Saturday, March 24, 2018

Weekend To-Do List

Today:
Grocery shop
Dollar store
Take the multitudes of cans in the garage to the redemption center
Buy more live traps (thank you, Ginny!)
Ollies -garden crocs $3.99
Thrift store 50% off everything (yahoo!)
Post office - stamps
Final spot check of Foster Room and replace litterboxes





(Enjoy that Foster Room while you can, Soda, because company's coming tomorrow!)

Sunday:
Laptop, camera, traps and carrier in car
Oil change
Take trapping buddies out to brunch
Then put them to work - First to Mary M's to drop off traps for her to use as feeding stations
Then to Ed G's to review gamecam footage of HIS feeding stations
Stop at center to pick up new foster, who is preggers
Home

Whew.



Monday, March 19, 2018

Trappin' time!

It happens every Spring - I start getting calls about helping people trap for TNR.  And this year is no exception - there are currently three people who've called me for help and are in the process of setting up neuter appts. at the local clinics.  On Saturday, I took traps out to a place where we trapped last fall so that the property owner could use the non-activated traps as feeding stations so that the feral cat could become accustomed to eating in the traps ahead of the actual trapping dates.

There was just one problem - I need more traps!  I've got a couple of dozen at this point, but when you're trapping in several places, and sometimes leaving the traps for weeks at a time so the cats get used to them, you run out of traps in a hurry.

Which is why I was so happy to have this come in the mail today:


THANK YOU, Ginny, for the Tractor Supply gift card, and thank you for helping to control the feral cat population!  I appreciate it very much!


Thursday, March 15, 2018

Patients

My new(ish) job is working in administrative support in a hospital-based outpatient physical therapy department, and it's really introduced me to a whole new set of people.

Our unit specializes in two types of patients: Pediatric and Neuro.  The pediatric patients are largely referred through a county-run program for early intervention services, mainly for help with developmental slowdowns and speech services, but we also see young patients who need help with walking after lower-extremity amputations, including one charming little girl who lost her foot after getting run over by a tractor, and a toddler who was born with leg deformities.

The Neuro patients are mostly adults, who have either suffered strokes or traumatic brain injuries.  The stroke patients tend to be elderly, although not always; one of our current patients is a middle-aged man who had a stroke while sitting in a tree stand during hunting season, causing him to fall out of the tree stand and break his neck.  Yeah. The elderly stroke patients tend to come in with an entire armada of shell-shocked family members for their initial evaluations; it's obvious that the entire family is struggling to deal with their new reality.  It's nice to see the patients progress over the weeks and months and watch the family members visibly relax as they see their parents learning that they can deal with their new situations; that life does go on, and improve, after a life-changing event.

Oh, and there's that subset of heroin-addict-stroke-patients:  The young men (and they are always men), who stroke out after OD-ing and are now trying to get back whatever they can of their former abilities.  Sadly, these guys tend to come for a few visits and then drop back off the map again., although sometimes they can turn out to be very dedicated. 

TBIs (traumatic brain injuries) aren't as common in our office, but we do see them occasionally,  most often when somebody's fallen backwards off a bar stool, and I'm not even kidding. Moral of the story:  If you're gonna get sloppy drunk, do it in a booth at the bar, and not at the bar itself.

We also see developmentally-disabled people whose new group homes are trying to figure out why they're wheelchair-bound even though medically they should be capable of walking, and other wheelchair patients who we are trying to help become ambulatory again.

Including one charming, wheelchair-bound, giant teddy bear of a man in his early thirties, who didn't show up for his appointment today.  It snowed pretty heavily here yesterday so his missing his appointment wasn't unusual; he relies on medivan transportation and also needs his landlord to clear the handicap ramp at his family's home in order to make it to his appointments, so sometimes when the weather is inclement he ends up cancelling. But he always DOES call and cancel; he doesn't just not show up.

A few hours after his scheduled appointment, I was about to call and make sure everything was okay and ask if he wanted to reschedule when one of the department heads came in and asked me not to make the call.

Because he committed suicide yesterday.

Rest in peace, good sir.  Rest in peace.








Friday, March 02, 2018

Disaster Pass

Anybody watching the Weather Channel this afternoon may have seen the reporter broadcasting from my town, which got a BUNCH of snow today. Nowhere near the record amount of snow we've received in one day in the past, but still, the weather was terrible.

And now that I work in a hospital, I am expected to report to work.  I actually carry a literal "Disaster Pass", issued by my employer in conjunction with the county, so that if I am pulled over and questioned as to why I am driving if roads are closed, I won't get ticketed. If I am unable to report to work due to weather conditions, the hospital will actually send someone to come pick me up and bring me into work, with the caveat that there may or may not be someone available to take me back home when my shift is over.   hmmm.  So I drove myself into work this morning, on ice- and snow-covered roads, in order to ensure myself a ride back home tonight.  

We normally see between 40 and 60 patients a day in the office where I work. Today, we had a full slate, but only 2 people actually kept their scheduled appointments - the rest either canceled or no-showed, because the weather was awful.   But it's all good - our providers were able to help out on some of the inpatient units who were short on staff, and I'd rather that patients stay home than risk their lives on awful roads  to try and make their appointments.   And by two this afternoon, the county had declared a state of emergency, and non-essential staff, including me, were told we could leave if we wanted.  Yay! 

So I headed home, on roads that were thankfully much, much better than they were on the ride in this morning, shoveled out my driveway, kicked back and got on Facebook.  Where I discovered that everyone was celebrating the fact that yay!  The restaurants and store