My good friend Sue uses that term when things just get to be too much to bear. Today was such a day for old Poops. Thanks to SRUI's and plenty of experience, it takes a right smart to get me pissed off at the day job. I do what I do and I do it well, all the while treatin' folks like they're human beings that Big Ernie loves just like he does me. Hey..it makes life more enjoyable, ya know?

The place where I work has been having trouble holding onto associates,team-players employees lately because, well ..umm. A team needs an inspired coaching staff and we're just shit out of luck in that respect. Because of the rapid turnover in nursing, we have a large contingent of them working on contract making about twice what I earn as a med tech. My job is to report lab results and monitor things that might affect them, such as specimen collection details. The diploma hangs on my bedroom wall as proof that I earned a bachelor's degree in said vocation thirty years ago, officially signed by the powers-that-be in the great state of Tennessee.

Morning rounds for phlebotomy start around 4AM and usually end around six. The patient population is usually chronically ill and/or elderly or just crazy as a bat so it's often difficult to get a good blood specimen, even when they first present in the ER. I was doing my job early this morning and noticed a blip in the coagulation radar that alerted me that something wasn't quite right. The numbers were drastically different from yesterday ( thanks be to delta check ) so I asked for a re-collect and the results were almost identical. Critical values are called to the patient's nurse with computer documentation of who called at what time and to whom the report was given, all contained in the medical record. I called the unit and asked for this particular patient's nurse. Prefaced with an explanation about the recollection, I attempted to give her the critical value, and she proceeded to go ape-shit crazy on me insisting that this very ELDERLY lady be stuck with a needle one more time because that result just couldn't be right and she couldn't dare call the doctor with an out of the way kind of number like that because her license was on the line and she does this for a living. *sigh*

Long story short? The poor lady got stuck one more time and the result was the same. Her treatment was delayed for two hours because some idiot OCD temp was on a power trip. When my c0-workers and I were in the room with this sweet lady and the nurse du jour was rantin' and raving, I recognized Miss Mary H as a member of my church to whom I had served homebound communion on occasion. "You're Tommy's mom" I said. "And Jack's."

"Jack died" she said.

"Yeah, I know. You okay sweetie?"

I wouldn't take any amount of money for the smile on her face at that moment.

^j^