Pummelo Revisited

My couple of readers may remember that I'd had a dream about a piece of fruit that I'd never seen before last year, and subsequently found out that the fruit I'd dreamed about was known as a "pummelo." I went through a bit of angst over whether or not to try the pummelo, wondering if I would affect the time-space continuum or end up in the underworld like Persephone, who ate seven pomegrante seeds and then had to stay in the underworld for seven months out of the year.

Well, I finally tried the pummelo. As far as I know, I haven't had any effect on the time-space continuum, and I'm not in the underworld. Only time will tell as to whether I added months onto the winter season in the Mitten.

But I have to say the thing was horrible. It was about the size of a grapefruit, and I thought it might have a similar taste. But once I battled with the very thick, tough skin and got to the fruit, it was terribly bitter. Quite icky, actually. I ended up throwing the rest of it away.

Okay I think I've talked about fruit enough.

This is your brain on...

Some of my friends know that I have been struggling with a horrendous case of asthma, almost since I got over the pneumonia. Well, the treatment of choice for uncontrollable asthma is prednisone--a form of steroid, to put it simply. I was on a fairly high dose of it in order to keep my breathing under control, and it comes with a lovely assortment of side effects: stomachaches, mood swings, weight gain, to name a few. It also acts as sort of a stimulant, which means that I had LOTS of energy for the last few weeks.

The good news is that I am finally able to breathe without wheezing, which means that I can decrease the prednisone (it has to be decreased slowly, because if it is stopped abruptly, it can mess with the adrenal glands and cause all sorts of problems). The bad news is that my body had gotten used to the stimulant effects of it, and now...I'm...moving...really...slowly.

Yesterday between naps, I considered calling Agatestone and asking her to come over and feed me chocolate bars like she mentioned that Starsky did for Hutch when he had been drugged, but I kept falling asleep. :)

I haven't been all that tempted in my life to try illicit drugs. I guess when I have to take a whole pharmacy's worth of meds just to keep breathing, adding more drugs doesn't sound like fun. But I can partly understand why athletes succumb to the temptation of taking steroids. Of course, I haven't run any 3 minute miles or lifted 500 pounds lately, but if a mild, legal version of what they take can have such an effect on my body, I suppose it would not be a strong temptation for an athlete to say, "Just this once before a competition." Certainly I am not condoning it, especially since the long-term effects from even the legal version of steroids are quite scary, but guess I can sort of understand the thinking that might lead someone to try steroids for performance enhancement.

Meanwhile, it is really nice to breathe without so much artificial assistance. And I think I may be able to get through the day with only a couple of naps.

Recess!

The other day at work, I heard an overhead page: "Anesthesia to Resuss Stat!" For the nonmedical folks, "resuss" is short for a "resuscitation room." The hospital where I work has a large ER, which has several resuscitation rooms. Those are where patients go if they are really in trouble, such as the severely injured or extremely ill. But the strange thing is, when I heard the overhead page, I thought the announcer had just called anesthesia to recess.

"Anesthesia to recess stat!" I pictured all of these normally serious medical people bursting out the front doors of the hospital and starting a snowball fight in the parking lot, or climbing up the lampposts. It occurred to me that "recess" is a great idea.

We used to have it in grade school: an hour or so where we either went outside and ran around, or stayed indoors and played games, depending on the weather. Somehow in the process of what we laughingly call "growing up," the idea of recess faded to a soft memory in my mind.

I think we should bring recess to the adult world. Oh, sure, we have government-mandated breaks and lunches, but how many of us actually have any fun time planned into the day? I can't remember the last time I threw a snowball, or walked in the woods in the wintertime. But even in my urban hospital setting, we could still take walks around the hospital, play tag in the parking lot, or even bring in board games. I think we would all be the better for it.

While I'm thinking about it, I also think our world would be a better place if we all were given blankets, milk, and vanilla wafers and told to lie down and rest for an hour in the middle of the day. Maybe after recess.

Bureaucratic Idiosyncrasies

I may have just spelled my title wrong, but I don't want to worry about it at the moment. Anyway, I thought I'd share the latest red tape in the medical field: One of the Homeland Security mandates is that all hospitals in the U.S. have the same code "colors," like "Code Blue" for a patient in cardiac/respiratory arrest (probably a well-known code for anyone who watches medical TV shows). I suppose it makes sense, since that way you don't need to wonder which color means which emergency if you work in another hospital, but I don't even want to think about how much of my hard-earned money went to people who sat in a room and thought up different color codes for emergencies. I always thought I could mismanage my money far more effectively than the government can. But I digress...

So one day, I was running a lab test, and while waiting for it to finish, I looked at the brightly-colored poster with all of the standard codes on it. My eyes strayed to "Code Yellow," which means a bomb threat in medical-ese. I read through the standard advice, like, "keep the caller on the line as long as possible," "call security/police," "get as much detail as you can," "don't go near any suspicious packages," and "fill out the bomb threat reporting form..."

Bomb threat form? We actually have a bomb threat form somewhere in our facility?? Where is it? In the Bomb Threat Reporting Form file?? I considered casually asking my boss where the bomb threat forms were kept, but decided that might invite more trouble than I wanted.

I am more than willing to help out in times of emergency. But if someone does call my place of employment and informs me that there is a bomb planted someplace on the premises, the last thing I will be worrying about is which form I have to fill out.

And in the I Truly Feel Like a Number department, remember my bout with pneumonia? It wasn't enough that I didn't have enough sick time to cover the whole event, I discovered (or, more accurately, re-discovered, since I had read the policy and then filed it under "Idiotic Policies to be Ignored" in my mind) that even though I had a documented serious illness that almost landed me in the hospital, the documentation didn't matter. What mattered was the number of days that I was out of work. Each day that I was out of work for one serious illness counted as a separate unexcused absence (even for a documented medical condition). Never mind that I was hardly strong enough to make myself a meal, much less go into work and be effective. Apparently it also didn't matter that if I had been able to drag myself into work, I could have infected my patients--who are, by and large, suffering from a number of chronic illnesses and are also extremely frail.

The frustrating part of this is not so much that I am cocncerned about being disciplined (or, in the jargon, "written up"). My concern is that my employer has instituted a policy that discourages people with legitimate illnesses from staying home from work. If I, as a reasonably healthy, reasonably young woman can be incapacitated for close to a week with pneumonia, what does the administration think will happen to the patients who are much more frail than I am if I drag myself into work and expose them to whatever illnesses they have?

Oh, wait a minute. I think I just came up with an oxymoron: Administration thinks. Anyway, if I end up needing another job, I can just picture the interview: "Why did you leave your last job?" "Well, I was fired because I didn't fill out the bomb threat form and I stayed home from work because I had a potentially life-threatening illness." Sad, isn't it?

I have just about decided to dump the pursuit of my MBA. Although the school I have attended is an excellent one, I really think this world has more than enough managers and administrators, and far too few actual leaders.

Okay, rant over.

The sigline that I have on one of my favorite websites sums my current attitude up quite perfectly: "Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been." --Grateful Dead

More stuck songs and a confession

The last couple of days, I've had these really annoying sappy love songs from the 70's or 80's going through my head. It's as if a drawer in my mind labelled "Songs I Couldn't Stand Even When I was Heartbroken and Thinking in Cliches" popped open and all these songs scattered around my brain. One of the songs is by some forgotten artist or band, and the refrain, "I need you now, more than I can say, I need you now..." is going through my head incessantly. Picture some tenor/borderline whiner with the prerequisite strings and orchestral stuff in the background. Yesterday it was some song by the group "Air Supply," and I mercifully can't remember how that one went. Although it did remind me of a comedian who commented, "If you get beat up at an Air Supply concert, you probably deserve it."

Anyway, I was in the shower today and inexplicably, Beethoven's Fifth started going through my head. Not the original version. The horrid, disco version from the 1970's that probably had poor Ludwig rolling over in his grave.

Which brings me to the eternal question once again: Why the heck do people get songs stuck in their heads? Since I am now working with a neuropsychologist, maybe I'll ask her about this. Maybe I'll get an answer. Maybe I'll get a prescription. But it can't hurt to ask.

Anyway, I also have a confession: Sometimes, when I am driving (preferably in the dark) and that Celine Dion song from The Titanic comes on the radio, I like to sing along with it at the top of my lungs. Not that I particularly like the song, but it's fun to sing along with.

There, I've confessed. I feel much better now.

Advice Martha Stewart Forgot to Give

1. If you are about 5'3" tall, and weigh around 130 pounds, and you decide that you really, really hate the old oak bookcase that has been serving as an entertainment center in your living room, you might want to plan ahead before moving it into the basement.

Specifically, you may want to take into consideration that a) the bookcase weighs twice as much as you do, and b) there is a turn at the end of your basement stairs, and there is no way that a bookcase that size will make the turn without being dismantled. If you fail to heed these precautions, don't be surprised if you are stuck with a bookcase stuck halfway down your basement stairs until your ever-patient father can rescue you with a variety of saws and a sledgehammer.

2. If a friend gives you a really good bottle of wine, and you have a glass, then you have another glass (repeat as needed), it might not be the best time for you to decide, "I think I'll paint the trim in my meditation room."

At least I got most of the paint cleaned up, but the bookcase is still wedged in the stairwell.

Another, erm...stimulating topic

Some of my (two or three) readers know that I finally managed to get transferred out of the ICU where I was working, and now I am working in a clinic, where the staff members are much, much nicer, and everyone seems relatively normal. Of course I still have my share of eccentric patients, but I wouldn't know what do do if I didn't.

Anyone who has been to a doctor's office probably knows that the office is inundated with drug reps, trying to get the docs to prescribe their meds, and often bringing samples. They often bring food, too, so my grocery bills have gone down significantly since I started working at this clinic. Anyway...

The staff received a warning from our boss that area clinics were being robbed for their drugs, and we were not to take samples of certain medications from the drug reps. Now, the reader may be thinking that our clinic stocks OxyContin, Vicodin, or other types of narcotics, but no. We neither stock controlled medications, nor are the thieves after these drugs. The thieves, apparently, have been stealing what in the medical community are known as phosphodiesterase inhibitors.

Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra are apparently the latest favorite drugs to steal. Yep, those drugs with the cute commercials of older men and women getting romantic, or men talking about their "ED." For anyone who has been living under a rock for the last couple of years, "ED" stands for erectile dysfunction. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably too young to be reading my blog.

So of course my warped mind had a field day with this information. I figured that the suspects would probably be easy to spot, depending on when they took the drugs. I also wondered how a thief that stole drugs for impotence would fare in jail. How do you explain to your big, burly cellmates that you were stealing a drug for those who, erm, can't, ummm, perform properly?? I don't think the "I was doing it for a friend" excuse would work either.

Of course, I couldn't help but think of the courtroom drama that could be made out of this. "The defendant rigidly maintains his innocence," "the prosecutor was impotent during the closing arguments," well, use your imagination. I wonder if I should email the CSI people.

I have to admit, though, that as I worked late yesterday, and was the only one left in the office, I began to wonder about crazed, impotent men trying to break down the front door to our clinic to steal the Levitra. I figure if you have come to a point in your life in which you feel the urge (ahem) to steal drugs for impotence, you are probably 1. desperate, 2. crazy or 3. both. In any case, I would not want to be caught alone in the clinic with someone like that.

So if for some reason my boss stumbles onto this blog, I apologize for not turning all the lights off. I couldn't find the last light switch, and I started thinking about how I was alone in the clinic, or was I?....You can take the higher electric bill out of my next paycheck.