Saturday
El Milagro: I'm here at 1:30 today. Amanda the Smiley Tech pokes me and we talk about left handedness... she makes some comment about shifting her body around to poke me and being left handed with writing only... and I reply that my daughter Katie is like that too. As usual, she does an excellent job of poking me and I begin surfing the TV channels to find out when the UT
game is on. UT is playing UTEP today: the school I work at versus my alma mater! Who do I root for? Well, probably it'll be UT... I love that Colt kid runnin' the team and all my in-laws are UT grads... but I'll also love seeing Sun Bowl stadium and remember the games I attended there and mowing the lawns that used to climb the end zones at a precarious tilt. Now the north end zone is filled with seats and the south with cement. El Paso is all excited about hosting the horns (see "Big moment for UTEP in Sun Bowl"*). I find that the game is on ESPN 2 after dark... so... DARN! I'll miss it cause tonight we are planning to go to Threadgill's to see the band I affectionately call Bellvue Unit... actually their name is the Belleville Outfit.**Connie the Nurse is here today (my old nurse at Mortitz's office) and she says "Hi". Once I find I won't be watching UT football, I settle on ESPN football muted (Penn St. v.s. Oregon St.) while I am reading texts for my Thursday class. This reading for class will become one of my main dialysis activities for the fall: a forced sit down time to study! This is a good thing. Dialysis is a good time to sit and do things one has to do and doesn't usually make the time for in their activity-filled life. Today I am reading a chapter in Berg & DeJong's Interviewing for Solutions and a chapter in Murphy & Duncan's Brief Interventions for School Problems. As I am reading I am creating ideas for students' activities and practice situations for behavioral rehearsal of strengths-based counseling techniques. For example, I muse that I could ask them to pay attention to specific constructivist questions and collect them for later use... and... or, over the semester I could do a SF interview with each student on an "issue" or difficulty they have, and do it with the prerequisite that they NOT identify the "problem". This is always an experiment that leads to the person's recognizing the difference between "problem talk" and "solution-talk". So, my brain is flowing on down the river of ideas and options for my class as my blood flows thru the cleansing machine.
And Joe Paterno's boys are smearing the Beavers while I muse. Of course, to complete the system, I am listening to Ed Miller on Folkways in my ears as background music while reading and constructing ideas for class. Finally I get tired of all this and look for a good movie to relax to... finding Obsessed, with William Devane... and watch it for my last hour... without catching the ending. My hallucination is that it's gotta end in some 'surprise' ending, like the girl driving Devane mad and ending with his killing her and having to pay the price of his philandering (just my thoughts).
So, around 8:45 one of the Techs whose name I still don't know, after seeing her around for ages now (an older Hispanic woman who is less than detail oriented) comes over to disconnect me and patch me up. I sit there holding my holes for awhile, considering if I can sit til the end of this movie... and realize I can't wait that long... and that this is not really that compelling a movie and my hallucination about its ending is probably as good as the real ending. So, when I see Amanda smiling over, asking me "are you ready?" I nod in agreement and she gently tapes me up and I weigh out and walk into a balmy Saturday nite wondering if I will really feel up to a night on the town at Threadgill's. We'll see.
Notes: In at 76.2 and out at 73.9 Kgs.
BTW: You may notice I haven't posted since last Saturday. Adding teaching a graduate class to my schedule may impact posting on this blog. This last week I was swamped with two conference presentations, preparing for class, and lots of loose ends tying at work... so, the blogging fell off the map. I am devoted to blogging here for the sake of PKD and Dialysis people to read [with the GOAL of showing that folks on dialysis with chronic kidney disease and kidney failure CAN continue to live an active and prosperous life... supporting the notion of LIFEALYSIS that we see posted on dialysis workers' t-shirts]. So, we'll see how I can fit in blogging during these teaching months.
* Big moment... in Herald Tribune online at http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/05/sports/FBC-T25-Texas-UTEP.php
**Belleville Outfit online at http://www.bellevilleoutfit.com/
2 comments:
you don't know me, but I have read your blog.
I am a random Dialysis nurse looking for information about achieving Magnet status for our outstanding clinic in California.
And, viola... your blog appeared.
I am inspired by your journey and wish you the best in your teaching credential. By the way... ask the Tech what her name is and then try to remember it... she is human as well...
Yeah Yeah! I know I SHOULD ask the tech's name... and yet I also conversely feel that it is a sign of professionalism for techs to introduce themselves to us when they first meet us. The techs that do introduce themselves make an immediate impact and build immediate rapport with the patients. They are beginning the relationship in a non-medical way and I think most of us like that. In my professional life I have to act professionally and I do my best to always be respectful, genuine, and courteous to my colleagues, clients, and audiences. I can and may take the first step to building that kind of a relationship with this un-named tech, and yet her behavior already has struck me as un-professional and somewhat sloppy.
You are, however, right about one thing... and you remind me that the I can't change her: I can only change myself... and, in changing myself, the impact on her may be a change in her too. Thanks for the reminder. JN
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