A regular reader of this blog remarked today about the lapse in time between posts of late. As per below, I have been consumed by the health of loved ones and so my mind is not wrapping too tightly around some subjects that I write about regularly. For those interested in medical issues, posts for the foreseeable future will be mainly about those. For others, stay tuned. The virtual teaming/collaboration/networked organization material will return - maybe even unpredictably shortly.
The trek to the ultrasound department in this hospital is a long one. For "my person," it involves eight 90-degree turns, four curves, two doors that don't open automatically, one elevator, one steep grade up (then down on the return trip), one turn so sharp that it requires the kind of mirror you see on a switchback, and traversing what amounts to three city blocks.
All on a gurney of the sort mentioned below.
On one of these trips, the person from Transportation was so short that she could barely see over the gurney; she was also not in shape to be pushing anyone uphill. As another reader of this blog familiar with hospitals remarked to me, this woman probably also is working two jobs, earning minimum wage, and is likely grateful to be employed.
Naturally, I run ahead to open doors, lend my weight to the uphill battle, while trying to make myself invisible because who wants someone else doing their job?
Once we arrive in the general ultrasound area, the gurney is parked along a wall and the wait begins. For this, only time-lapse photography can properly capture events. There are perhaps half a dozen or more ultrasound rooms and their doors are opening and closing like kitchen doors in a restaurant. Someone rushes out; another person rushes in; an extremely thin woman in very high heels clomps past and unlocks another door; two doctors hurry past; someone else walks in and then immediately out of another door; the thin woman clomps past again; the person from Transportation who escorted my person the last time wheels someone else up.
Later I'll write about what the actual ultrasounds themselves are like (anxiety-ridden might be one way to put it) but will leave it here for now: while waiting for a doctor to interpret the results, a resident, who stayed in the room while the ultrasound tech went to fetch the doctor, decided to check his email (Yahoo, not hospital) and evaluate his stock portfolio on eTrade. Makes me think he should be the one pushing the gurney.
