Monday night again

Today was really busy. I was running about 45 minutes late with most of my patients. Everybody, it seemed, had some problem, something out of the ordinary; "orange stuff" or "rib pain" or a problem with their pharmacy. I had 7 no show patients from today and Friday, and so I wrote seven "you missed your appointment" letters. That's a weird thing we do at this office. If you don't come to your appointment, we chase you down.

Also, no one had brought money to pay for their Pap smears. I really hate talking about money with people, but I have to frequently. At the same time, it's weird to me that people will come to doctor's appointments with no money at all. Pap smears cost $85.

We had two LPN students following us today. They were nice girls, and they asked a lot of why questions, which is good for me. It was sort of hard to figure out what to show them...I guess I don't really know what LPNs do. I talked about how I was deciding to treat people for their symptoms and diagnosing bacterial infections, but then I stopped because they won't be doing that stuff. It feels strange to be in a position to teach.

Linda came over and we had dinner together at Outback--which was great, as usual. Then we went back to my apartment and she taught me some stuff to study for her management test tomorrow, like operational strategy vs. functional strategy. It was a lot of ideas, the kind that float around in the air and all sound the same. She liked it. I like concrete stuff better. That was something I appreciated about nursing school.

I saw Memoirs of a Geisha. It was okay, not great. At the end I wondered how a guy named Arthur Golden knew all that stuff about Japanese women. Because Arthur Golden sounds like a guy on a cereal box or something.

I was off call this past weekend and I went to Chattanooga and went to a football game, watched movies, and jumped on the trampoline so much that I had to take a shower. And I got new jeans...I hadn't bought any since college I think, so it was time. Two weeks ago some of us went canoeing at Suck Creek, I think I have pictures of that in my computer somewhere...