The Lion Tamer

Babbling the midnight oil

Night float, day 2...

I've seen exactly one patient, who was here when I got here, but you know what? I feel good about that patient. It was an adolescent that I took a long time with and I think I managed to get the situation to work in her best interest. It helped that there was a Pedes ER attending on who was just incredibly helpful and interested and invested in this kid.

You know...I have this soft little place in my heart for adolescents that I didn't have any sort of awareness of until this year. Previously, I mostly found them annoying and juvenile and always felt like they were making fun of me. I forget, though, what a complicated and tumultuous time adolescence is by its very nature. Add in screwy social circumstances or caretakers with limited parenting skills, and gosh, these kids just have so much trying to coalesce on them. And, you know, maybe it's the population of kids that I deal with, but I see so much...I don't know what it is. Energy, color, potential, intensity...so much raw possibility, this sort of effervescence of conflict and recombination, this complexity that's simultaneously developing and concluding... It's fascinating. And when you're underneath it, it's overwhelming.

I just don't see it in a lot of my adults. I mean, sometimes I see vestiges of it. Sometimes I see outright mature correlates, these peculiar and disorganized qualities come to fruition. But honestly, a lot of adults seem to have just lost this ineffable, diaphanous quality. Sometimes it seems like it's been sublimated into the unconscious, sometimes it seems like it's been partitioned off and redirected...but sometimes...in others...it just seems like it's gone. Like they've gone flat.

I don't know what that is. I don't know what it means. I obviously can't even describe whatever this is that I'm talking about with any degree of significant eloquence, but, well, it's 3 in the morning.

Does this make sense to anyone who lives outside my head?

Anyhow.

So the other interesting thing about my night has been this - when I got here and read my email, I discovered that I'm being audited for inappropriately accessing a patient's confidential medical records without a release of information on file. Which, I wasn't too concerned about, because, I figured it was one I opened on accident who had the same name as my patient, or, a patient I treated a while ago whom I was checking up on for continuity of care and, you know, silly things like learning. Until...until I got to the patient's name.

It's my record.

From the email conversation that's ensued, apparently, I'm being brought up for disciplinary action for - wait for it - violating my own privacy. And when I explained why I went in, that I added my medications which are prescribed by an outside provider, she told me that was a grave misuse of my access to the system.

Oh, come on.

So...apparently...it's an abuse of power to "alter" my medical record in such a manner. Because, you know, if one day, whilst I'm walking home, I get run over by the Chapel Hill Transit system (God forbid), and I wind up in the ER, all unconscious and bleeding, it's really not important for those doctors to know what goes into my body on a daily basis. Because it won't affect my treatment at all. Thank heavens I was all "ethical" and didn't "alter" anything.

I'm really pissed off about this. I mean, forgetting the fact that my record contains exactly this: the medications I've entered and two test results (a rapid strep and a Flu A aspirate) from when I went to employee health with the flu last year. Oh, and now, it probably shows a pending appointment with a family doc next week (FINALLY I'm going to go get all of this exhaustion and falling down checked out). It has my address wrong. It doesn't have my insurance information. And until said employee health flu visit, it had my name spelled wrong. Forgetting that there's NOTHING THERE, it's my information. It can't tell me anything I don't already know!

So, one of the things I did tonight was fill out a release of information form - to release my own information to myself. For the love of Steve....

Disciplinary action, my fat white ass.

Again I say...anyway.

So, now, I'm hanging out. I finished some paperwork, I disinfected my desk (Ruthie seems to have the plague). I did some laps around the psych department. I read my newly-arrived copy of Franklin Habit's cute new book of knitting cartoons, "It Itches." (SO cute. So Franklin. I love it.) I'd pre-ordered it months ago, so I was excited when I found it on my stoop this evening when I left for work. Last night I watched House and 30 Rock and Doogie Howser reruns on Hulu.

I keep trying to read more important things (like my readings for class tonight), but damn if I can concentrate on anything like that. I concede that I slept well today and thus tonight hate night float a little less, but, considering it's taken me over two hours to write this blog (I keep wandering off to do other very random things and then suddenly thinking, oh! Was I done with my blog?), I don't know that I'm up for great feats of concentration...

Yeah, don't think I'm going to class tonight.

Oh, in related news, I had my last interview for the psychoanalytic society this morning. It was much more pleasant than the one with the intrusive old guy who lived in the country. And I'm relieved that it's all wrapped up and done with.

Alright, I think I'm going to go knit. If anyone's still reading at this point...wow, you're awfully tolerant...

Well stated.

A friend of mine, in response to yesterday's post, said the following to me:

But having lived a large part of my life feeling numb - I think I prefer feelings. Even the bad ones.

I can't agree more.

Maggie may have to change her name to Toto...

::sigh:: I guess the drought is over....

So the remnants of TS Fay are here (you know, a week after I didn't fly to the coast because the Tropical Storm might ground us. Oh well). It's been raining like a damn monsoon (or, say, a tropical storm) off and on all day. Apparently, there were all sorts of tornadoes around the state today. Or, well, maybe. There are reports. We can't confirm anything. It's possible there were tomatoes spotted across the state today, we may not have the whole story straight.

Sometimes I really miss the Chicago Tribune.

It was sort of funny, though - I went to my psychotherapy supervision this morning, had a nice discussion of my last therapy session with my supervisor (so, I do therapy, and then I go and discuss it with a real therapist, who gives me feedback and makes suggestions and that sort of thing), stopped at the Starbucks and tried to read for this afternoon lectures, made it through part of the readings, couldn't bring myself to finish the CBT stuff, and gave up and came home for a while, because, well, Maggie isn't a big fan of storms. So we hung out, and, I'd left the TV on for her while I was gone today, right, because of all the raining and whatnot. And I'm lying on my bed reading my email and listening to the News 14 Carolina weatherman blather on and on about tornadoes and how deadly they were and that conditions were right and that the NWS was not going to hesitate to continue issuing tornado warnings pretty much on a whim and he felt the need to tell us, you know, the topography here isn't like the Midwest, tornadoes can just pop up all of a sudden... Okay, first of all, I don't know how he knew when he made that last comment that I had just moments prior looked out the window and said, "Nah, it doesn't look like it's going to tornado." But second, here's a tip, Mr. Weather Guy - they sort of just pop up in the Midwest, too. Not out of the clear blue or nothin', but, I'm just sayin'. Anyway, I had to change the channel for her before I left again to go to the hospital for lecture, because he was just way too anxious.

I used to be terrified of tornadoes when I was like, late grade school to high school. Terrified. Like, if there was a single cloud anywhere (and, let's review, I lived in Chicago) I'd get all worried that the day was going to end in disaster. But then, I had a lot of phobias that sprung out of sublimated neuroses back in those days...now, they only really bother me because of the dog. Although Maggie's outgrowing her hatred of thunderstorms, it seems, or at least she doesn't automatically pee all over everything the moment there's a distant rumble of thunder. But still, she's more tolerant of them if I'm here. And while I certainly worry about, you know, her well-being if our house were flattened by a tornado, but I just worry a lot more about her being scared.

Anyhow...one definite positive of the local newspaper's website, even if they can't tell me if there were actual twisters today, is this video. It's a political cartoon spoof of Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song, and it is not to be missed.

Although..........who else is disappointed in Obama for being a Sox fan?