I know I should take the high road, or the zen road, or the whatever-just-drop-it road … And I know it’s risky to be talking about work in a public forum (so you know I’m not about to name names or go into any details here) …

But having a shitty day just gets worse when someone glibly says, “Well, someone’s a little snippy aren’t they?” You know what? FUCK YOU. YOU are on the list of reasons why I hate working with you people. And it makes me feel like shit, because I love my job, and hating any part of it makes me feel like I’m not pulling my weight. And fuck you for making me get so mad that all I could do was leave the room before too many people saw me crying. I wasn’t crying because I was sad, or because you hurt my feelings, or because I messed up, I was crying because I was so frustrated that your bullshit gets in the way of me doing my job.

I’m a damn good technologist, so FUCK OFF.

I have been planning a post on how I don’t think that I’m really cut out for healthcare. Sometimes I see things at work and I just obsess over them for days and I don’t know how to deal with it. It seems like everyone else can deal with it much better than I can, and I feel like i’m not doing anyone any favors by being here.

This morning I just wanted to say, screw it, I’m going back to school, see y’all when I’m a science teacher.

Ironic, I think, then, that today I was handed the x-ray program application and told, “If you still want to do this, we have to do it quick.” So I spent today filling out the application, writing an essay, and sending for my transcripts and SAT scores. Because I figure, who knows, I might decide to not do anything (or not decide to do anything) different, and keep doing nuclear medicine, I’m going to need to go to x-ray school so that I can do fusion (like PET/CT) work. And if work will pay for it, then hell. I have no reason to say no.

Hopefully soon, I’ll be able to buy more clothes from this lady, but for now, my beer wench costume will have to suffice.

I finally made it to payday, with a few cents to spare. I’m really not sure how I did it, besides not pooping at home and eating lots of cafeteria food off the clock. Seriously, Augusts suck. Car registration, licensure, and various other annual fees come up in August. Plus the wedding. And whatever else. I don’t think I’ve blown serious cash in a while, and I’m resisting the urge to do so now. I went to the grocery store after work tonight and got some foods for this weekend, because I plan on staying home and cleaning, and splurged on some eel rolls. $6.50 ain’t bad, and they’re pretty tasty, too. Not as good as Ichiban, of course, but not bad.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Cardiology lately, and appreciating it. It’s an entirely different environment down there. In ways it’s more political, but in a lot of ways it’s less so. I can go down there, take care of my patients, and rock out. We spent one day listening to the radio discussing which would be the best songs to karaoke to. Another day I mentioned the link I posted that gives the Billboard hit for your birth day, and I got to hear about all the awesome concerts my supervisor down there had been to. Seriously, I was born in the wrong decade. I also wish that I’d listened to more music growing up. I also wish my parents had listened to more music, so they would have exposed me to more of it. But I’m catching up now. Or trying to.

But my cheesy pop kick reminds me of a link that I must have posted a long time ago, but I am going to repost in case I was negligent. Because seriously. This. Is. Awesome.

I present to you: Yacht Rock!

Yacht Rock, Episode 1: What a Fool Believes

Let me get one thing straight right off the bat — I AM NOT COMPLAINING.

Today, it finally happened. I came in to work my Saturday (once every nine), and there were no patients on the printer! All I have to do is wait for the delivery to show up so I can check it in, do a little QC, and wait for someone to show up so I can tell them there are no patients so they didn’t think I just didn’t come in to work! This is frickin’ sweet.

I do kind of wish it had happened on a week I haven’t carefully calibrated my fuel consumption to the point where, if all goes well, I don’t have to get gas again till payday. And also not on a holiday week so that I would be much closer to having 40 hours in and not have to take so much PEP. BUT DUDE THIS IS SO AWESOME THAT THERE IS JUST NO WAY TO SAY HOW AWESOME IT IS.

Okay, so I added a digsby widget to the sidebar there. Not sure how useful it will be, since I rarely remember to log in to chat with anyone anyway.

Tomorrow there is a staff meeting, which means I have to get there extra early. Blehh. I hate living so far away from work. Dating Nate has spoiled me, since he only lives a few blocks away and nights I sleep over I can sleep in a little. Plus I always sleep better when he’s around. Evidently last night was an exception to the rule, however, since I passed out around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and didn’t even get up again until 6 this morning. That means I slept through my 11 pm dose of ibuprofen, and then I topped it off with leaving the house without my pills, so I didn’t get my 7 o’clock dose, either. Thank god I got out early and had my 3 o’clock pill at 4. My shoulder is rioting now :(

I am broke but Kaity just txt’d me that she’d buy me a drink so I guess I’m going back out tonight after all. Guess I’d better put some clothes on.

Wall-E was cute. I cried. But then I was happy.

My arm feels like it is going to fall off.

My head is full of retardedness.

It’s really hard to like my job when I realize that I do it better and more efficiently when my boss is on vacation. Is this what every grown up feels like? I like my boss. I really do. I thought that if I liked working with someone, it meant I had escaped the Dilbert curse. But I think I do it better when she’s not around? Maybe. Or maybe I’m just imagining things.

[Tangent: When Nate walks around with just jeans on and no shirt, it's all I can do to bite my knuckles and not hump him.]

Jesus fuck my shoulder hurts. I almost think the tylenol made it worse. I’m going to bed.

I’ll be the first to admit that they confuse me. But if this says that UTC is 1 am and it’s 9 pm right now, that should make me UTC -4, right? But then when there are silly things like DST and whatnot, it throws me off.

I have no idea how dianarchy.net got switched to UTC -5, but it’s fixed now.

Which reminds me: I made more spreadsheets at work today. This time I taught myself how to add an hour and a half to a set of times. And also how to subtract just the time part out of a date & time timestamp. It’s almost like my job has nothing to do with patients sometimes.

Kaity once knew someone who had a seizure anytime she heard Stevie Nicks. No joke. I couldn’t make something like that up.

Some people have auras before they have an epileptic seizure. They see things or hear things or smell things. I’ve heard of someone who smelled burned toast.

Kaity and I were in the cafeteria the other day getting breakfast, and someone was burning toast.

“Epilepsy is right up there with multiple personality disorder on my List Of Things I Never Want To Go Wrong With My Brain,” I told her on the way back to the department.

“Yeah, I’m afraid of Bipolar Disorder. What is it about people who are bipolar that makes them not want to take their medication? I’d be like, ‘Sign me up! Fix this shit!’”

I nodded in agreement, wondering if I should tell her my family’s suspicions of my grandmother, wondering if I have already told her, wondering if she knows how my mind feels like it’s breaking these last few weeks. Finally I say, “Well, when you’re manic, you feel great. You don’t want to medicate because you are finally getting shit done, you don’t want to feel ‘normal’ because that would be lower than you’re feeling already. And when you’re depressed, you don’t want to medicate because you just want to die. You hope that someday you’re brave enough to finally end it. And you spend your whole life oscillating between two extremes.”

I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I was hoping she’d hurry up and respond soon, because we were almost back to the office and I really didn’t feel like talking about it in front of everyone else.

“I guess since I’ve never felt like that, I just have no frame of reference.”

And at that moment, I thanked God (with the obligatory question mark: ?) that she could say that, and wished that I could have.

When I left work this evening (20 minutes late, but someone else stayed almost an hour late, so I am not saying I got a raw deal), I had seven patients scheduled for tomorrow already. Had twitter posted anything of mine today, you would know that we already did 18 patients today, which is about twice as many as we usually do. Usual Friday nights you may know about 1 or 2 patients that could not be done on Friday afternoon. Not seven.

Then there is a storm tonight. Awesome. I thought I would crash at Kaity’s tonight so that I would not have to drive in very far tomorrow morning, but I may be staying with Nate. I was considerate enough to invite myself right over. Ha. This is why I’m … awesome?

When I got home tonight, I found that the Cat Genie had clogged, so I fixed that and it’s running now. That delayed my laundry by 30 minutes, which will then delay my shower by 30 minutes. It’s not like I have anywhere to be, but I miss living at home where I could do laundry and take a shower at the same time. Or flush the toilet while brushing my teeth. That sort of thing. I miss having water pressure.

Cat genie is done! Now I will go do laundry. And maybe find something to eat.

I woke up this morning with a splitting headache. I was also very thirsty, so I thought hmmmm, dehydration? But usually if I’m dehydrated enough to get a headache for it, my body has already given up on my giving it fluids and turns off the thirst switch.

The good news was that Nate was there to immediately distract me from the headache business. It wasn’t long after that it came back, though. And even shopping didn’t help. Shopping helps everything, doesn’t it? Wait. Maybe not. And then when we got back to his apartment, I not only still had a headache, but then I had a guilty conscience and I wanted to barf. Awesome. So I took some naproxen and it didn’t really help at all. And we had lunch, which only helped a little. After some more distraction and napping it was mostly gone, but now it’s back again, though only on one side now.

I wonder if it’s a tension headache from doing crazy things with my shoulders like sleeping on them. That happened a while back. I’ll give it a few days. Then I will get Dr Lauer to do that hurty thing that makes the headache go away. Ohhh, it hurts so good. He pushes on some weird pressure point and then I cry and go home and ice my shoulder and then I don’t have a headache anymore.

My arm got numb and tingly on the way home tonight and I had to tell myself that I am too young to have a stroke, even if the headache is on the opposite side. See, I know I’m a hypochondriac, but at least I’ve been hypochondriac-ing for long enough that I can (usually) talk myself out of it.

I should go to bed, since it is ten thirty and Sunday. Bleh. I just don’t want to go. At least I work 4 9’s and a 4 this week. For some reason, that seems easier that 4 10’s.

And then when this week is done, it is next week, and that week is Week Of Birthday. Hallelujah. I am fucking tired of being 24. 25 is bound to be better. The odd ages always are. Also it’s such a neat looking number. It’s all divisible by 5 and stuff.

Hey, I just looked at my schedule and it looks like I have a Friday off in April. That’s pretty awesome. 4 days in a row will probably suck, but I’ll totally take it for a 3-day weekend.

Okay. Really going to bed now.

So tonight on the way home from Nate’s/Uno’s/eclipse-watching, I realized that I have been so focused on how rotten I was feeling over the last week or so, that it had become pity. Ugh. I haven’t pitied myself like that since college & the whole suicidal Creighton fiasco.

[Tangent: I'm wicked dizzy right now. Like I get when I have a not-for-a-week cigarette, only I haven't.]

So I decided that I don’t have to feel like this. I can just take everything that’s been said about me in the last week or so in stride and not really care about how it was supposed to make me feel. And hopefully this will make me more fun to be around, since I have been absolutely rotten to people, and it’s just been getting worse.

Also stupid. It’s been an off-week.

But even if I can’t shake the stupids for a while (it’s even like my muscles got stupid – I missed veins left and right today), I can change my attitude. As much as I like being able to bitch about work with Kaity, I don’t actually like doing it. I feel … gossipy. And more than a little crass. I’m not going to stop, mind you. I think it’s good to have a place to vent, and also if Kaity needs it, I want to be available for her venting. But tonight it didn’t feel as good as it usually does.

But back to me for a moment, I decided that I would go ahead and read whatever it was that Marcus emailed me. If I don’t like what he has to say, it doesn’t much matter because he really is about as much out of my life as a person can get. Just like when people ask me what he’s going to be doing in Hawaii for money/car/living arrangements/whatever, I can tell them that it’s not my problem anymore.

Being afraid of getting hurt by something he said is not a good reason to avoid it. It’s like LETTIN’ THE TERRISTS WIN

There’s a job listed in Advance that, when combined with a cost-of-living analysis provided by CNNMoney, pays approximately $9000 more a year, base-rate. And I’m well qualified for it, as well. But it’s in Arizona? Pleh.

Originally uploaded by dianarchy
This is mah frnd winning an award at werk.

Marcus is getting shifts switched this weekend so we can be raucous this weekend and go rafting with people from xray.

Work is going pretty damn good. The other day I was frustrated with something so I went and talked to my boss about it and she was awesome about it. I can’t remember what it was now, but then she said something about how she tells me things she doesn’t tell the other people because she knows I wouldn’t tell. And it’s true, because I’m not even telling you. But it was nice to hear.

Then the next day, she said that the thing she told me probably wasn’t going to happen because her boss is being an asshat about it. She said she wishes she had a lead tech and then this other lady looks at her and then looks at me and then looks at her, which was saying, “UM, HELLO? WHAT ABOUT DIZ?” And my boss looks at her and says, “SHE WOULD BE AWESOME AT IT I KNOW!” But the truth of the matter is that there are three techs (including me) who would be eligible for it should such a position be created, and if Person One wants it, it’s almost guaranteed to be theirs. If they don’t and it’s just between Person Two and me, it’s really up in the air and I don’t know which one of us would get it. I like to think that it would be me, but we both have skills the other doesn’t, and I’m not sure which are better suited for Lead Tech positions.

Okay, but now I have to go shave my legs and stuff because I am going RAFTING AGAIN YAY.

Why do my feet hurt, you ask? Well, probably because I wore three inch heels for most of the day (or at least a significantly larger portion of the day than I am used to). And why would I do a silly thing like that? Considering that I did not factor the sixty pounds I have gained since the last time I wore them into the equation of pounds per square inch that the balls and toes of my feet would be bearing, I didn’t think it would be a bad idea.

Oh, were you asking about the occasion for which I wore the shoes? Well, now that’s an entirely different story altogether.

You see, I had a job interview today. No, my current employment is not in peril. I had an interview at a larger (read “better” in my mind) hospital, in a larger city (read “much better” in my mind). I am not a small town girl. I am a city girl. I just didn’t know it until I moved to Saint Louis. This is not Saint Louis, but it’s closer.

I don’t have any idea how it went, so I’m not even going to go into the details except to say a few things. First of all, I did pretty good with the person who would be my direct supervisor. I did pretty poorly with that person’s supervisor. At one point, I got so nervous and rambling that I ran out of breath and when I went to catch it again, I realized I had forgotten the question I was struggling so hard to answer in the first place. This is commonplace in my interviews. Then I interviewed with HR, and I have no idea if I did well or not, because while I gave textbook right answers to most of the questions, and while she was bubbly and friendly to talk to, I have no idea what was going on in her head, and I’m pretty sure the words “video games” came out of my mouth at some point and I don’t really want to talk about it.

Second of all, I got a chance to meet with my potential coworkers, and they all seemed very very friendly and in need of help. They all looked like they’d been pushed to the breaking point, a look I know all too well, considering my own experience with understaffedness. Yes, I just made that word up.

Third of all, this hospital is not known for its retention rate, and that is raising so many red flags for me. But I think I saw today that they are trying earnestly to fix that. I can appreciate the work that goes into making changes like that.

Okay, that’s all I want to say about the interview itself. The whole thing is giving me stomach cramps like you wouldn’t believe. But I’m not done with this entry yet, no boy, not by a longshot.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always been more than a little disappointed in myself for not finishing school at Creighton. I know that logically, I could not have finished in the state I was in, but I should have gone back when I was “better”.

At work, we’re going to be getting a PET/CT scanner. This is very exciting news. It will provide better exams for our patients, and their oncologists won’t have to send them to Boston to get them done.

In every state I’ve ever heard of, nuclear medicine technologists are allowed to run the CT portion of the exam, they just can’t run a regular CT scanner unless they are dual-licensed (meaning in Nuclear Medicine and in Radiography). Unfortunately, Maine has not decided this to be the case, and requires a licensed Radiographer to push the Little Red Button. I would be allowed to inject, set up the patient, do everything except push that magic Little Red Button.

Two of our technologists are dual-licensed. Two of us are not. We are trying to figure out if the two who are licensed in radiography would have to take the specialty CT exam offered before they could do it. We’re also trying to figure out if the two of us who are not would be able to take the specialty exam. The trick there is that you have to do a certain number [pdf warning] of exams in CT before you can take the test. Would our hospital even let us do that (supervised by licensed techs, of course), since we don’t have a radiographer license? I don’t know. Neither does anyone else. It might end up being that in order to do PET/CT, I’ll have to go through radiography school. I’m not necessarily opposed to that idea, but I’d like to know soon, so I can start planning for it.

I’d like to go back to school and get my bachelor’s degree. I got a card in the mail about a school in Florida that I could get a Bachelor of Science in Radiologic Sciences, online. It’s not anything I could use to help the problem at hand, and until I know what the hospital wants to do with me and my inadequate education, I can’t start this. If I did, it would be my luck that they’d require me to go to school for radiography and I’d be doing two schools and working. That would … suck.

http://mcved.blogspot.com/2006/02/tummy-ache.html

Seeing as I don’t have x-ray experience (which is going to bite me in the ass in a few months, when we get our PET/CT scanner), I wish we could at least get these CT machines in our hospital.