Saturday, 15 November, 1997 08:09

...really really late at night, again...

Once again, a crummy day sleeping. I damn near didn't get up;hit the snoozebar for an hour and fifteen minutes. Took a shower and came to work, didn't even check email. Even then, I feel like I could drop off pretty easily at any moment.

There is a dearth of work coming through the Emergency Department, and what there is is simple stuff. Nothing to fire up the adreneline at all. Ah, well, maybe later....

There is a chance that I will be able to move to days soon, doing computer stuff. I've been asked to come up with ideas for a job description, and I take this as a good sign. However, everything is tentative... I really enjoy working nights, and working with patients, but I do miss the hustle-bustle of daytime work too, and I would really like to work on improving our departmental computer systems. Right now, we have a mish-mosh of PCs and the hospital's IBM AS400 and the Radiology/Lab system, which is separate and propriatary, although it will exchange info with the AS400. Then we have the digital radiography system, which doesn't talk to anything, and the radiologists' teleradiology system, which doesn't talk to anything either.

All of this needs to come together very, very soon. We now have five formats for imaging, none of them friendly, and five companies insisting that their way is the best.

I'm afraid that I'm being a bad influence on my friend Eileen... she wanted to go smoke a cigarette with me, and she stopped smoking about ten years ago. I couldn't stand the guilt, though, so I told her no way.

My coffee-meeting with Marva, the friend that I mentioned yesterday, went very well. It was really nice to see her, it has been at least a few years since we'd seen each other. She has aged some, but then, so have I.

She's very intense, which is something that I hadn't really remembered about her until I was talking with her. We got pretty well caught up on things and then I found out a little bit about schitzophrenia.

It is very, very scary.

She (and other schitzophrenics) hears voices... constantly. When she is on her medication, the voices stay pretty well in the background. When she is not on her meds, or is drinking, the voices take over her life. They are usually voices from past experiences... I'm one of Marva's voices. The voices will direct her to, say, stop smoking, or stop eating or stop sleeping, and she will eventually comply, even though it is against her will. The voices chide her, at first gently, then more stridently, until she does as directed. Then they start on something else.

And she says that the voices don't come from herself, but from someone vastly more intelligent, because she sometimes has to look up the words that are used. I told her that she underestimates her intelligence, but she says not. She was adamant about this. The voices aren't from "GOD", but from "someone" who is directing her.

She has spent quite a bit of time in hospitals the last five years, but she also has been working on her master's degree, and has almost completed the requirements, lacking only about a hundred hours of residency or internship or something like that. As I said, she is very intelligent. (Not that intelligence is a requirement for a Master's degree. I've seen that this isn't true.. many times over!)

After the tenth cup of coffee, I decided to get a chocolate malt. We were at Denny's, and I didn't know that they made such good malts. My mouth is watering just thinking about it... then I decided that it was way past my bedtime, so we left. I gave her a hug as we were walking out to our cars... it is nice to have a friend return, if even for a short while. As I was starting to get into the truck, a car pulled in, honking... it was Karen and Kim. They had found some Denny's coupons, and decided to catch Marva and I, but Marva waved at them as she drove off. I need to mention at this point that Karen adn Marva are friendly, and there is no hanky-panky going on, and she knows that. Kinda made me wonder, though...

The city is pretty active tonight, but the other hospital has received the brunt of it. There was a shooting, some guy got gut-shot in his car, the security people went over to look at the car and said the back window was shot out and there was blood and... gut contents... all over the inside of the car... and at least two loaded weapons in sight.

I did get to x-ray a kid who, along with his brother, was assaulted and robbed. The cops caught the perps and had the kid come out of the x-ray room to identify them. It seems that the bad guys don't get caught very often around here, it is good to see it happen. The kid that I x-rayed was pistol-whipped... I'm glad that he wasn't shot.

I did get a late (or early) trauma in, though... a guy that had been beaten unmercifully and dumped in a ditch. He had probably been there an hour or so before he was found. Anyway, I was late getting away, and now I'm gonna hit the sack.

ARRRGH! Someone hit 5555 on my counter and they didn't tell me!