insights into the world of caffeinated monkeys
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| javamonkey insights into the world of caffeinated monkeys |
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Friday, February 07, 2003 Snow! Snow! Snow! Snow! Snow! It's snowing out and I'm hyper. I don't want to go into work tomorrow, and quite frankly, I hope that things close down for the evening so I can have time off. I know, not like I didn't have today off, but I used today to clean my bathroom and make a really nummy dinner. I had a roasted chicken with roasted potatoes and peppers and onions with rosemary and thyme. It was actually easy. Just throw chicken in a pan. Chop up potatoes and red onion and red peppers into chunks, toss in the pan with the chicken. Add a few cloves of unpeeled garlic. Sprinkle with rosemary and thyme. Splosh on a bit of olive oil and bake til chicken is done and potatoes are golden brown. Totally nummy. And healthy. And nummy. I also have a sad story and a happy story from work. First the sad story. A lady came in with a Rottweiler on Monday. The Rottweiler had puppies, and she had brought two of the puppies in with her. The owner wanted to do an x-ray of mom to see if there were any more puppies, but there weren't. One of the puppies was being pretty active and the other wasn't. She let us play with the puppies. They were so tiny that they fit in your hand. She took them home and that should have been the end of things. Well, she called in the next day--one of the puppies wasn't nursing. We gave her puppy formula and told her how to forcefeed the pup. She called back and the puppy had started to have seizures. It may have been due to the puppy not nursing and having low blood sugar, and we told her to keep feeding the puppy and give it about 24 hours to stabilize. The seizures got worse through the evening, and she brought the puppy back in. The pup was just having one seizure after another after another. We took it back and were taking turns holding the puppy to try to keep it warm. We were also massaging it to try to simulate its mom, well, being mom. I was holding it and it died. That's the sad story. Now for the happy story. We had a diabetic cat in our office. His name is Radar. Imagine Nikki, but fuzzier, softer, and much more loving. He had been in the hospital for almost a month while we got his blood sugar stabilized. He was there so long that he got to have run of the place. He got to run around the kennels and would talk to you and beg to be loved on. He got run of the front when we were done seeing patients. He is absolutely adorable and he's finally going home. He's doing well and his blood sugar is now under control. I'll miss having him to play with, but I'm glad he's going home. (Although his owners probably aren't happy with the bill--it was almost $1000.) Another chapter in the Merry saga. I came into work on Wednesday and saw a laminated page duct taped to the cover of the surgury book. It's a set of instructions for scheduling surguries. Oh, great...some required reading for Merry. Actually, she put it there because apparently, I am the only person that could possibly make a mistake (although I find Merry's mistakes and get them fixed plus I take responsibility for my actions). So anyway, it's a list of instructions for scheduling surguries. Let's go through this step by step. I've got time. Step 1: Pull chart. Well, duh, folks. But this is just the beginning. Step 2: Open chart and make sure animal is current on vaccines. Okay...I'm already two steps ahead of Merry. On Friday, I found a surgury that she scheduled where she never even got to steps one and two. The animal hadn't been seen since 1999 and she scheduled surgury for it. And because I was working for Merry on both Friday and Monday, I had to call these people to make a vaccine appointment or otherwise cancel the surgury. I had to fix her mistakes because she's so incompetent. But, moving on. Step 3: Check to see if pre-op bloodwork or antibiotics are recommended; if so, tell owner. Okay...I've caught at least 2 or 3 of these already. Way to go. If Merry can't look on the first page of the chart for the vaccine history, is she really going to flip to the end of the chart to see about bloodwork or pre-op antibiotics? Ha! Step 4: If animal is more than 10 years old, recommend pre-op bloodwork. Well, if we can't even bother with the first 3 steps, why bother with this one? Step 5: If owner declines any pre-op instructions, write this in the chart. That involves actually getting the chart, doing steps one through four, then getting an ink pen and manually writing a note in the chart. Too much effort. Step 6: Verify the surgury and schedule. Now, I've caught several wrong surguries scheduled. When I call people for pre-op instructions, I verify the surgury. I've caught I don't know how many wrong procedures. Stacey, the morning person who gives post-op instructions and sets up the animals, has caught wrong procedures. And there have been a few surguries that people have changed their minds on and Merry never told the doctor. Opps, but sorry your cat doesn't have it's claws anymore and you wanted it to have those. Guess you won't want to pay for that surgury or ever come here again. Step 7: Don't schedule long surguries with the middle doctor. In the morning there are 3 doctors, one with early appointments, one with middle appointments and one with late appointments. The doctors just pick what they want to do and do it. No scheduling involved unless someone wants a specific doctor. In that case, I ask that doctor and they can choose when they want to do the procedure, since they know better how long it would take. Merry doesn't bother with that. Because she does so many surguries and knows all there is to know about surgical length (she doesn't know what a cystotomy is, let alone that it takes about an hour and a half to do). Step 8: Make up the cage card and nametag for the animal and enter the surgury in the chart. Yeah...again, see step 5. Merry actually pick up a pen to write anything in the chart? Or get a paperclip to put the cage card and nametag in the chart? Hahaha. If she even gets the chart out, she almost never puts the cage card in, and I get left to do that. Now that's not all. There are now instructions and a sample for the cage cards. These are 3 by 5 index cards. Now we have to have 1/4" margins on the sides and 1/2" margins top and bottom. It's a fucking index card. There's only so much room to write a description of the animal, the animal name, the owner name and the date and type of procedure. As long as it's legible, get over it. It pisses me off that all of that is now on the surgury book because it's all stuff that I do, and I do well. I have not had problems with any of this. Merry has. Look at the track records, and see who's doing what. (That's why I initial everything I schedule, and I'm now starting to initial the cage cards that I make up. The doctors know who is doing the job.) Alrighty...I'm done bitching now...off to bed. posted by jaime | 12:42 AM 0 comments |
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