Tag Archives: medicine

A Small Sliver of the Health Care System in America

Uncategorized, , ,

Okay, Story time with the Legospaceman: (either you’ll find it interesting, or at least it will let me blow off some steam)

The doctor who put a graft into my arm (who can’t seem to remember if it was a fistula or a graft) was told months ago that I had lost all feeling to the index finger of that arm. He indicated that was normal and that the no feeling and numbness would go away. A month after that my finger started to feel pain.. He looked at the finger and said “It’s healing”. The next few months were series of the nurses at the dialysis center constantly indicating that they didn’t think it was getting better. Calls to the doctor were impossible to make because no one answered. Finally, I walked into the clinic and said I needed to see the doctor (of which I had been informed that this breached some kind of unwritten protocol). Saw the doctor. He looked at the finger and said “I really think it’s healing.” Fast forward another month and the head nurses decided they were going to contact the nephrologist and inform him that in their opinion something needs to be done. Get an appointment and he arranges a new surgery to repath the graft (or fistula). A few weeks after, he sees me again and says “it’s definitely getting better.”

Anyway, about seven months of this have taken place, and I’ve been in pain the whole time. Advance a few more months into this timeline and I see him once more because “no, it’s not getting better.” He sends me to a plastic surgeon with the idea of cleaning out the debris that has accumulated as this finger was “getting better”. The plastic surgeon says he doesn’t want to clean it out until we’ve had an xray to make sure it’s not infected (which means he’ll have to amputate part of the finger). I go and get an xray and it turns out that the finger is NOT infected. I go back to the plastic surgeon and he says the only option is to amputate.

This is kind of where I am now. My nephrologist has honored my request of getting a second opinion, so now we’re in a holding pattern waiting for some mysterious doctor to entertain me with a second opinion. Meanwhile, my finger has made it so I haven’t had more than two hours of sleep most nights during this period.

If I Had the Job I Really Wanted

Books, Business, Economics, Memoirs, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. Not sure why, but it just keeps coming up in my mind. I wonder what it would take to finally get the job I really want, rather than the job I actually have.

I don’t mean I don’t like my current job. It’s okay. It’s just not really all that exciting. Nor is it really that hard. It’s not even all that interesting. I’m a glorified editor who sometimes creates stuff that’s not really very creative. It requires working for the health care industry for a hospital system, and most of the stuff I do is really designed around rudimentary stuff like registration, insurance and other boring stuff that would cause most people to scream if they had to deal with on a day to day basis. Every now and then I get to contribute on some education for a surgical procedure, but it’s not like anything I contribute really helps the procedure in any way. I just make sure that people can understand it, and that no one in the chain of command (or higher up outside of the chain of command) thinks it was designed by Neanderthals.

But no, I think I’ve figured out the job I’d rather have. I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to get it. It’s not because the job isn’t something I can’t do. I’m highly qualified for it, and if I was able to find an opening, I’d probably be one of their top choices. But I don’t live anywhere near the place where this type of job is accessible, and in order to move to such a place, I’d probably have to be jobless for some time before I actually found something, and that’s never a good situation to be in.

I’m not even talking about a really, highly technical job like law or medicine either. I’m talking about something I do all of the time. As I’m a writer, I realize the job that’s perfect for me. I should be a copy editor, or an editor for a large book company.

I know these jobs are out there, and I know a lot of strong writers got their start in the field by making connections with these types of jobs. I just don’t live anywhere near where such a job might be possible.

This often gets me thinking that I’m living in the wrong place. I even moved back to the wrong place when I came back from South Korea. The San Francisco Bay Area just wasn’t the place for me, even though you’d think those jobs would be available there. I really think I should be living in New York City. I just don’t know how to make that kind of move, as I’m now kind of stuck in West Michigan right now. There’s not a lot of upward mobility when you hit your 40s. You’re kind of stuck with whatever job you can get, and often you have to stick it out, even if it’s not the best match for you.

If there was some way to obtain a job like this from afar (BEFORE moving), that might be the greatest thing ever, but I’ve never been all that successful with trying to hook up a job long distance (even though I did get the current one that way). I just really think that working for a big publishing company as an editor is the one thing I could probably do well. I sure don’t see myself getting a job with the government or anything all that exciting these days.

Oh well.