."
Tam: "I'm bored, let's do something stupid."
Me: "okay, Wanna pretend we're getting married?"
Tam: "What? hey maybe we'll get some free shit"

The next place we see is a Tgi friday's. We slip the ring off of her finger and into a ring box I happened to have in the truck, yeah I know it's just a little too convienent. We walk in the restaurant and as we're being escorted to our seats I take the waiter aside and tell him my plans to propose to my girlfriend and how I'm going to need to get hammered to do this. He shoots me a "Are you fucking serious" look and asks me why tgi friday's I explain to him that it's the first place we ever went out to. In true white trash fashion I remind him that I'm really nervous and am going to need to get really tanked and to keep the coors light flowing. We sit down and order our drinks and meals. By the time our meals get there I've already downed 6 beers. As I devour my meal I keep thinking of exactly how to propose, finally I decide I'll pull the waiter aside and ask him to bring it out with dessert. By the time dessert rolls around I'm three sheets to the wind. What happens next I can only explain as pure genius. Our waiter drops off dessert and the ring, Tamara looks at it a little confused, I get down on one knee and go into this long drawn out drunken proposal. I'm pretty sure it last's a good fifteen minutes, by now I've drawn the attention of most of the staff and customers. When I'm finally done with the proposal her reply was a simple "no"... WTF... What am I suppossed to do now. My first reaction was to get up flip her off while yelling "fuck you!" It was one of my finer moments. As I'm leaving, sobbing fake tears, the hostess in her perkiest little voice says "Have a great night sir"... My reply to this was "what the fuck is wrong with you do you really think I'll have a good night, the woman I love, the woman who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with just said she wouldn't marry me, do you really think I'll have a good night?!" The look on her face was priceless, a mixture of pity, shock, and horror. I leave and go out to my truck expecting tamara to pay the bill and come out in a couple of minutes. I kid you not, she was in there for another hour and a half, The hostess took it upon themselves to give her a little counseling session, while she had a few more drinks. When she finally came back out she told me that our entire meal drinks and all had been comped. I felt a little bad untill I realized it's just some stupid corporate chain, Fuck 'em they can give away a meal or two. I did go back into that same tgi friday's about a week later with another girl, I even had the same waiter. He ended up being pretty cool and we had a laugh about it all... and yes I did tip him insanely well for having to put up with all that shit.

basic training

2007-05-25T15:36:00.000-05:00

I think this story is a pretty good synopsis of my life. I've gone through phases where I honestly thought the rules just don't apply to me and that I can talk my way out of anything. I found out in the army that this just isn't true. I convinced my girl friend at the time (who is now a lesbian).
SIDE NOTE I promise I'll go into that wacky relationship later.
to send me some brownies and a fifth of jack, how, may you ask, did I get these things in basic training. Well, my girlfriend at the time was a little smarter than I gave her credit for. She bought a huge box of cheap ass laundry detergent and opened the bottom of it, took out about a fourth of the detergent and put the bottle and brownies in. she then hot glued the bottom back in place and turned the box back right side up. Upon inspection it just looks like a normal box of detergent. Of course my drill sgt did inspect it and and found nothing. He questioned who the fuck would send me such a package. I just played it off as a joke. He bought it I was home free, right?... Wrong. Just like in most things in my life I forgot the little details, like remembering to lock my wall locker. A favorite past time of drill sgt's is pull on the locks of everyone's wall locker and make sure they're secure. A few of us thought we were smart and could save some time by making our locks look locked but all we had to do was pull down on the lock. (believe me every second of sleep helps). Anyway, of course my wall locker was unlocked, which was an invitaion to take everything in my wall locker and throw it about in a reckless way. When he did this he had a ball with the big ass box of detergent. When all of a sudden I hear a loud crash. Immediatly I know exactly what has happened, my poor bottle of jack is all over the floor in the bay. I'm not terribly excited. Needles to say my the rest of my night isn't a cake walk. The next day is our end of cycle testing. Which is a bunch of crap, we also get ot write a letter to our drill sgt highlighting the positive and negative points of the last 3 weeks. Again I decided to act without thinking. The gist of what my letter says is that yeah I got the shit smoked out of me but those few sips of the tasty beverage that is jack daniels was well worth it. Now let me remind you that there are suppossed to be no consequences for anything we write. Not so for me. It's taken me a long time to figure out that technicalites don't mean shit in the real world. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with m.o.p level 4 but basically it's a charcoal chemical suit with a chemical mask and akward rubber boots and gloves. Anyway during the entire testing I had to be in mop level 4, it's hot as shit and not too easy to breath through that chemical mask. Anytime we were standing in line idle I had to be doing up downs, if you've played football you know what kind of hell that is in just pads and a helmet, imagine a charcoal suit. It wasn't fun, but as I look back on it, I have to say those few moments of bliss that I got from that bottle of jack daniels was well worth it. The funny this is after it was all said and done my favorite drill sgt. said it was the funniest shit he'd ever seen and that I was gonna be alright, and probably a lifer. He was wrong about that last part, although I do miss the army and wish I never got out... well rather kicked out for being an alchoholic. That's another story you'll read soon enough. Seriously who gets kicked out of the army for being an alchoholic every one is an alchoholic. Oh well, live and learn

Tips on appropriate bar behavior

2007-05-25T03:03:00.000-05:00

Someone once pointed out to me the fact that there seems to be a micro-economy in the service industry. Restaurant workers take their tip money out to bars and clubs at night and give it to the bartenders, who promptly return it to the waiters and waitresses the next day at lunch. The cycle is almost self-sufficient and is mutually beneficial. Knowing the pain of waiting on customers, each group tips the other well and never raises a fuss. These people do not need to be educated. The rest of you do.

Many of us have stood in a noisy, crowded bar and asked, "What's a guy got to do to get a drink around here?" Well, you're about to find out. Here are some Do's and Don'ts that will keep the relationship between the bartender and bar patron running smoothly.

DON'TS
Fail to have your money ready

We're waiting on you. Everyone else is waiting on us. Therefore, by the Transitive Property of Equality, everyone is waiting on you. Rule #1: Have your shit together. Not only will following Rule #1 get you served quicker in a bar, it's a good general rule to adopt in life and is especially helpful in Central American border crossing scenarios.

Whistle

This is an absolute No-No. You whistle at dogs and pretty ladies, not people.

Wave money

Oh, you've got a dollar!! I'll be right over!! Hopefully I won't break an ankle in my fevered rush to get you your "curz lite." Well, at least you're not breaking the next rule.

Say "make it strong!" or "put a lot of liquor in it"

Oh, you're one of the rare drinkers that like their drink strong! When you say this, you're assuming I make weak drinks (which is insulting) and you're assuming that I'll stiffen this one up for my new best buddy, you. This is the best way to get a weak drink.

Give the ever-expanding drink order

You want a Bud. I go get it. I come back and now you want a Margarita. Okay, no prob. I come back, and (oh yeah!) now you want a shot of Tequila, too. You really could have told us this all at once. See Rule #1.

Pull the redirect (or the bait 'n' switch)

Usually used after the money wave or the whistle, this is when the gentlemen passes his turn to the lady behind him. Yeah, um, don't do that, okay? Chances are she's not ready, and your weak attempt at chivalry just cost you your turn. See you in 30 minutes.

Try the confused, lost look

This is usually accompanied by the question "What kind of beer y'all got?" while looking at all the beers we have. You did know you were in a bar, right? You didn't just appear here, did you? Refer to Rule #1.

Order High Maintenance shooters

Example: "Lemme get an Alabama Slammer, a Red Snapper, two Kamikazes, a Buttery Nipple and a Lemon Drop." Usually followed by a small tip. People, these shooters are fine by themselves, but there are multiple steps involved with each one. Translation: Time Sink. You may get them this time, but you'll probably be waited on last the next time we see your face. Here's a clue as to whether or not you're high maintenance; if two bartenders are working and they see you, and they flip a coin and the loser comes over to take your order, pretty good chance you're high maintenance.

Assume we know you're in the band

We know, we know, you're gonna be really famous, but you're not there yet, tiger. Tell us you're in the band and which band you're in. By the way, if you are in a band and get free/reduced drink prices, feel free to tip, as most bartenders are also in bands! It's not like we don't know how it is. Oh, and our bands will smoke your band.

Assume we know you period

Unless you've followed the first "Do" rule below, we don't remember you. You are one of a thousand faces for us, and when you point at an empty glass or a beer bottle that's invariably facing away from us, your attempt at a shortcut backfires. Tell us what you want.

Apologize for sucking

Don't apologize for not tipping. Acknowledging that you suck is not the same as not sucking. Oh, and don't say "I'll get ya next time." We know all about you.

Assume soft drinks are free

Are they free at McDonald's? Are they free at Wal-Mart? Are they free anywhere? I blame M.A.D.D. for this myth.

Put pennies and nickels in the tip jar

We don't want that crap in our pockets any more than you do. We don't have anything smaller than quarters. Have you ever ordered a drink that cost $3.17?

Be "The Microbrew Aficionado"

Usually a pseudo-hippy who can't tip a quarter but can't bring himself to drink "schwag," and who has to sample some new berry-wheat-harvest-ale that he heard about at Burning Man. "Do you have the new Vernal-Equinox Special Welcome-Fest?" "Does Anyone?" Here's your Newcastle. Go.

Be "The Daddy Warbucks"

Dressed in classic day-trader wear, this loud, boisterous guy smokes cigars and orders Martinis and generally exudes an air of money. Until the tip. We hate you.

Be a "Whiney Baby"

Under no circumstances should you ever whine to a bartender when asked to see your ID. Our jobs depend on them, and when we spot a fake/expired ID, don't argue; we've seen and heard it all a million times before, and it will get you absolutely nowhere. If you "don't have one" or "forgot it," forget it; you don't belong out on the town in the first place. That's the law, plain and simple. If we don't have the law, the terrorists win. You don't want the terrorists to win, do you? Bring your ID. Remember Rule #1, from a minute ago?

DO'S
Tip

Tip heavy right off the bat, and you're the first person we aim for every time you come up to the bar. Did you get that? Go back and read it again. The word will spread to the other bartenders and you'll be treated like a prince. It will pay off in better drinks and the occasional free one.

Be patient

All you really need to do to get waited on is make eye contact. We see you, and we'll get to you before the guy right next to you waving money and whistling. Remember, this isn't insulin we're passing out here. If you really need the drink that bad, you've got a problem to address, Jack. The meek shall inherit the bar.

Be an attractive female

As in life, this goes far.

If this comes across as a little petty, remember: bartenders are a jaded lot.