Trip to the Doctor's Office

One of my favorite things to hear when I'm in a public restroom is a mother telling her small child, "Just go." The child responds, "But mama, I don't need to go." And the mother says "Yes you do." Seriously, they probably don't need to go.
I had a similar experience the other day (and more)...
The University had some extra money for health benefits at the end of last year and decided to reward us employees by covering all of our co-pays for preventative services. So naturally, I decided to take advantage of this rare opportunity to go to the doctor for free.
When I got there, I was greeted by a young female medical assistant and shown back to the exam room. She got me a form to fill out and asked me if I would give a urine sample. I had used the restroom right before I got there and didn't need to go, so I asked if she minded if I drank some water and finished the history form first. She responded by saying "Can't you just go a little bit?" I again told her that I had just gone and would need a few minutes. I guess she didn't believe me because she argued with me telling me that I could in fact probably just squeeze out a little urine. I finally had to get a little snappy. I said, "Look, I just said I don't need to go. I can't just do it on demand." It finally got through and she got me a glass of water to drink.
There's more...
As I was filling out the history, I was answering typical questions about my surgical history, heart problems, allergies, etc. When I got the the psychosocial section, one of the questions asked me if I had a history of committing suicide. If I did, would I be here filling out this form?
The medical assistant came back in and took my vital signs. For some strange reason, my blood pressure goes up when I get it taken "for real." When I take it myself at work it's fine, but every time I go into a doctor's office, it goes up. I can feel it. First she took my pulse rate and it was high. I mentioned that, judging by my heart rate, I knew that my BP would also be high. She looked at me like I was an idiot and said that heart rate and blood pressure have nothing to do with each other. They do.
As you can imagine, I was a little fed up with her at this point. I was glad to give my urine sample and see the doctor if only for the fact that I no longer had to associate with this individual.
I was wrong. Two days later, she called me with the results of my labs. I had 3 labs drawn: a lipid profile, a metabolic panel, and thyroid lab. As a Registered Nurse, I am quite familiar with what these labs are testing for and the interpretation of them. She gave me the results of my lipid panel. When I asked about the other two tests, she responded that the results had not come back yet (strange since they were all drawn in the same tube). I said, "So you've only received the results of the lipid profile?" She said "no, we don't have that back either." I responded, "So where did you get numbers for my cholesterol and triglycerides?" She told me that a lipid panel did not include cholesterol or triglycerides. It does. In fact, that's all it includes. I told her to just fax me the results. About 5 minutes later I was holding a copy of all three of my labs in my hand. And funny thing... Under the title Lipid Profile my cholesterol and triglyceride results were listed.
A few words of advice for this individual... 1. Get educated about what you are doing. As a medical assistant, you should have at least a basic knowledge of human physiology, such as that the heart rate and blood pressure are correlated. 2. If someone says they don't need to urinate, believe them. and 3. Get educated about what you are doing. If you are calling someone with lab results, have a basic knowledge about what the labs are testing for. Seriously.

Backpacking Mineral Gulch

For Christmas, I got Michael a Backpack from Cabella's. Then for his birthday (which happened to be the same day as the REI anniversary sale), I got him a sleeping bag, a camping stove, two thermarest pads (ok, one was for me), a tent, and some camping cookware. At this point he was all set for a backpacking adventure.

Last Monday evening, we did a little online research on backpacking destinations, and we headed out for Mineral Gulch on Tuesday morning. Mineral Gulch is just East of Zion National Park. We started hiking in the afternoon and set up camp about 7.5 miles later. After we had pitched our tent, I reached into my pack to get out my fleece. It was soaked. Turns out that the valve of my 3 liter camel back pouch somehow popped open while we were setting up camp. All of my warm clothes were soaked and I had lost about 3/4 of the water I had brought to sustain my life for the next 2 days. Luckily, we had brought some emergency water purifier tablets along and there was some water about a mile away. So the next morning, we woke up and started walking to find the Indian Pictographs that we had hiked down here to see. We walked about two miles out to a really beautiful section of narrows when we figured out that we had missed the confluence that we were supposed to turn at. So we went back to camp, ate lunch, packed up, and started backtracking yesterday's trail. We found the confluence about 1.5 miles away. We had totally missed it the day before. At this point, we filled a bottle of water to treat, ditched our packs, and headed up the wash in search of the pictographs.

We never found the pictographs. We did find 7-arch, though, at the end of the trail where these pictographs supposedly were. We searched and searched for the pictographs, bushwhacking along the base of the cliffs, to no avail.

We decided to hike a few miles back toward the trail head and set up camp for one last night before heading home. A couple of miles later, we ran out of regular water and were forced to drink the emergency purified water. It was so gross that it made us dry-heave. We decided that we would rather hike extra miles that night than drink that nasty water for another day. So after about 18 miles of hiking (7.5 with 50 lb. packs on our backs), we finally reached our car. We were both so exhausted and dehydrated. We headed straight for the nearest gas station and immediately drank $6 worth of Gatorade. We also checked into the nearest hotel when we determined that our legs hurt too much to drive for 4 hours.

We had a great time, but it would have been a lot better if I would not have lost my water.

Tulips

I've continues to practice drawing over the past few weeks. I'm on the 4th chapter of my teach yourself to draw book and I still have a lot to teach myself. I'm still working on drawing recognizable objects and sometimes that is a struggle. I won't post my failures, although there have been many.

My sister-in-law, Natalie planted a bunch of tulips in our front yard and they look beautiful. The other day, I decided to go out there and attempt to draw a couple of them. These are my efforts:

Stolen Cheesecake

A few years ago, Katie, Barbie, and I went to Disneyland. On our way home from California, we stopped in Las Vegas to see our friend Jen...

Anytime we stop in Las Vegas to see Jen, we go the the Cheesecake Factory for dinner (mind you, this happened before there was a Cheesecake Factory in Utah). We were EXTREMELY hungry and it seemed like our food would never be ready. The people at the table next to us had ordered one really big piece of cheesecake and only eaten about 2 bites before they left. As the four of us eyed what was left of that large and delicious slice of chocolate cheesecake, we knew what had to be done... Jen was the one to present the dare. Katie carried it out, and we'd finished off dessert long before our meal arrived.

Anyone else have a random funny memory?