Friday, October 31, 2008

Alyssa, Aarthi, Deven, ANYONE ELSE IN OR FROM TOLEDO!! Do not let Joe the Plumber anywhere near your shitter! The Chode doesn't know what he's talking about!







Yes if you can handle the above 5 minute clip of fox news you find that they are defending Obama's policy on Israel. It must have really hurt.

And a few words for McCain.

1. Stop calling nuclear energy "green" It is not. And fine you want to build 45 nuclear reactors? Where ya gonna put them? I guarantee they won't go in his daughter's backyard or anywhere near any of the 7 houses he owns and neither will the waste they produce. No. It is the poor who live in the shadow of reactors.

2. I TOLD YOU TO STOP CALLING ME YOUR FRIEND!!

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Hope is coming
Change is coming
Get out, vote and make it happen!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Why yes that is baby vomit on my shoe...
why do you ask?
I only mention this because I looked down at my feet during my first overnight shift this past week and noticed that Adeline had vomited on my shoe and I had not bothered to clean it off. It was a new low. I think that must be the definition of "letting yourself go". I went out the next day and joined a gym, cleaned my shoes and vowed to try to take better care of myself.

It was a busy week though. Joel's parents came into town over the weekend so I spent much of the week cleaning in preparation. I then got a little distracted and painted the plant room and redid the floors. It looks great. Next I think I'll do the dining room. Any color suggestions?...

Not being chief is great. I've been able to spend more time with Adeline and more time at home. My first two shifts at lakewood were fine. No I take it back, my first shift was fine. My 24 hour shift this past weekend was awful. It was like I was a resident again. I was up all night admitting patients and clearing plans with other docs. (I'm not the pimary for admitted patients) I saw about 12 kids in 4 hours the ED all of whom actually needed the ED. All I can say is thank God I had gone out the night before and had a fun evening with Kevin and Kelly and 2 pitchers of Maragaritas. (Joel's parents watched Dela)

Speaking of Dela...
We love the Fall!!!

Friday, October 17, 2008

My pager is off...

For those of you who know me well you also know that my pager is never off. I have been on call every other day for the past 16 months with the exception of 8 weeks of maternity leave. Even then my pager was on vibrate most of the time.

I am no longer a chief resident.

Cleaning out my office was strange and I know that my co-chief will miss me. I feel a little like the big sister who went off to college (again). At any rate I have closed that chapter of my life and I am excited to start the next.

My first shift is Tuesday night. Wish me luck.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

FOUND: Joel's Missing Leg
We are back from Boston. For those of you who don't know, Joel and I went to Boston for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The conference was great as it always is and I got to spend some good time catching up on some Gen Peds topics that I haven't had a chance to keep up with being chief. I also got to spend some time with Joel and Adeline. We went one afternoon to New Hampshire to see some friends Sean and Sadie. They are expecting their first little boy on Halloween. Joel liked that trip because we rented a Cadillac. Actually we rented a Chevy Aveo or similar but the rental company goofed and we got a wicked, pimped out, black Cady with tinted windows, a killa' sound system and a V8. During that drive (2+ hours to go 60 miles) I decided I could never live on the east coast.
We also spent an afternoon at the New England Aquarium. Adeline loved the turtles and jelly fish. She kept calling the penguins like she calls the cat, "AAh, AAh". She did very well on the trip. She fussed during the plane ride out but slept during the plane ride back.
This was also our first test of cloth diapers on the road without a Nana's house to wash and hide the dirty ones. I have to say it worked out fine. The wet bag we kept in the bathroom at the hotel did it's job great and we didn't have to waste time rinsing etc. I must admit though that I feel sorry for the poor drug sniffing dog that had to check out that suitcase on the way back though. It probably died right there. We're expecting a bill from the department of homeland security to replace their dachshund.
But we are back. Last night was perogies, wine and presidential debating with the Hatgases. Can we all please stop talking about this Joe the plumber? Why isn't anyone talking about Jane behind the counter at Macy's or Jill the single mom in college. At least John McCain stopped calling me his friend.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Debatable
These come courtesy of my mother. God Bless Her





I may be a little biased but I think Obama won last nights debate. I just wish John McCain would stop calling me "My Friend" I'm not his friend. I'm also beginning to feel a little bit creeped out by the man. His voice during debates is just a little too "guy-in-the-back-of the-bus'ish" and I still haven't decided if his right hand is real or made out of Vietnamese Bamboo.

12 days and 10 minutes

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Scum of the Earth
and no it's not lawyers...

It's doctors who work for insurance companies.
This week was very busy for me. I was "on service" which means that I round with the residents in the hospital all day and answer pages all night. One of my patients this week was a young man whose condition required very intensive inpatient therapy. Ideally it would be at some sort of rehab facility. I got a call from his insurance company on Tuesday saying that they were not going to pay for any more of his hospitalization. In fact they weren't going to pay for the last week either. When I called, the nice lady who answers the phone for them suggested I have a "peer to peer" review of the case. Sounded good to me so I agreed and a little while later the devil himself called me back.
"This is Dr. -------" he said, "I understand you want our decision (Code for we're not paying) reviewed."
So after a long discussion about how this child would not last 24 hours at home, how I feared for his life and well being and how he was much sicker than his numbers looked Dr. Devil told me he wasn't changing his mind. I asked him what I should do for this child. He suggested an inpatient rehab facility. I informed him his boss wasn't paying for that either. After a moment of silence he directed me to an appeals process in not very nice terms. He then told me that my patient and his family would just have to "cope".
That is where things could have really broken down. I wanted to:
1. Ask him how many people you have to kill on the operating table before they take away your licence and you have to work for the insurance company.
2. Ask him if his mother would be proud of what he did every day and if this was the reason he went to medical school. And where the Hell did he go to medical school anyway?
3. Wish this nasty disease on his children so that his employer could deny him of benefits.

But I didn't. I just told him I thought this was rediculous and hung up on him.

Stupid insurance doctors.