bump

this is sagan, last saturday. but who cares about her?

i shouldn't say anything, but i'm excited. i'll jinx it, surely, but i'm excited. i'm on the verge of moving from transcriptionist iii to transcriptionist ii. a promotion, a level bump. it's based on speed, see. my line count has been especially good the last two months and if i keep it up through this month, i go to the next level. three consecutive months at a level-ii speed, and i go to level ii. it's another buck an hour, at which i will not sneeze, but mostly it's rewarding just to be doing well. aren't i goofy?

i was hired in may 2005; i haven't been a transcriptionist a year yet. when an inexperienced transcriptionist is hired (i got my transcription certificate from a technical college in march 2005), that person is hired as a trainee. usually one is a trainee for a year. i graduated from traineedom in january 2006, so that's what? eight months? eight months. so i've been a full-fledged transcriptionist, transcriptionist iii, now for not quite three months. and here i am on the cusp of moving up!

pardon the horn tooting, but i am the shit.

well, we'll see. i'm not there yet. this is why i shouldn't even be writing this here. i could screw the whole thing up, my line count could drop in the coming weeks. then i would start over and have to maintain a level-ii speed for three months in a row in order to make the grade.

i'm thinking i'll make it, though. i'm thinking so. i'm going for it.

anyway. i'm going back to my novel now. write write write! that's going okay too.

here come da sun

eosophobia - morbid dread of the dawn

ha! i ain't eosophobic but maybe kara is. i'll get to writing now, and i'll be writing when the dawn comes.

regimen

ready? okay! i'm getting on the stick and making things happen. for too long i have been slack.

yesterday afternoon, after work no less, i exercised, did a little time on the recumbent bike. not a terribly long time, because it's been a while and i'm flabby and weak, but a time nonetheless.

this morning, instead of getting up like a crazy person at 4:30am and rushing off to work, i got up like a crazy person at 4:30am and came up here and did some writing. the novel! remember the novel? i confess i myself barely remembered it, but now i'm back in the thick of it. just like that! like riding a bike! i wrote something like 600 words this morning; i want to be doing at least 500 each and every day, so this morning was good.

the current scene has horst (a funeral home representative and minor character) and shannon (our hero) in the hospital morgue, because some bonehead didn't leave behind the appropriate identifying paperwork, trying to figure out which of three corpses on gurneys is the one horst is supposed to collect. shannon shows his stuff by reading the medical records and determining by scars etc on the bodies just who is who.

is this not totally ridiculous? who cares?! i'm having fun with it. i'm going to do at least another 500 words tomorrow morning, probably finishing this scene.

i exercised this afternoon as well, more time on the bike, "the commitments" in the dvd player. then i had a needed and deserved shower. i pat myself on the back and ready myself for more of the same tomorrow. yeah, creeping out to the (detached) garage (where our exercise equipment lives and breathes) at 5am in the chilly dark was just not appealing to me. i wasn't feeling it. i'd much rather be up here in the predawn, banging away on my ergonomic keyboard.

working out in the afternoon, though, is potentially problematic in terms of energy levels after a day on the job. at the moment, however, i'm motivated, and believing i can keep this regimen going.

oh, and in the event i've been keeping you in suspense, no, i didn't break my hip. neither did kara. no one i know did, to my knowledge. the above image is here only because i typed a report this afternoon in which this kind of surgery was done, the reduction of a four-part intertrochanteric fracture, with internal fixation. i found the picture at work and liked it. end of story.

clips

kara and i watched this documentary last evening and it was amazing. two minutes in i was bawling and i didn't stop until after it was over. middle school kids in a wee town in tennessee called whitwell (pronounced "wtwl") learn about the holocaust by attempting to collect six million paper clips, one to represent every jew murdered.

freaky that whitwell is in such proximity to pulaski, where the kkk was founded, and dayton, where the monkey trial took place. i urge people to see this documentary. the point is made a few times that it's a one-horse town and there's no diversity in it and plenty of prejudice. some of those involved in this project had a sincere turn-around in this arena and that definitely got to me too.

kara was moved in the same way, as she grew up in towns not unlike this one, only in texas. she grew up around this kind of prejudice. it's a testament, i imagine, to her parents, that she came out of that situation okay. i wish i could have met them.

one thing did bother me about the film and it is this - well, it's not just this film, really, but the film does perpetuate the issue. the number "six million" keeps getting tossed around. that number represents the estimanted number of jews killed in the camps, yes? the documentary offhandedly mentions that this number does not include the gypsies, gays, and others who were systematically eliminated. so what's the real number, of everybody? ten million? twelve million? what?

interesting, perhaps, that last weekend (while kara was at work and jennifer and rick were with his cousin's family) i watched another documentary called "mr death", about a moron who thinks he has disproved the holocaust. i guess it was theme week. i need to watch "schindler's list" again soon.

nary a vaginal delivery neither

seems a conspiracy could be afoot. yesterday was the ides of march and i had not one cesarean section report all day long.

necrotizing fasciitis

aka flesh-eating bacteria. no, don't panic, eliot hasn't come down with this too. he's fine; his anal sphincter is just peachy.

but some other folks in town aren't so lucky.

last week my colleague tawny told me of a report she typed in which a boy's face was eaten away. he got a cut on his lip and within days his face was gone. it wasn't clear he would survive. this morning i see this article in the local paper (online) - a woman died of it. and my second report of the day today was of another woman of about the same age who died too. you can get a little cut, it gets infected (aka septic), the infection spreads rapidly, and you die. essentially. here's more (from canada!). scary in a pretty big way. that's three cases in this area in a week!

be careful is what i'm saying. wash your hands.

i thought about attaching a photo but they're just horrible to look at, even for me. but if you're feeling sturdy and want to look at some, here's choices. i leave it to you.

free expression

there's no pleasant way to say this so i'll just say it. eliot's asshole was horrendously inflamed. (the image to the left is not actually eliot. truth, it's no one i know.)

by his demeanor it was clear he was quite uncomfortable. he scooted his tender behind across the floor, this time, fortunately, not leaving a fecal trail. kara took him to the vet this morning and i picked him up after work. he was spot-shaved a bit and had his anal sacs expressed. we got some antibiotics to put on his wee bum.

he seems to feel better. he was a little shellshocked fresh from the vet, but he's relaxed some since.

in more pleasant news, jennifer and rick were here! we had a great time, though the visit was quite quick and felt interrupted by my shifts at work and kara's shifts at work. they also got to see rick's cousin who lives here in tacoma, so that was good for them.

saturday we had a good day by the fire, relaxing and reading. monday (yesterday) we went to seattle and did a spot of shopping. we visited the elliott bay book company (of course).

kara was recognized by a former colleague, which was interesting. whenever i go there i see employees i recognize (sometimes i think it's weird that some of the same people are still working there. do they not have anything else they want to do with their lives? but then i remember that once upon a time i wanted to be a lifelong bookseller. of course, i did grow out of it ...) but i don't particularly believe they recognize me, as i worked there for something like 3 months something like 5 years ago.

i'm not moping about not being recognized.

then we strolled down first avenue to pike place market. we saw the fish throwers and lots of tourists and produce and handmade jewelry. kara and i bought a watercolor triptych - usually i'm not keen on watercolors but this one was nice - folks in bathtubs. then we came home. we watched "the daily show" and i went to bed.

i got up crazy early this morning and went to work. jennifer and rick flew back to ohio. kara took eliot to the vet and went to work.

rant reiteration

let me get something off my chest real quick. well i don't know how quick but we'll see. i'll start by saying this: medical reports follow a general format. emergency department reports, for example, tend to start with the heading "chief complaint," which is what the patient says the trouble is (common ones include "abdominal pain," "shortness of breath," "foreign body in naris," "tugging on ears," and [one of my faves] "found down").

then there's the "history of present illness" heading (or "hpi"), which is supposed to explain how the chief complaint came to be.

the heading most emergency room physicians use next is "past medical history." now, i do take issue with this. tell me it isn't redundant. it bugs me, so for the last several months i've just been typing "medical history" as the heading, and no one yet has come to yell at me.

i know i'm new to this gig and still idealistic, but really.

some doctors even say things (under subsequent headings "social history" or "habits") such as "the patient has a current history of smoking" - what is that?! i understand "remote history" and "recent history," but "past history"? "current history"?! i feel like i'm about to pop.

of course, if someone can explain to me the legitimacy of "current history," oh, please do. i'm all ears. if i'm missing something i'd like to know.

anyway, the "medical history" is pretty much what it sounds like. prior medical issues, chronic medical issues. doctors typically say things like "the patient has had a prior history of cholecystectomy in the past," and i pop again. "has had a prior history"?! and i do wonder when else the history of cholecystectomy would be. the future? i confess i've yet to hear a dictator say "future history," but that day could be coming.

and then we typically get a "review of systems." this, to my understanding, is the patient's subjective assessment of her or his person. the system subheadings include "respiratory," "cardiovascular," "gastrointestinal," "genitourinary," "musculoskeletal," "integumentary," etc, but most of the time in these emergency reports the time-sensitive doctor just says something like, "all systems are reviewed and are otherwise negative except as stated above in the hpi."

now, of course this sentence troubles me too. "otherwise negative except as stated above"? what does that mean? anyone want to diagram this for me?

not a small part of my job is, clearly, fixing the stupid things doctors say, so their reports don't make them look like fools. but i look at a lot of old reports in the course of a day and notice that most transcriptionists don't fix these kinds of redundancies. everyone else uses "past medical history" as a heading. can i be the only one who sees this as redundant? the only one who is bothered?

or is there truly something to it that i am missing? should i abandon my crusade?


fyi:
ombrophobia is a morbid fear of rain

time and a half

hoo! what's next? here's how my mind works. all this week, except sunday, i got to work at 5:45am, which is 1.25 hours earlier than my scheduled time. overtime is encouraged these days because we're behind on our minutes/lines/whatever. i don't mind working a bit extra; i like the job, i like the cash. so i was thinking, i work 1.25 hours of overtime all four days (monday, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday - you're welcome), that comes to 5 hours of overtime for the week. (i didn't go in early on sunday because there wasn't a clerk working and i didn't want to shoulder all the telephone responsiblities - what's groovy about my job is i sit there with headphones on and don't have to talk to anyone!)

getting up early has always been easy for me. my alarm is set for 5am but all this week and last i woke up at 4:30. my internal clock is on the money. only, well, night before last i didn't sleep so well (rachel weisz plagued my dreams), so last night i was especially tired. boy did i sleep well last night! i slept right until 4:55 and i might have slept longer (right to the alarm!) had kara not woken me.

so i was a touch late. but i felt like i had to get to work at 5:45. obviously i didn't have to, because i'm not actually due until 7, but having the tidy 5 hours of overtime appealed so much that i rushed this morning. i took what some would consider an insufficient shower, washing merely the vitals and hopping out.

of course it snowed last night (?!) and there was ice on my car. i did an insufficient scraping job, which was perhaps even more foolish than the abortive shower, but i made it to work safely - and on time! that is to say, 1.25 hours early.

i was pleased. my 5 hours of overtime for the week was cinched. then, wouldn't you know, my last report of the day was a 30-minute orthopedic surgery report (status post pedestrian versus car) that took me a heck of a long time to do, and i didn't finish until 3:45, 15 minutes after my scheduled departure time. so much for my 5 hours. bah! now it's 5.25 hours. i'm ruined.

and, yeah, that 30-minute report was the longest i've ever done. comminuted fractures of the humerus, ulna, and pelvis; a full-thickness avulsion over the tib-fib; and a medial malleolus fracture. if you're a pedestrian and you see a car coming, i recommend getting out of the way.

... anyway ...

my sister jennifer and her husband rick are coming over tomorrow. they live in ohio. i'm excited; i haven't seen them in a long time. they stay until tuesday. unfortunately kara works the weekend but we both have monday off. we'll have a little visit.

and there's a new film out called "ultraviolet" that i'm sure is totally stupid but i actually wouldn't mind seeing it because of (forgive me) this.

octavia butler

this stern-looking woman is octavia butler. she wrote novels and stories in the science-fiction genre. she died last week. she was 58.

truth, i've read only one of her books. "mind of my mind." it was years ago that i read it. she just published a book last fall that i'm interested in, though. i'm waiting for paperback.

she lived in lake forest park, wa, probably pretty close to the bookstore where i worked, third place, because she came in fairly regularly. she was a big woman, very tall, imposing. her voice was tremendously deep.

she would buy cheesy romance novels, real crap. i think they were like candy for her. she probably swallowed them whole.

i never said, hey, you're octavia butler, aren't you? i never did. partly because i'm shy and she was a little scary but also partly because i imagined she might have appreciated the anonymity, privacy, what have you. being a famous writer and all. i sort of regret it, because it would have been nice to meet her. (maybe we could have become friends! you never know.) sometimes i think she might have appreciated being recognized.

i don't know. i'm sad that she died, though.