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?

What Happened to Common Sense?

To me it seems that the number of interactions I am having with people who possess common sense is continually decreasing. Some experiences of late:

• I am managing the clinic I work at while the real manager is on maternity leave. It's a small clinic, so right now, there are only 4 employees. Me, two techs, and a social worker. I get to work bright and early one morning (5:45 a.m.) and strangely, I am alone. I think oh... my coworkers must be running a little late this morning, so I go about starting to set up for the day and I give both of the techs a call. Neither one answers. At 6:00, the first patient gets there. I can't do anything because there has to be at least two employees present in order to do any patient care. I decide to check the company voice mail while I wait. There are two messages. One from each tech saying that he is too sick to come to work today. Lack of common sense: don't call in sick to an answering machine. Call in sick to a real person (preferably the person who is currently in charge) so that they can find someone to cover your shift.

• Two weeks later, after I had given explicit instructions to call my cell phone directly if they couldn't make it to work for any reason, it happened again. I arrived at work and I was alone. Again I tried to call both of them repeatedly. No answer. I called another clinic in Provo and they sent me a tech. Two hours later, one of the techs calls me and tells me that he had sent the other tech a text message telling him that he was sick and couldn't come to work. About a half hour later, the other tech calls and says that he forgot to turn on his cell phone/alarm clock last night. He never got the text from the other employee and didn't wake up on time. Lack of common sense: don't call in sick by texting your fellow tech. Call in sick to the person in charge. Make sure your alarm clock is turned on before you go to bed.

• I went to Dillard's to get my sister a birthday present. I found a shirt that I thought she would like, but you never know, so I asked the cashier to print me a gift receipt. She just looked at me blankly and says "I don't know how." Lack of common sense: If you work at a store in customer service, help the customer. If you don't know how to help, find someone who does. So I say, "Can you find someone who does know how?" She looks at me and says, "Yeah, I guess." She makes a phone call and within about 30 seconds, I have my gift receipt.

• One night, my husband and I decide to grab an unhealthy meal of burgers, fries, and ice cream. We go to this local place and order to go. This place usually takes about 15 min to get your food out to you. The girl behind the counter takes our order then immediately makes our ice cream cones and lets them sit out on the counter and melt while our food is cooking. Lack of common sense: If it has potential to melt, don't prepare it first, prepare it last.

• This happened a few years ago, but I think it's my favorite experience with the lack of common sense. I was living in Quito, Ecuador volunteering in orphanages. I lived with a bunch of girls who were doing the same thing. I was in charge of doing all the shopping for the house. I had just gone to the produce stand and bought a bunch of food. I was in the process of washing it with diluted bleach (we didn't want to get parasites). One girl came in and offered to help me. I was glad to have some help until she asked this question... "So, like do we wash the fruit or dry it first?" I just looked at her. I couldn't continue the interaction. I had to leave the room.

Seriously, what happened to common sense? I know it's out there somewhere...

Ben Folds Live

For many years, I have been a fan of Ben Folds (and his five...before they broke up). My friend Scott introduced me to his music sometime in high school. But up until last night, I hadn't had a chance to see him preform live. It was awesome. He played some of my favorites: Fred Jones Part II, Rockin' the Suburbs, Kate, Annie waits... Great tunes! The concert was at Saltair. This was the first time I've been to that venue... not my favorite. Part of the problem is that Anna and I both left our wallets home so we didn't have our IDs to get into the bar where there was a significantly better view. So we were stuck in the middle of big crowd of people trying to see over the tall guy in the gray shirt-hate him. After a while, we moved to the back on the side, where we could see quite a bit better. We had a great time. Ben puts on a good show. Oh yeah, and he threw his stool at the piano at the end. I loved that.

Before the concert, we met Anna and Peter and at Pete's request, went out for sushi. This was a first for Michael and Anna. I had sushi once with an old man a few years ago. Pete ordered everything for us because the rest of us didn't really know what to order. I didn't love it, didn't hate it. But it was a fun experience.

Costa Rica Love

Well, the big trip is over. A week in Costa Rica wasn't nearly enough. We went to three places: Arenal Volcano area, Monteverde cloud forest, and Manuel Antonio national park and beach. I'll give a brief synopsis of the trip.
We arrived in San Jose at 5:25 a.m and met Arnufal, our driver who took us to our hotel in Arenal (a 3 hour drive). We were exhausted from flying all night, so after breakfast, we crashed for a few hours and woke up just in time to meet our guide for horseback riding. We rode to the beautiful La Fortuna Falls.

Later that evening, we went to Tabacon Hot Springs. This is an amazing river that is heated by the volcano. It is warmer than a hot tub in some places.

The next morning we got up early and headed for the Pacuare River where we went white water rafting. It was a blast. There were class III and IV rapids.

That evening we drove to the observatory lodge and watched the fiery magma rocks roll off the top of the volcano while we ate dinner. Unfortunately, my camera is not good enough to capture a great night photo of this, so here's a pic of the volcano in the daytime.

The next morning we headed for Monteverde via a boat ride across Arenal Lake and the a long drive in a van on a winding dirt road. That day, we went and hiked around Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. We spotted a white faced monkey on one of our hikes, and listened as wild boars talked to each other (they sounded mean).

The next day we went on a zip line canopy tour (over 2 miles of zip lines). Then we walked through the canopy on hanging bridges that were about 150-200 feet tall.

Later that day, we went to the serpentarium. I hate snakes, but I have an unhealthy fascination with them. The serpentarium featured only snakes that are native to Costa Rica... a lot of vipers. There were also a few poisonous dart frogs...very cool.

The next day, we took another drive on that winding dirt road to get out of Monteverde. We drove another 3 hours to the Pacific coast. We stayed in a town called Quepos, about a 5 minute bus ride from Manuel Antonio National park. We spent Sunday just hanging out on the beach and playing in the ocean until sunset.

The next day we went for a coastal kayaking tour to a beautiful beach where we snorkeled. We were going to go on another tour of a mangrove forest later in the evening, but the tide was too high, so the tour was not running, so we just hung out in the town of Quepos.

Our last real day was spent in Manuel Antonio National Park. We hiked around and spotted wildlife. A lot of Howler Monkeys, sloths, lizards, and iguanas. We hit the beach for one last hour then headed back to San Jose. On our way, we crossed the crocodile bridge... a ton of crocs just hang out under this bridge all of the time.

That was it. We ate dinner in San Jose, went to bed, woke up at 3:30 and got on the airplane headed for Denver at 6:00 a.m. It was a great trip. We did so much, but there is so much we didn't do. Maybe we'll go back someday. PURA VIDA!