Another Field Trip July 24, 2007
We had a fairly important meeting scheduled at one of our hospitals today and I decided to attend.
With all this in mind, I stayed in bed and snoozed until diana and the kids got home around 1000. I ate breakfast and took a shower, then got dressed in my modified scrubs. Much like the gym shorts and the boxers, these have the right leg cut off just above the knee and the seams on the outside of the leg replaced with Velcro. Diana also moved the drawstring over to the right side. With that, a t-shirt, a scrub top, socks on both feet and a sneaker on the left foot, I was ready to go. I brought my ID to ensure that no one thought I was an escaping ortho patient.
Diana dropped me at the front of the hospital where we quickly snagged a wheelchair. Jenn met us there and took my walker and my handicap parking permit in her car so she could get a decent space. (Jenn was my ride home, so her use of the tag was legitimate.) We met the others in the lobby and went up to the conference room.
I deliberately have not named the hospital because of my feelings about the meeting. To put it bluntly, it was miserable. There were roughly 20 of us crammed into a small conference room and it was clear that they were not interested in hearing from those of us who knew the most about the procedure in question, preferring to (by one doc’s own admission) make up their own protocol. The meeting lasted more than two hours and in the end, I’m still not sure things are properly resolved.  I suspect that the first time we use this protocol we will have a lot of complaints and arguments, even from people who were there today. But that’s life, I suppose.
A hospital transport wheelchair is not meant for a two-hour sitting session (custom-built wheelchairs for paraplegics and quadraplegics, on the other hand, are designed for long stays). By the end of the meeting, my butt was begging for mercy. Jenn wheeled me out to the hospital main entrance where we discovered that a Phoenix windstorm was in progress. She pulled the car up, left her door ajar, opened my door, and the resulting wind blew my prized handicap tag out her door and across the parking lot. Despite best efforts on her part, even with the assistance of a hospital security guard, the tag was not recovered; I will have to get a new one from the MVD office on Thursday.ÂÂ
The return trip home was slow as it was around 1600 and even the HOV lane was full. I finally got home around 1645 and went in to take a nap with the CPM machine. I ended up answering email and voicemail, though, and not getting any extra sleep. Diana came in around 1900 to ask if I wanted dinner and I agreed, so I moved out to the couch and had some excellent pork chops (again from Entrees Made Easy). After that, the kids went to bed, we watched the news, and that was it.
No more trips planned until Thursday. I can use the rest!
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