A slew of hardships and annoyances

Every so often I just wanna slap people.  Yesterday was one of those days.  I had had kind of a long weekend.  I watched Annie's kids on New Years Day.  Going from no kids to two crazy kids, I was tired.  Between their snacking and wipeouts (Everett fell and cried because he hurt himself at least 5 times, seriously the boy falls off of stools and all manners of side tables constantly) I managed to finish painting my cabinet, sanded and re-finished Gina's dresser and line up a truck to haul them.  In the afternoon we drove Gina's dresser to it's new home in Pana and the kids passed out hard on the drive...Zac did too.  Zac and I wrangled them into bed by 8:30 and Everett woke me up at 6:45.

I went to work that Saturday and it was freakin crazy.  I usually am done after about an hour and a half, two hours.  I had four patients on the books, ten showed up.  I didn't get home til 1:30.  I started cleaning the house and was just about done when my renter sent me a message around 4 to let me know her pipes had frozen.  Frozen solid.  She knew in the morning, but hadn't called because she thought if she turned up her heat it would fix it.  Stupid.

Uncle Brett and I got that situation under control.  I was feeling so dejected that I even agreed to drink "a frosty" or two with him. It took forever, two and a half hours to be exact, in the freezing cold darkness.  Luckly, frosty cold beer seems to warm you and maybe even lift your spirits a little.

Monday passed without much happening.  I stayed up too late.  Maggie and I made baby food for Caroline, and Zac wasn't home, so I filled a few too many hours with bad tv and book reading.  I made it to bed at 12:30ish and got up at 7:30ish, which should have been acceptable, but for some reason was not.  Needless to say, I was dragging on Tuesday.  All was normal until the evening yesterday.  I had two late patients.  I usually close up at 5, but I had a 4:45 and a 5:15.  I had a regular, Mary, walk-in around 4:30.  After I treated her I walked her to the front and found my next patient, Elsie, waiting.  They say hi to each other.  Mary says her neck is already feeling better to which Elsie replies, "really, every time I come here she makes me feel worse." I was shocked.  This was just Elsie's third visit.  I took her back to the treatment room and she proceeds to tell me how she's talked to a bunch of people about how she's getting worse and they keep reassuring her to give it a little time, she will be sore for a while, etc.  Now Elsie came in with hip and low back pain last week.  So of course I ask her, "the low back and the hip have been pretty bad huh?"  To which she replies "no, they haven't bothered me at all."  WHAT!  She told everyone she was getting worse when two visits resolved her complaint.  She even complained in front of my other patients about how I was failing her.  I ask her what has been bothering her and she tells me her knees, which she hadn't mentioned at all before this point.  The she tells me how they've bothered her for years and she has prescription medication for the pain.  But somehow, a condition that she never told me about, that is being treated by another doctor, has become my fault.  By now I'm mad, and I hadn't even touched her yet.  The treatment went relatively well.  She had a thousand questions, and told me she "just wasn't right" on the table over and over, even after I told her she was good, right where I needed her.

I'm sad to admit I failed at one of the goals on my list last night on the ride home.  I did drop an f-bomb I was so worked up.  After reading Jillian's blog, I just had to share my story.  I'm with ya Jillian...people have been getting the better of me lately.  We are lucky though, supportive husbands, little kids around to cheer us up and good friends to calm us down.



P.S. I spend so much time in blogland, I called my patient Elsie, Elise.