They had sprinkles!!!

2002-09-20 - 9:16 p.m.

Today was actually a good day for me. I was in a good mood almost the entire day. Even while I was torturing other people without even realizing it. Oh well.

So where should I start? I have so much to talk about today! Oh, but don't worry, none of it is exciting! Ok, just to alleviate any piqued curiosities out there, I'll talk about the sprinkles first. For dinner tonight I went with my parents to Fresh Choice, a salad buffet type restaurant. So how many 23 year old girls do you know who write to restaurants and tell them they really need to have sprinkles in their dessert bar? Ha ha, well, you know one! Anyway, for years they've been lacking sprinkles. But tonight they had them! It totally rocked. And dessert was just sooo much yummier... I should write 'em another letter and tell them how wise they are in their decision to include sprinkles.

OK, next stop, dreamland. In my dream last night I was with Stretch. We decided to stop by Burger King for dinner. I don't even like Burger King, but that's where he wanted to go. We were both carrying these huge black garbage sacks that were stuffed with something. As usual, Stretch was blabbering about something and I was just listening. Outside of this Burger King were a bunch of homeless people just hanging out, but Stretch didn't even seem to notice them. He was talking to me about his money. Apparently he had just won sixty million dollars. Suddenly I realized that the garbage sacks we were lugging were stuffed with money. And we were carrying them through all these scroungy looking poor people and Stretch was cluelessly announcing to the whole world all the money we had. So we made it inside and he went up to the counter to order. It was really busy in there and I saw an open booth, so I went and sat in the booth with my bag of money while he ordered. Meanwhile homeless people were milling about eyeing me. Stretch was still merrily chatting away and he decided to order the cheapest thing on the menu for us, this gross looking 69 cent hamburger shaped like a taco. I wanted to tell him no, but he was far enough away that I would have had to shout at him and I didn't want to draw anymore attention to myself.

Wasn't that a fun dream? Then there was today. I worked at Del Paso all day today. First thing of course, the staff meeting. We spent the greater part of an hour in a very juvenile argument between the clerical staff and the nursing staff. It was ridiculous. I kept waiting for the director dude to tell them to knock it off, but he never did. That was a complete waste of my morning. Then I had seven patients scheduled to see me today. Only four of them showed up though. One of those patients was the Pakistani lady with her brother that I saw last week or the week before. The one that I spent forever on the phone tracking down his meter only to call him up and find out he had already picked it up. So this week she comes in with a whole potload of medicine she got in Pakistan--stuff I've never heard of--and asking me to write prescriptions for it so she can get more. I told her, yeah, dream on. And then she complained of pain, like everywhere, and wanted me to give her pain meds, but I told her she would have to see a doctor for that. Of course we're a free clinic and a tad busy so the doctor is booked all the way until December. I told her she'd have to get a walk-in appointment. Which means she'd have to walk in, sign her name on the list and then wait for an opening--generally a several hour wait. Apparently she wasn't in that much pain. Another patient I saw was a round black woman in her forties with a blood pressure of 194/124 (yowsers) who is maxed out on about 6 or 8 different blood pressure medications and seems generally unconcerned about it. We went over s/sx of stroke, and how it would be really helpful if she exercised a bit and reduced the amount of salt in her diet. Her attitude was yeah, whatever, leave me alone. I have no idea why she even bothered coming. You know what, if you want to kill yourself, why don't you go do it somewhere else and stop wasting my time? Yeah, Euc, good attitude you have there! The other two patients were both newly diagnosed diabetes patients who needed meters and a bunch of education. One of them was the guy from last week who came in and I didn't have a meter to give him. Luckily, I got it all straightened out and this week everything was a go. He was actually a very pleasant gentleman this week. Both of those patients were a whole bunch of fun. I spent over an hour with each of them teaching them the ins and outs of diabetes and anything else they wanted to know. I'm not the best teacher in the world, but I am pretty patient and don't mind spending time.

Speaking of time, try 33:56. That was how much time it took me to run 5k today. Phew, I think I was flirting with death. It was sure tough. I'm trying to pick up the pace a bit, but I just end up wearing myself out so I'm faster at the beginning and slower at the end and I end up exactly the same as I was before. Ah well.

And tomorrow I get to sleep in! And have a leisurely caloric breakfast! Life is so good sometimes :)