Dirty Thirty 2008/08/10

In roughly six days, I turn 30.  One empathetic friend seems to be anxiously anticipating this event with the occasional “How are you feeling?  I know how I felt when….”.

Truth be told, a fair amount of obsessing consideration has been devoted to this milestone.  I’ve obsessed over considered the implied physical/emotional/societal/occupational ramifications of entering my thirtieth year of life.  So when he asked this question again today, here’s what I’ve come up with:

My last ten years have been chaotic.  I’ve known since the age of 22, I’d need open heart surgery.  The speculation was this would come closer to 40, than 30.  But it didn’t.  I had adolescent ambitions of marriage, a graduate-level education, children, and at least a 200,000/year salary.  Heh.

Did I ever think my life would be as it stands currently?  No.  Do I wish I would have done/seen/accomplished more?  Absolutely.  Do I have regrets?  I’d be lying to say there are none.  Do I measure the quality of my life by any of this?  Thankfully, no.

When considering my options, I really only have two – to have a good life, or to have none.

I choose the first.

Oh, and I’m glad life isn’t what I thought it would be.  It’s so much better than I could have imagined.

What your cell phone says about you 2008/08/02

I found this article amusing. I often check my Facebook page or blog with a company-issued Treo 700wx. Yikes!!

So…what does YOUR phone say?

Email Free Friday 2008/07/19

I have the utmost of respect for my director.  Not only because she has faith that I can do my job with some degree of competence, but also because she’s always thinking of new ways to improve and evolve.

This week was Email Free Friday, the idea being to improve internal and external customer service by actually getting up and talking to people.  Because of my inability to sit still for any extended period of time, I thought I did a pretty good job of this already, but having a day where I am mandated to talk to people?  Awesome!

I needed to talk to Kirby about redesigning a sticker for a hospital.  Turns out it was helping staff to remember to call us, mostly because they are now peeling off the phones and sticking to people’s hair.  Though I found this moderately funny, this combined with the ink that is rubbing off, is leading to a re-design of these stickers.  So I traverse Cube Land and recount these experiences wtih him and provide assurance that a graphic designer won’t be needed if the printer will just stick to the template I will develop.

He says, “You’re smart, I know you can do it.”

Aww thanks.

Then says, “You’re smart, just have no common sense.”

Laughter comes from my director’s office as she says “Did you really just say that to her?”

And we’re supposed to be focusing on customer service….  See what happens when we’re forced to speak to one another?   I vote for Insult Free Friday next week. 

I’ll be out of town.

What I am thinking… 2008/07/10

In honor of the infamous question “What are you thinking?”, the less obvious sibling to “What do you want to talk about?”, I’d like to share what I am thinking about at this very moment.  I know both of the people who read my blog are dying to know…so here goes:

1. The car needs an oil change and an equally necessary visit to the car wash.
2. I’ve been getting a lot of unsolicited advice/sympathy about my scar, i.e., “Wow, it’s too bad your scar didn’t heal better” or “You should massage that to make it less noticeable”.
3. In response to #2, stop staring at my chest, you insensitive, socially-inept moron.
4. OMGosh, OMGosh, OMGosh - I’m turning 30 in a month.
5. Does he think of me as much as I think of him?
6. Enrolling in grad school is a necessary evil.
7. What is Melissa’s fascination with rodeos?
8. Why we hate outsourcing call centers to India, but think nothing of outsourcing someone’s uterus.
9. Oprah is annoying.
10. I’m insane for treating the ICU and ED staff of a local hospital to ice cream in the middle of July.

10 [Good] Reasons to Love a Recession 2008/07/10

Seriously!

Presentation is everything 2008/05/20

My one year follow up with my cardiac surgeon was today.  All is well and the PVC’s (a relatively benign arrythmia as far as arrythmias go) I have been experiencing are, well, benign.  Cardiac function improved.  Size remains a bit smaller than pre-op.  You see, when your heart grows it is usually a medical problem.

 

Clearly Dr. Seuss threw caution to the wind when he wrote “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.

 

So in conversation, I queried about my condition (technically: subaortic stenosis with aortic regurgitation).  Apparently the condition in itself is somewhat unusual, and my presentation of this condition and when considering the extent of the repair needed…well, it would seem he doesn’t do them frequently.  The next one he is doing since April 11, 2007, is tomorrow.  Making me the only other patient who has been the recipient of said repair in the past 13 months.  It’s so infrequent he calls it “The Jennifer Procedure”.  Considering this guy does several operations a week, I find this factoid amusing.

 

It’s hard not to get emotional when I reflect upon what actually happened this time last year.  I mean, talk about God providing.  My surgeon has experience in pediatric heart transplant and also hates doing bypasses because “they’re boring” and prefers the challenge of fixing aortic valves versus replacing them.

 

However, there is such a time where success may not be celebrated.  After all, if my heart didn’t work properly, then I wouldn’t be hiking and the cities of Phoenix, Tempe and Chandler could have saved some tax dollars.

 

When I provided this correlation to my physician, he laughed and said “That’s twisted.  Really twisted, but I like it”.

 

Yeah, I do too.

Romance? 2008/05/01

OK so I have a nighttime ritual of reading online celebrity gossip. It helps put things in perspective. For real…check out this one….

Pete [Wentz, one of the greasy haired, emo girl jeans wearing 'guys' from Fall Out Boy] sings the praises of his future bride’s [Ashlee Simpson] organizational skills in People’s 100 Most Beautiful issue.

When Ashlee tells the mag how she’s become adept at packing both their bags while on the road, the Fall Out Boy boasts, “She’s kind of like a super-assistant that you can have sex with.”

Now why can’t I get a classy guy like that?!?!

Why I do what I do 2008/04/29

This weekend was a Donor Family Ceremony where families were recognized for their gifts of helping others.  The families I met this weekend are among many who chose donation and at a tragic moment, demonstrated indescribable compassion towards other families.

Like any job, some days at work aren’t the most exciting.  But even on the most mundane of days, I hope someone’s reality was changed for the better.  I think we all long for that meaning in our lives.  At least, I hope.

So when the day is complete, I eventually realize that having any small part in this whole process is an honor and there’s not much else I’d rather do.

Here’s what kept me busy last weekend….

Control freak 2008/04/21

A friend’s sudden, serious illness has brought my own chronic (and acute) medical issues into perspective.

My friend’s a younger guy - an otherwise healthy runner, who developed what could have been a life-threatening infection in his lower extremity.  Though the hospital screwed up and it wasn’t explicitly diagnosed as such, the most reasonable theory names community acquired MRSA, a drug-resistant bacterium previously unseen outside of the hospital environment, as the culprit.

During his hospitalization, it was surreal being on the other side of a hospital bed.  The extent of my non-recreational hospital visits are usually limited to the nurse’s station.  Sometimes, things get a little crazy and I venture to a staff lounge (or two), and then there is the rare excursion to a patient’s room during the donation process.  So, sitting beside his bed, I felt overdressed and plain, considering my lack of hospital issue garments and plastic IV tubing.

Memory…not alone in the limelight 2008/04/08

Lots of donation stuff in the news this day.  We would prefer to think it is in honor of Donate Life Month, but that’s optimistic. Unfortunately until another unwed celebrity gets knocked up or Britney Spears does something interesting, I suspect more [negative] donation stories will come to the forefront.

Lately in the media, the topic of cellular memory (the article link is new age rubbish, but you get the point).  The ineffectual, yet far-from-ugly, Jessica Alba made both cellular memory and corneal blindness sexy when her character received the gift of sight in the movie The Eye.  The formerly blind violinist now sees dead people.  Original.

The exploitation of corneal transplant as a movie plot is frustrating, at best.  But I’m confident that undergoing such a procedure is less painful than 90 or so minutes spent watching that movie.