332) Paired Exchange Research

February 26, 2009
Thursday

El Milagro: Joseph the Tech cannulates me after Rosie the Tech moves over to stick someone else. The door to the clinic is locked again today and so I pound on it. Susanne the Administrator comes over and opens it and I say something like, "Back to the locked door procedure again?" and she doesn't really respond... only to say that they'll call us when ready. Within seconds Rosie shows up and "calls" us.

Jo the Nurse does my nursing evaluation and says my echocardiogram won't be sent over here until after Dr. Levy checks it out and does the write up. I went for the test yesteday and met Terry the Tech, who did the sonogram very competently (from my "patient" point of view)... sliding the sono-wand back and forth over my chest... finding a good listening spot and staying there... "breathe in and hold it..... okay..." every once in awhile. Terry knows Dr Venkatesh thru their daughters and says she is/was a child prodigy, getting her MD at 20. 20! That's hard to believe for me... but I don't want to suggest she is lying while I am lying right in front of her. She could poke me in the eye with her sono-wand. Terry also says "Dr. V. got that murmer right..." and I was hoping she would say more about what she could see... but, as usual, those folks don't say... and I don't ask anymore. So I just have to wait and see.

Dr. V. has already announced that she is going over the South Austin to work with Herman the Nurse Administrator... and I keep wondering if I should go over there too. Let's see: it's a question/consideration of 1) I HATE CHANGE v.s. 2) I WORRY THAT S. AUSTIN IS A BETTER RUN FACILITY. Back to my echocardiogram: so I guess the report, after Levy will go to Dr. V. and she'll tell Ann the Nurse what to tell me. And it'll be days before I hear.

Today I finally started my exploration and research to see about getting paired exchanges in Austin. I emailed a policy committee that I found on the UNOS website. Elizabeth the Policy Analyst emailed me right back with a nice, long, explanatory email that gives me plenty of sites to check out (research) and some answers to my specific questions. I was impressed with the quickness of the reply and that it came from a real person, as determined by the care of the writing. Unfortunately she reports that they don't have data on how much a paired exchange program helps move along the transplant list. She did offer ideas about getting connected to an existing shared exchange program. I will have to fully explore the seven resources she mentions and will report on this blog the results of that research.

If there are folks out there who are participating in a paired exchange program, I'd like to hear your experiences. Send me a comment.

As is my usual agenda on Thursdays, I listen to NPR's ATC, switch over to the ABC News, switch over to the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, switch over to Survivor, and end up with Gray's Anatomy... it is TV nite in dialy-land. I get absorbed by the cathode ray tube and watch away my time in the chair. My shallow consciousness is absorbed and yet I am also, on a deeper level, planning for my trip to Dallas tomorrow; thinking about meeting Cherry at the plane, emceeing her training, and then providing my own consultation with Promise House's staff on dealing with after hours crisis phone counseling... plotting out what the day will be like, thinking about my materials and hallucintating the kinds of issues, questions, they will have for me to respond to.

So it goes on at Thursday night.

Notes: In at 77.6 and out at 75.7 kgs.