Tales from the Steppes

2005-05-06

12:28 pm
Dreaming of Mercy Street, Wear your inside out

The week has been busy with all sorts of miscellaneous crap that has sucked my time but provided nothing in return. The high point was the YM breaking his right arm again. He was playing on the rope ladder up to the treehouse and fell backwards. It is another buckle break, which means it will heal quickly. He only has to have a cast on for 3 weeks.

After his performance last time, I was especially dreading the trip to the doctor's office. In fact, I waited until the next morning to do something about it because he was making such noise. Not from pain, it was the "Don't make me go to the hospital. I don't want to go to the hospital. It's not broken" variety. The next morning, when it still hurt and I was pretty sure that it was broken, I called his pediatrician only to discover that he is on vacation. The nurse recommended that we call an orthopaed directly so I tried to do that. His old orthopaed is not on our current plan so I called a couple of others only to discover that they did not want to see him unless he had seen another doctor. After all, how did I know his arm was broken? I opined that it would be an x-ray that would determine this and a pediatrician's office does not have one, and wouldn't that be something they could do? Apparently I was correct but they still wanted him to see another doctor first. So I called several clinics to see if they will see the YM. Sure, but they don't accept insurance. Anything to not go to the ER. Finally I called the pediatrician's office back to find out who he had covering for him while he was out of town. The covering office does not want to see him but instructs us to go to the ER instead.

This is not an emergency and I think it is a misuse of resources but I tried other options and this is what I was left with. Fine, be that way. The YM was quiet for the duration of these phone calls because I did all of this while taking the dog to the groomer. Beorn was leaning over the backseat licking his face and completely distracted the YM. But now it was the moment of truth - the dog had to get shaved and the YM had to be told.

So the YM and I had a chat about just what his problem is with the hospital. He is reasonably easy to talk with when he isn't hysterical and could clearly communicate his fears. It seems that his one experience with the hospital was going to see his father several years ago and he remembered all of the tubes sticking out of the SU. When I pointed out that he was born in a hospital and they did not put any tubes in him or do any surgery, this gave him pause. I reminded him of his last broken arm - no surgery and no pain. So all was fine and there was no more drama.

The ER was mostly ok. It was earlier in the day so the goriest thing we saw was a couple of men with fingers cut from circular saws. It took forever but they finally xrayed his arm, said it was broken, and splinted it. But didn't put a cast on it. For that you have to go see an orthopaedic surgeon. WTF? I felt like I had been hit on the head with a surfboard. Could we just make this day any better?

So we went and had lunch to fortify ourselves for the next leg of the experience. I let the YM get a chocolate milkshake and we talked about what he was going to get from Target when we were all done with this. I made the appointment with the orthopaed and we got there in perfect time. Only to be made to sit in a waiting room for more than an hour. For a five year old, an hour is an eternity. But still he behaved well and did not complain much. It took the doctor less than five minutes to look at the x ray, confirm that his arm was broken, and give the orders to an intern on how to cast the arm. The YM wanted an orange cast this time, to match the insects on his green Hawaiian shirt, but red was as close as they got. He did not even complain about that, which was a happy thing.

I was quite proud of him for getting through this experience without complaining, after we got past the initial several hours of drama. He has even declared that he likes the hospital and the people there are nice. This is a good thing, given his reckless tendencies.

The rest of the week has been filled with driving mongols to various activities, listening to the EM talk about boys(!), dealing with the mongol's school, waiting for the IRB to decide my fate, and not getting any writing done. I have been so busy with everyone else's crap that I have not gotten any of my own done.

Well, that is not completely true. I did go into work to find out where my new office is going to be and see if I could start moving my things down there. My new supervisor, Steve, explained that there were only two open cubicles in the department. Apparently the other new person requires direct supervision so he gets the cubicle with the rest of the department. Me? Go out the door, through the atrium, down the hall, past transportation, door on the left, all the way back. If you leave the building, you've gone too far. As Fred put it, it isn't even south bumfuck, it's a suburb of south bumfuck. But at least it is a large space, even if natural sunlight will never enter it.

Of course, it is a little hard to tell just how large a space it is because it is currenly filled with someone else's crap. And I do mean filled. This gentleman, David, was told that I am starting Monday and he needed to clear out, to a much smaller space, before then. It seems that he works part-time, mostly from home in Pennsylvania, and only comes in once a week. So I get the nice office. Except for the skulls lining the shelves. Well, skulls and other artifacts he has collected doing field work. I am actually thinking about taking a picture of this because it is so impresive. Especially since he thinks he is done.

My new co-workers tell me that David was angry about being booted out and he thought he would leave this mess for someone else to take care of. When I walked into the room yesterday, the cubicle was full of people standing around looking at the contents, making dire comments about what was going to befall David if he did not take care of this pronto. They even called in the head of the department to look at it. But David will not be back in until Wednesday, so they have asked to see if I can stay in my current place upstairs until they can get this mess sorted out. Given that he even took the computer, which he was not supposed to do, I am not sure where else I can go. My personal inclination is to bring a bunch of boxes and pack up all of his skulls, snakeskins, wasps nests, bottles, clothes, personal pictures and posters, and other artifacts and deposit them in his new space. The professional stuff may not be all of his to go through, but certainly he can help with that.

Probably the funniest thing that happened all week was seeing "Being Ron Jeremy." I had no idea who Ron Jeremy was until I saw "Orgazmo" and even then, I could not believe that that toad-like little man with the dyed hair was a porn star. He seems to have a good sense of humor about it and that is commendable. "Being Ron Jeremy" is a take-off on "Being John Malkovich" and is not that long or involved. And you never get to see Ron Jeremy's actual assets, but it is still pretty damn funny. And if you have not seen "Orgazmo", I am so sorry. You can borrow my copy.