Daylight Savings SUCKS

Well, there are a few reasons yesterday seemed like the longest day ever at the VA. #1--I left my home when it was dark and i didn't get back from the VA till after dark. I wish we at least had windows in our ops down there so we could at least dream about being outside! And, #2---we had no CA. That was crappy. There is so much for a CA to do at the VA. I hope that never happens again.

My pt was "Lawrence the Cheetah" if you can remember from last week's post! He wasn't scheduled till 10, so i was able to help the other girls w/ xrays and probe charting...then at 9 the desk said one of our 8:00 pts was here. We didn't realize there was someone who had been looked over. I felt way bad. He was a really nice guy and not the type to put up a stink about waiting for 45 minutes. ANyway, luckily he had been partly cleaned already and i just had to scale 2 quads. I tried to hurry because my next pt got there right at 10. PBJ helped polish him so i could get started on my other pt. She was kinda the CA i guess! We kept her very busy today. Poor Crystal got way sick and was puking and out for the rest of the day after her first pt. PBJ was doing triple duty. She saw a pt in the afternoon, acted as the CA, and was able to get around to all of us for OD and scale cks. Wow, that lady is amazing! So, anyway, Lawrence only growled at me a couple times today and it was a much more pleasant experience than last week! He had recovered from whatever he had that was causing all the phlem! ha ha I felt so scatterbrained after though because i only had a short lunch and felt like i had been going 90 all morning. I can't believe that one day i'll be seeing pts every hour. YIKES!

My afternoon pt was amazing. His attitude and outlook on life left an impression on me that i will never forget. This man was 69. He was in a really bad car accident when he was 25 and 85% of his body was burned. I didn't want to pry, but he was very open about it all and i got the whole story by the time he left. I have never met a happier person in my entire life. He was in the hospital for 7 months and doesn't remember a thing, which might be a good thing. I can't imagine the pain and everything else he must have gone through with all the surgeries and grafting they had to do. He said he was pretty much left on his hospital bed in England to die. Actually in the newspaper there, the story claimed he died. And that's what everyone still believes to this day...even the friend in the accident with him. For some legal reason he wasn't allowed to talk to anyone about it which is really weird to me. Anyway, this guy was a crack up! He was joking with me and singing along to all the country songs on the radio with me. He was just happy to be alive and would never let any trial in his life change that! This was a really good learning experience for me. He had really limited opening in his mouth, so taking xrays was interesting and try to scale the distal of 15! It's a dang good thing he had such great homecare or i would have been in trouble!! ANyway, he made my day and really challenged my skills!