And another bitch of a night! Way too much work for one guy to be doing. It was different than last night (Wednesday night) though... this did not start off pretending to be a gentle night. The teeth were showing when I walked in the door.

Actually, the first thing that I did when I walked in the door was to go and get my blood drawn for the lipid panel... the one that the cardiology office had scheduled for 16:00 today. People just don't understand about night workers... that's like getting up at 02:00 for most people.

Anyway, I went to the lab, and they sent me upstairs to the satellite lab. The door closed behind the girl who works there as she came out to check me in... and she didn't have a key, so I had to go back downstairs.

My cholesterol had dropped, to 188, but my triglycerides were up to 450 or so, and the risk factor was still the same... 6.4. So I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do about that. I might have to start exercising and eating right or something else crazy like that.

Well, I don't eat that wrong, and if exercise at work counted, I'm doing way too much of that. Unfortunately, it doesn't, according to the books... and my waistline.

Anyway, back to work... I'm already starting to get a bad attitude again. I don't mind working hard, in fact, I enjoy it, and I mostly enjoy the patients, but there is a limit to how much I can do. I will call in extra help when I'm about an hour behind, but the last two nights when I've reached that point it's been too late to call anybody... help will arrive in 45 minutes anyway.

The back-up people are supposed to be there in 30 minutes, but it takes five minutes to call them, and probably fifteen minutes for them to get oriented enough to accomplish anything once they get there, so I really try to avoid calling them in.

Equipment problems added to my woes last night, too... my main machine went down before the evening guys left, and we couldn't get ahold of an engineer to come in and fix it. Therefore, I had to do many of the exams in the main department, which adds 10-15 minutes to each patient, plus more miles to my legs.

And another piece of equipment for doing jaw x-rays has had a broken part for three months now, and I had to use it again last night in the middle of all of this and that hacked me off even more because I didn't get as good of a film as I should have. It's not like I haven't complained about it more than once... it's just too low on someone's priority list. Somewhere below getting that next cup of coffee, I guess.

Boy, I'm really tired of bitching about work... I think that I'll bitch about the weather. It really sucks.

It's a lot like Kansas in July, dammit.

My friend Steve called last night, letting me know that there was an opening in the company where he now works in Lawrence. Steve's last night in security at St. Francis was last Saturday night, and he was hoping for an easy one, but he got into an altercation with a drunk naked hooker. I wish that I would've been there... not that I haven't seen my share of obnoxious drunk naked hookers, you understand... I just always miss out on the action.

After all, no one's assaulted or insulted me for quite a while. No excitement in my life, heh.

But Steve's out of that now. He'll never have to thump anyone as part of his job anymore. Just when he wants to...

OK, time to wrap it up and get to bed. More tomorrow...