A Doggy Rider

Driving home last night around midnight, I saw a man wearing a top hat. That would have been odd all by itself, but this man was also driving a motorcycle. In addition, there was a big white dog straddling the front section of the bike. I wasn't drinking, I swear. I don't know about him.

The dog didn't look too happy. His ears were back and he was clinging on for dear life. I've seen articles about this man in the paper. There is no law against taking a dog for a ride on a motorcycle, so there is nothing that can be done about that. There is, however a law against riding without a helmet. A top hat doesn't qualify as a helmet. That has gotten him in trouble. Perhaps that's why he was riding around in the middle of the night. There are fewer cops out then.

Even though I had my camera, I couldn't get a picture. Sorry.

Fish Discovery

MacKenzie discovered a terrifying truth today. We are not alone. It's not just me and her furry brothers who live here. There are some odd furless, legless creatures that live under the water in the pond. She spent a good part of the day barking at the koi. The fish didn't like it either.

The reason why MacKenzie now knows there are fish in the pond is because I finally got the water clear enough to see them. How did I do it? I turned off the fountain. The pump is so powerful that it keeps any sediment in the water in suspension. Now the sediment is at the bottom of the pond where it's not so noticeable. The only problem is, I miss the roar of the fountain because it drowns at the freeway noise.

If it turns out to be a choice between not hearing the freeway and seeing the fish, I think I will go with a cloudy pond. I really hate the freeway noise.

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I came back from running errands today to find a big pile of clothes on the floor, topped with the old collar MacKenzie came with and a rock that I brought home from Ireland. MacKenzie had gone through my closet, pulled the clothes off the hangars and dragged them to a spot at the top of the stairs. Her old collar had been on a bookshelf and the rock came from a window sill.

It's such an odd collection. I can sort of see the fun in pulling down clothes and the collar was hers, but what is with the rock? Too bad I can't ask her what it all means.

Urine Surprise

One of my coworker's urine got all over my bare bottom. I didn't notice that the toilet seat was wet before sitting down. I wanted so badly to take a shower and change my clothes, but that wasn't an option. It was so disgusting having my clothes stick to me because of the pee. Once my butt dried, it was a little better, but still annoying.

I really do understand why women hover over toilets. I've done that too on occasion, but it's important to lift the seat first. You can use your shoe and never touch the seat with your hands.

There is a reason why men lift the seat before they go. No one's aim is that good. This is especially true for women. Please, please, please don't pee on the toilet seat.

Comparative Status Symbols

A shoe store in New York City has been given its own zip code. I don't care one way or another about that. What caught my attention was the accompanying article in The LA Times in which New York women described their feelings toward shoes. Since the woman interviewed all happened to be in the shoe store, they probably already had an affinity for shoes and don't reflect the opinion of all New York women, but still.

The women interviewed related to Sex In The City's Carrie Bradshaw and her need for five hundred dollar shoes. Nothing else would do.

I don't understand that kind of thinking at all. Everyone I see wears reasonably priced tennis shoes or sandals. Even if someone wore five hundred dollar feathered stilettos, no one around here would be impressed.

The women justified their expensive taste in shoes as being a way of showing people " who they are." How silly is that? People in LA aren't so shallow as to judge others by the shoes they wear. That's what cars are for.

Who Gets The Blame?

The patient was allergic to dilaudid, a type of pain medication. The chart clearly stated so, but the doctor made a mistake and ordered it anyway. The recovery room set up the dilaudid in a pump, but didn't start it because the patient wasn't having pain yet. Once the patient arrived on our floor, she was having pain, so the nurse turned the pump on. The patient began going into anaphalactic shock.

The patient was treated and is fine. It seems like there is plenty of blame to go around here. The question is, who got the blame for the patient getting a drug that she was allergic to?

1) the doctor who ordered the drug,

2) the recovery room who set up the pump,

3) the nurse who turned the pump on,

4) all of the above.

The answer is 3.

Why? You tell me. (Thank goodness I wasn't involved.)

Gooey Legs

One of the patients has legs that are rotting away, clear down to the bone in spots. A musty, dirty, rotting meat smell permeates the air and of course, she's infected with MRSA. She's not responding to treatment and I've noticed our leg amputation doctor visiting her. At some point, I'm guessing her legs will need to be amputated to save her life.

In the meantime, she is driving us crazy because she will not stay in her room. The ooze from her wounds soaks through her dressings and runs down her ankles onto the floor. We don't especially want that on the carpet, although it may not really matter because the carpets have never been cleaned in the last 40 or so years and are already a disgusting mess.

We also don't want her touching our stuff. That's our biggest complaint. Her hands are covered in that gooey leg stuff and then she walks around touching everything the way a two year old does. We don't want her near the linen cart, but she dives for it and starts touching clean linens that will go on other people's beds. She touches our papers, equipment, everything in sight.

We've called security so many times that it was decided to post a sentry at her door to keep her from leaving. Even then, she once took off running, escaped down the stairs and fell after going down six flights. How she does that with her legs looking the way they do is remarkable.

She wasn't injured in the fall, which in my twisted way of thinking was a shame. A broken leg would keep her in her room. So would have having her legs amputated. See what sick thoughts nurses sometimes have? I don't really wish her harm, but I want her so badly to stay in her room that I fantasize about ways to keep her there.

She also has what other nurses call a hoarding problem. She grabs things like linens, masks and gloves and hides them in her room. I call that a stealing problem.

Pond Water And A Misrepresentation

These aren't photos of the pond. It's what the pond water looks like when I drain it into the rest of the yard.

My big project for the day was cleaning out the pond. I did this by pumping out half of the water in the pond, treating the water with a de-chlorinating agent and then re-filling it with water. I did that twice. With 75 percent of the water replaced, I expected to see some improvement in the water quality. There was no change. It still looks like pea soup. I wonder how many times I need to do that before the water looks half-way decent.

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MacKenzie, in the top photo, needed to get a dog license, so I went through the papers that came with her to prove that she's vaccinated and spayed. There was one big surprise. She was advertised as being about four years old. The vet's records say that she is 18 months old. That's good news. I'll get to have her even longer.

I also found the reason why she was given up to the pound. She was "uncooperative." I have no idea what that means, but I find her to be very anxious to please. Since she does her best to please me, I would classify her as being very cooperative. She does, however have other issues, such as not wanting to share me with the other dogs. But, we are making progress with that.

Beach Volley Ball

While at the beach in Hermosa over the weekend, I couldn't help but notice that something was going on. There was a large grandstand, TV cameras and crowds of people. It was a professional beach volley ball championship. I had no idea all of that would be there.

Below is gold medalist Kerri Walsh. She's the one with the long gorgeous legs. I had no idea that volley ball players were so tall. I usually tower over people, but next to her, I felt short and stalky.

This seems like a strange sport. The girls are real athletes, yet they have to wear itsy bitsy bikinis. Whose idea was that? The men wear modest trunks. Why aren't they required to wear Speedos to make things a little more fair?

If you can do it, it seems like a nice way to make a living. It must be nice to spend one's days at the beach, exercising in the sun. It sure beats emptying bedpans.

A Day At The Beach

This is Hermosa Beach from the pier. It wasn't a bad place to spend a Saturday.

This was my favorite t-shirt of the day.

There were lots of girls in bikinis. I wonder if that had anything to do with the sentiments expressed in the t-shirt?

I have to admit that I didn't take this picture and as far as I know, it wasn't taken at Hermosa beach. Good thing. There's probably a law concerning this kind of thing.

The Teenaged Underwear Model

One of the psychiatrists at work is in trouble. The social services department has accused him of behaving inappropriately with a patient. This is the doctor's version of what happened:

The patient was a minor, teenaged girl who, along with her mother, came to his office for a consultation.

1) The patient was wearing underwear that was pulled out above her pants. In an effort to establish a rapport with the girl, he commented on the print of her panties.

2) The patient is a model and showed him photos of herself on the Internet. She is an underwear model and was dressed accordingly in the photos.

3) The patient was complaining of stomach pain, so he palpated her abdomen. The shrink added, "It's not like I did a pelvic or rectal exam."

4) Afterwards, the patient's mother asked the doctor out to dinner and he accepted. The two of them went out on a "date," as the doctor put it, and "it was nice."

The psychiatrist's superiors are doing an investigation. The patient and her mother were both asked about the doctor's behavior and they saw no problem with it. The doctor, therefore, believes that his behavior has been proved to be appropriate. I'm not sure that a patient and her mom are qualified to know what is appropriate behavior for a shrink.

This whole thing creeps me out. I can cut him some slack on the first two items, but the last two are major no-no's. What do you think?

Elvis

This is Elvis leaving the building. He had come to visit a patient. The view from the front was better with the sequins, sideburns and big pot-gut. I couldn't photograph him from the front without his seeing me, so I settled for the back.

He was also about the age Elvis would be if he were still alive. Who knows, maybe Elvis is still alive and going around visiting patients in hospitals. But, Elvis is still stuck in the seventies, like a lot of us.

Driving Dog

It's exactly because of this kind of thing that I have a dog barrier in my car. I don't want dogs in my lap when I'm driving. MacKenzie managed to squeeze through a tiny space in the barrier and slide down my shoulder into my lap, while I was on the freeway.

Once she was in my lap, she turned in a few circles and plopped down, facing front. It looked like she was driving the car. To make sure that everyone around us in traffic saw that a dog was driving the car, she would every once in a while honk the horn.

Several years ago, when one of my big Goldens was a puppy, the same thing happened. Only that time a cop was driving in front of me and I was on the street my house is on. With my car swerving and horn blaring, I pulled over to the side of the road. I got out of the car to get my mail since the mailbox was there and the cop made a U turn and stopped opposite of my car. He watched me and then asked how I was doing. I said "fine" and asked how he was doing. He didn't answer and drove off. I guess he figured that my driving was impaired by dog, not alcohol.

Back to MacKenzie, nothing bad happened, it was just difficult to look around her in order to see to drive. I'm going to have to talk to her about the horn honking, though. It was a little tacky for a young lady to behave that way.

The Code

Someone was shrieking, "Oh no. Oh my God. Call a code." The nurse wouldn't stop screaming. She didn't need to scream anymore, she had our full attention, but she couldn't stop.

I hate code blues. I ran as fast as I could into the room to see if it was really necessary. Last week I cancelled a code that a manager called because the patient only fainted. Codes are for people who aren't breathing or are in cardiac arrest, not for people who just need to lie on the floor for a couple of minutes.

This patient didn't need a code because she was dead, but it is our policy to try and revive even dead people. While the nurse wailed, sobbed and screamed, the rest of us grabbed the crash cart and got busy. Given how dead the patient was, it seemed more like an opportunity to practice our code skills. I wasn't nervous for once because I knew that nothing we did would matter. It was just a practice session.

One nurse spoke sharply to the wailing nurse and told her to stop it. The nurse left the room, sat at the nursing station and continued to cry. The patient had arrived from the ER about an hour earlier and she was the only one who knew anything about the patient. She was unable to answer any questions about the patient, so the doctors just took the chart and tried to figure out for themselves what was going on, other than the obvious fact that the patient was dead.

They worked on her for 45 minutes and got enough of a heartbeat that they could transfer her to CCU, but she was still dead. She was just a grayish empty shell staring off into space. She was finally pronounced dead in CCU.

The patient had been diagnosed with a critical electrolyte imbalance in the ER. Treatment was started to correct the imbalance and she was transferred to our floor. Considering that hearts have a tendency to stop when electrolytes are this far off, it would have been a better choice to send her to a floor that has cardiac monitoring. That way, if she did go into cardiac arrest, they would know about it in time to do something. On our floor, the patient had an opportunity to get good and dead before we noticed. I hate it when people die because we screwed up.

The most unusual thing about the code was the nurse's reaction. Everyone on the floor could hear her sobbing. Some of the nurses were complaining about her unprofessional behavior. Granted, we need to stay calm and cool-headed in a crisis, but it was refreshing to see someone who cared enough to cry. The rest of us are so desensitized that we feel nothing. It must be nice to feel something, anything.

Diaper Night

Wednesday night is diaper night, not for me, for MacKenzie. The problem is that the gardeners come in the middle of the night on Thursday mornings. Well, it's actually eight am, but it might as well be the middle of the night. I work evenings and sleep in late. Eight am doesn't exist for me except in my dreams.

The dogs must be locked inside the house when the gardeners come, so that means I either need to lock them in the house before I go to bed or get up when the gardeners ring the door bell. The latter scenario is most unpleasant. I have to throw on some clothes, lock the dog door and make sure everyone is inside, then run and unlock the gate. The whole time, the gardeners are revving their engines outside the gate. I then have to wait for them to leave, lock the gate again and let the dogs out. Then I go back to bed. Is it any wonder that I hate gardener day?

It is by far easiest to lock the dogs inside the night before, but MacKenzie either can't or won't go that long without emptying her bladder. I don't like having to spend Thursday before work shampooing the carpet.

I didn't think that it would work, but it occurred to me that diapers might solve the problem. On Wednesday night before going to bed, I put a diaper on MacKenzie. She didn't like my putting it on her, but once I was done, she didn't mind. The boys looked at her funny, but she seemed happy in her fancy pants.

The next morning I got plenty of sleep, the carpet was dry and MacKenzie's diaper was nice and heavy. Problem solved.

Computer Woes, Biohazards And Jello

I had heard the horror stories. This kind of thing happened to other people. Now, it was my turn. My computer would not connect with the Internet. *gasp*

I tried everything. It was hopeless. I picked up the phone and after a long, complicated conversation with a computer, a live person finally picked up the phone, in India.

The stories were true. They really make you talk to people in India when you need help with your computer.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against India and the guy I spoke to couldn't have been any nicer, I just had such a terrible time understanding him. Can't they get tech people in America? Of course it would cost more, but wouldn't it be worth it to get people that can be understood?

Anyway, the problem wasn't with my computer. The system was down in my area and has since been fixed.

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At work, an aide put my patient on a bedpan. When she was finished, I removed the pan. It had the roommate's name on it. If I am ever hospitalized and need to use a bedpan, I sure hope that I don't have to share one with my roommate.

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At the nursing station, there are spots on the ceiling in a spray pattern about five feet across. It looks like blood, although I can't rule out liquid stool. Either way, what's it doing on the ceiling?

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A vegetarian patient asked me for some jello and I gave it to her. Jello isn't a vegetarian food. I knew this and apparently she did not. Was I wrong not to tell her?

Slobber Pills

My coworker was flipping through the pages of the medication record, licking her fingers with each page. In case I haven't mentioned it before, my work-place is filthy. MRSA is growing on the computer keyboards, telephone and I'm not sure what else. The place gets cleaned up, they culture various surfaces and nothing changes. We just have to be careful to keep our hands away from our eyes, mouth and nose and wash our hands before touching patients. Licking our fingers is not an option, no matter how tempting it may be.

Next, my coworker popped a pill out of a little package and gave it to the patient with her freshly licked fingers. The patient swallowed it. The patient might just as well have licked our work surfaces, the nurse's fingers and then french-kissed the nurse.

But then, who am I to talk? I also did something gross today. I was in the middle of something messy in a patient's room when my nose started running. Sniffing didn't help to stop the snot, so I wiped my nose on my upper arm. Leaving the room to blow my nose wasn't an option at the time. Do you suppose that Queen Elizabeth ever does that?

Secret Ingredient

I went to my parent's house for dinner. While eating the salad, I tasted some mint. I figured that my mom had gotten creative and added mint leaves to the salad. As I chewed, the texture seemed a bit odd. The more I chewed the more I came to realize that there was something terribly wrong. I pulled a wad of something out of my mouth and looked at it. It was used chewing gum, spearmint flavor.

I don't chew gum and neither does my dad. That left my mom as the culprit. I showed it to her and she started laughing hysterically. My dad thought it was funny as well. I thought it was funny too, but still, how did that happen? Did my mom spit out her gum in the salad?

The last time I found something disgusting in one of my mom's salads, it was a caterpillar. The time before that, it was a caterpillar again. The caterpillars upset me more than the gum, so I guess things are improving.

What surprises have you found in your food?

Packing A Cat

I found this on http://neatorama.com via http://cosmicwatercooler.blogspot.com. How neat is this story?

When Mary Martell left for St. Johns Airport, she didn’t know her cat had jumped into her suitcase.

How did a live animal in a suitcase make it through airport security?

Martell said her bag was scanned at the airport, but she was not stopped.

“They had asked me, when they put … the luggage through the X-ray, whether I had a turkey,” Martell said.

“[Security] kept going back and forth with [the suitcase],” Martell said. “I was adamant. ‘Look, I have no turkey.’”

The cat was discovered after a two-hour flight to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, when Martell opened her suitcase in her hotel room. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority is investigating the incident.

I'm So Lame

When going to the doctor, I don't normally give my underwear any thought because my clothes either all come off or all stay on. Since the doctor never sees my underwear, today I wore old, frayed panties with the elastic stretched out, just the way I like. I can't believe that he wanted to see my hip. I figured that he would just move my legs around until I shrieked. I guess it could be worse, at least they were clean.

A couple of years ago when I injured my left hip, the x-rays showed nothing wrong with my left hip, but moderate degenerative arthritis in my right hip. Today, the x-rays showed nothing wrong with my right hip, but moderate degenerative arthritis of my left hip. Go figure.

Either I had a miraculous cure from arthritis in one hip, only to develop it in the other hip or someone in the x-ray department mislabeled the films or turned around the images. I'm waiting for a radiologist to compare all of the images. Rather than becoming the subject of medical textbooks, I think it more likely that someone screwed up.

Anyway, it's thought that I tore a ligament in my hip and so my leg is no longer being held firmly in place in the socket. Hopefully it will heal on its own. In the meantime, I learned a new trick. If I walk with my leg internally rotated, it seems to hold everything in place. So, with one leg, I'm walking pigeon-toed and with the other, I limp a bit because I've never fully recovered from the first injury a couple of years ago. Getting old is a bitch.

Walking And Planting

It's annoying when things don't work right, like my hip, for example. My hips are bad anyway, but something really bad happened recently and now I can barely walk. Last night I worked and the pain was unbearable. Every few steps, there would be a jolt of pain that would make me gasp and hop. Had we not been so short-staffed, I would have gone home. Today, I didn't go to work at all.

I'm hoping that this is related to the dog walks and that my hip will heal if I take it easy. There is a big difference between walking two dogs and three. With two, I can walk. With three dogs, I have to run, whether I like it or not. With the degenerative changes in my hip, I should not be running at all.

A hip replacement is in my future, but I hope that it is in the distant future. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. I'm primarily going to ask for time off from work so that I can try to heal on my own.

This will be the end of the dog walks. The dogs aren't going to like that. Maybe I can take them for drives instead.

In the meantime, my ambulating problem didn't stop me from planting twenty tomato plants this afternoon. I just sat on the ground and dragged myself along. If I get one tomato, I will be doing better than last year. It's probably cheaper to just buy tomatoes, but not as challenging. I'm not going to let last year's crop failure stop me from trying again. And this year, I'm not going to stake the tomatoes with ties that are used for tying up dead bodies, not that I'm superstitious. But, why take chances?

Big Dog

Taking Direction From A Dog

Today, the pups and I went for a walk along a route that is particularly annoying. The street trees are planted down the exact middle of the sidewalk, which means that we all have to agree on which side of the tree to pass. If one dog goes one way and the rest of us go the other way, we all crash. No one likes that. MacKenzie solved the problem for us.

Tommy and MacKenzie walk side by side in front. I'm a leash length behind and Kelsey is one step behind me. When we're almost to the tree, MacKenzie side-swipes Tommy to let him know which side of the tree we're going to pass on. Tommy does as directed and the rest of us in back follow the lead.

Who knew that MacKenzie knows how to herd? Or, that the rest of us wouldn't mind being herded? MacKenzie solved a problem that has been bothering me for years. She may be a little bossy, but she knows what she's doing.