Late

Alright--here it goes. I'm just gonna lay this one out there. First let me lay the background: For the past few days I've been feeling quite sick and am amazed I got through work on Friday....it was a real challenge. So, Saturday and today I spent in a feverish delirium, sleeping constantly, in an attempt to get well enough for Monday morning work...I had gotten up around 5pm and ate some dinner and then decided to go to sleep for the night right afterwards.

I was SOUND asleep, in deep sleep, dreaming about a gigantic turtle in an underground cave somewhere in the Carribean....I was just about to discover the mysteries of the universe, when.... my cell phone, which I keep plugged in by my bed, started ringing loudly with its Moroccan-style tune. I sat straight up in bed, heart pounding, eyes, most likely bulging...I could feel the drool on the left side of my mouth which had dried sometime during my sleep. I didn't answer the phone; this was going to require some quick thinking. I noticed it was 8:30!!! I had overslept big-time!! I usually get up a little after 4am!! I didn't recall turning the alarm off--how the heck did this happen! And, worse, how was I going to explain to work why I hadn't called into ER already to let them know I was either going to be sick or late. The Government is very strict about their policy about calling in 2 hrs prior to your shift...in my case my actual shift start time is 6:30am. I was still new to this job and this was really going to look bad. My real boss was on vacation and so another manager was covering...I don't even know her yet. First I decided to try and call my boss right back. Apparently it was a "wrong number" who had called me because they didn't know who "Sherry" was. Alright then, I had no choice but to call ER and to see if they might have Sherry's extension # so I could talk to her directly. ER transferred the call and the phone began to ring. It continued ringing. I was letting it ring while I was thinking how I was going to explain to this manager how I possibly overslept 4 hrs. How irresponsible can a person be?! Oh my gosh...it's daylight out there! The birds are chirping!! How could I have not woken up!? The phone rang on and on endlessly. No voicemail...nothing. So I hung up. I ran to the bathroom for some flash-diarrhea, and then I decided to call ER back to let them know I was calling in sick. As the phone was ringing I decided to question what day it was...apparently my brain was just now starting to fire. I jumped online and opened MSN and there it was: Sunday, July 13, 2008. I hung up the phone and let out a huge sigh of relief. I don't even WORK on Sunday! Wait until I tell my kids this one. Where did you say that Adult Day Care Center was located again?

Falling Apart

Okay, so yesterday I went to the orthopedic to get my knee examined. I've known for years I've had Chondromalacia Patella, which is just another word for "screwed up knee". I messed it up years ago by too much weight lifting & exercise. So now I'm stuck with this knee due to taking care of myself too much. It's been bothering me more than usual, probably because I push people around on gurneys and stand during surgical procedures all day long most days. It's been swelling up and causing me quite a bit of pain. Sometimes I can't squat, which interferes with proper body mechanics while lifting, which plays havoc on my back. So, anyway, I wanted to see the ortho guy so he could give me his opinion on my knee. Wanna know his words? "We start falling apart after a while" was his official diagnosis. Yeah, he diagnosed osteoarthritis, gave me a steroid injection in my knee, and carried on some superficial conversation to distract me while he was injecting, but the message I got was this: "You're getting old, lady...it happens to us all." So now the option I'm left with is whether or not I want to get chicken fluid, extracted from chicken's "combs", injected into my knee. It's called Hylan GF-20...and it's basically injected to increase the fluid in the knee so bone won't be rubbing on bone quite so much, hopefully causing a "cushioning" effect. I don't know about injecting chicken substance into my knee. All I can see is some guy in the lab sitting hunch-backed over a chicken's neck, which has already been chopped off, extracting this wonderful substance from that red, fleshy, bizarre-looking thing that sticks up and flaps over a chicken's head. Who was the first one to think, "Hey, I think I'll take a sample of this chicken's red, fleshy, bizarre-looking thing's insides to see what it contains?" I know the guy. He' s dressed in a white lab coat, with a green polka-dotted bow tie, thick black glasses, & pock marks from a history of a bad case of acne as a pubescent. You know him, too. He's the guy who sat alone in biology class trying to come up with a plan for liver failure. He was my partner, actually, who ended up being a geriatric proctologist. He lives alone & he still wears a bow tie. He spends his Friday nights searching for research articles on thrombosed hemorrhoid's. He's got black, greasy hair that separates into long, stringy strands, and his breath smells like formaldehyde, probably from those chicken's red, fleshy, bizarre-looking things, which from now on will only remind me of how old I'm getting & how "we start falling apart after a while". Darn those chickens....I always knew I didn't like them for some reason.