243) Workers Unite!

May 1, 2008

Tuesday

El Milagro:I am late again… and beginning to worry about this habit of being late, but the staff don’t seem to mind. They never criticize me for coming in late and even though I’m usually the last person to leave at night, they seem totally okay with my comings and goings. Of course, I haven’t asked Ron the Nurse, but I hope he would mention to me if he has a problem with my flexi-schedule.

I’m on the back wall today in the chair beside the doorway to the back rooms. Joseph the Hulk is there to stick me and I am getting to like his power sticks. He lines up the needle (trocar), slants it, and then jams it in so fast it veritably POPS into the fistula. He smiles afterwards as he tapes it up and I hallucinate that poping fistulas is his joy.

My beginning BP today is 128/69. Ron the Nurse comes up to perform my nursing evaluation and asks the regular questions: any chest pain; any nausea? “Well, let me tell you… I have had some nauseousness in the mornings, usually before eating anything, except sometimes after some coffee. I don’t throw up and it usually goes away after about half an hour or so.” Ron strokes his chin, looks up at the ceiling, and says, “HMMMMM. Do you want something for it?” “NO!" “ I don’t know what thay could be. We should ask Rowder.” We discuss this a bit further with no real direction, and then I ask him to note it in the file so we remember to talk to the doc about it.

For awhile I read an article for work on the Youth Efficacy Scale; an interesting scale designed
to assess youth perceptions of selfefficacy with respect to managing their own mental health condition.

I listen to NPR ATC: Some claim they are on the recession diet, paying 4 buck a gallon for milk and gas. Food banks are hurting cause there is more need for their foods and less donations. Sherry the Social Worker appears and we talk more about the details she needs to set up my K-ville dialysis and some about Da Vita paying for my dialysis way back when I went to Washington. Seems no one wants to pay for the dialysis at K Street. "Won't be me." I assure her.

I settle in to the Thursday schedule of watching Survivor, Gray's Anatomy, and LOST and somewhere in the middle of the end of Survivor and the beginning of Gray, my BP goes down under 100 and Joseph takes me off dialysis. I stay off cause we all forget me and then finally I remember and ask Ron to put be back on. He reports I only have ten minutes so we call it a wash. Then, when I leave I weigh out at 74.5, exactly what Joseph had set as my goal.

Figure that?

Notes: In at 77 and out at 74.5 Kgs. (Ending BP 111/60)
New Readers: For an INDEX, click January 2008 on the Sidebar and page down to post # 207.