February 19, 2008
Tuesday
El Milagro: I arrive and weigh in at 77.7 Kgs. and say “HI” to John the New Guy (who isn’t really that new anymore so we should rename him… let’s call him John the Book Reader since he reads a lot.) So, anyway, as I am weighing in John is finishing his session and standing there ready to weigh out. We exchange pleasantries and John mentions that this scale is still not working correctly. I observe as he steps on the scale and checks his weight and exclaims, “It is 1.3 Kgs different than it was a minute ago!” So, I decide to weigh again and I’m the same weight I was a minute ago. And then he weighs again and he gets a third new weight! He remarks that only occasionally does he weigh out at the amount they set the dialysis machine to take off. So, here we are… two grown guys jumping on and off the scale to do research on its’ weighing behavior. He is always different and I am always the same.
I tell John that my ending weight is never the same as they plan on the machine… it’s always lower and that I thought that the calculation on the machine and the outgoing weight weren’t even connected. John looks at me askance (hallucination: as if I am crazy). All of a sudden I realize that we live in different worlds: he may be one of those people like my brother-in-law, Larry, who have an engineer’s mind… the kind of people who expect ‘A’ to lead to ‘B’ and things to be naturally logical. John was a guy who set up high-end sterio systems, so the engineering mind would make sense. At any rate, I could tell John was a bit surprised by my summation about no connection between numbers… so, I added, “maybe it doesn’t matter that the weights are different..” I too was surprised at HIS logic tht those two numbers should jive… interesting thought. I go on in my mind to think… maybe we just come here and they take the weight off and then we go and then come back and they take weight off again and so on and the actual numbers are just fluff.
John intimated to me that since I am his PAC representative, he’d like me to bring up the fact that the weighing machine is screwy…. so, I promise I will.
When I get to my chair I touch base with Rosie the Tech, asking her about re-calibrating the weighing platform, and she says she will fill out a form to get it done.
A new tech comes by to set up my machine and I check my dialyzer and bath and they are correct. As she is working on setting up my machine she is snorting, sniffling and sneezing… without even covering her mouth, so I immediately get a bad impression and when she asks if she can stick me I have hallucinations of germs all over her body, so I beg off, asking her to ask Rosie to do it instead. For future tech readers of this blog, when you go to stick someone for the first time, 1) be friendly and introduce yourself first; 2) avoid sneezing all over everything (if you have the sniffles, wear a mask); and, 3) ask nicely if the person is okay with you sticking them.
So, Rosie came and stuck me and now I am listening to NPR…
So it goes.
Notes: In at 77.7 and out at 74.7 Kgs.
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