The birth of MooseRATS

Fla was right...5 minutes of work, um strike that.... horsing around, horsing around, horsing around (font check!!),and you, too, can be a blogger. Maybe my diarrhea of the fingers will pay off after all! (i.e-Maybe my diarrhea of the fingers will pay off after all!) Mom always said I should write.... well, Happy Mother's Day, Mom!! I'm writing.

(wake up!! wake up!!!! I haven't even gotten started! ;-)

The week that was...
age is creeping up on me... I swear it's only Wednesday. I am not sure where the week went, but I don't remember most of it. Two things do stand out... the dying man and the nasty-gram from medical records.

From Thursday:
Stayed late tonight... an older guy was brought in by ambulance. He was in really bad shape... lives alone.... I found some next-of-kin info in the computer.... the phone number had been changed to unlisted so I called the cops and asked them to go over and check out the address.

We were short a secretary (i.e. - had none) so I played sec. for a couple of hours. Nothing like doing a job you haven't been trained for to make you really appreciate the ones who *do* the job... I was almost useless.... 8 gazillion things going on, 4 patients actively trying to die, phone calls coming in and a billion more to be made.. page Dr A, call Dr B, call an ambulance to transfer patient C, enter doctor's orders into the computer (WAIT!! no one showed me how to do that!!)... and on and on and on.... Finally got relief and packed up my office and headed home.

I made it 2 blocks and remembered that no family had shown up for the dying guy. So turned around and drove back. Called the cops back... no one by that name at that address. Shoot. Then I remembered.... the medics brought in some pill bottles showing that he was a VA patient. Called the local VA hospital... they dug a next-of-kin name and phone number out of their computer.... "Could you have the patient sign a release of information so I can give you this information?"

Um.. If he were well enough to sign a release I wouldn't be calling you..... They gave me the number.

Called the number... the lady that answered knew the patient.... She answered me in that voice you get when you get that phone call you don't want... "Hold for Dr. B., please"

The lady said she was the man's guardian. She would be right in. Yes, she had the guardian paperwork and the advance directive... a breathing tube, nothing else heroic. She'd be right in. I hung around for a while. She didn't arrive before I finally gave up and headed for home.

I don't think he will survive the night. I'm glad I went back to work. I hope someone will do the same for me if I ever wind up like that.

Am glad tomorrow is all on the road stuff.... I make a bad secretary.

Follow-up: The lady came in... papers and all. She had the opportunity to see her uncle and then talk to the doctor. No heroic measures. The man died a short time later.

I had an interesting phone call that evening also. Another lady... said her father had been found passed away that morning by one of her siblings. She wanted to know why there was a cardiac electrode in the garbage next to the bed. She asked if her dad had been in the ED (emergency dept.) recently. (He hadn't) So I asked a few questions... what town was he in, who had the sibling called (9-1-1). I know the procedures for that town and told her that the police had come and also called the paramedics who came out to ascertain death had occurred and that one of the tests was to put the person on a heart monitor. That's how the electrode wound up in the garbage. I explained the whole procedure and thought the call was over because she got so quiet, but she had started to cry. She said they found him that morning laying in bed looking so peaceful. Sobbing now, she just wanted to know if her dad had died in pain. "No, he was never in pain. He just went to sleep last night and didn't wake up."

May we all go so easily.

Regarding medical records... really, I haven't had those 6 charts in my office for 274 days! Each. I looked! They are not here. And besides... the work I did with those charts shows up on my computer as finished before Christmas. Maybe you could check the shelves again??? Really... my worst one is only 55 days overdue. (I have the trauma patient's medical records signed out to my office so my secretary (S) and I can enter their information into the state trauma registry. To eliminate this problem, S offered to do the charts in medical records if they would provider her with a computer that had internet access. They declined, so we still bring the charts to our office!) Will be interesting to see the outcome of my rebuttal tomorrow.

I love my job!! hee hee hee

Other stuff... Have you every had the chance to use a built-in navigation system in a car?? WHAT A HOOT!!!!!!!!!! My Beloved Boyfriend (BB) has decided he wants to move. So, we spent yesterday driving around in CIRCLES looking at apartment complexes and townhouses. Just punch the address into the nav system and it calculates the route and off you go! Saw some parts of town we never want to see again, found a bunch of garage sales (or garbage sales as BB calls them) and lots and lots of apartments. But all those circles finally made me dizzy so we went shopping. I love Wal-Mart. ;-D

What's that you say? No... I'm not with my mother today. Our little family put off celebrating until next weekend... My sister had an outing in Michigan on Saturday so we are a week late. But, Dad's birthday is this coming week so we will celebrate both! YIPPEE!!! Steaks and potato salad for dinner on Saturday!! YIPPEE!!! It's truly spring when we can go out and grill up at the summer house!

Ahhhhhh, it's good to see that I can still type ad nauseum.... I have no idea if I will be able to write every day. Will certainly write once a month or more... (don't want to set myself up for failure too soon...)

Oh... MooseRATS... how did I ever come up with that name? It came to me in a dream... Well, sort of... A couple of months ago I was laying around staring into space when BB asked me what I was thinking and I said RATS. "Rats?", he asked. "No, RATS. Random Access ThoughtS." And Moose is just my nickname... courtesy of Sue from high school. I must have had blogging on the brain from the other night and I really did come up with the name MooseRATS while sleeping. Welcome to MooseRATS.

Enjoy!