Thursday, March 15, 2007

Build her a cake or something...

My dear stepdad Pedro just got out of the hospital yesterday. He had been flat on his back in pain for NINE days straight. No acute trauma, just...excruciating pain.

To top it all off, once he had been admitted there was some kind of hospital-politics snafu involving his needing an outpatient procedure that they wouldn't give him because he was inpatient. Typical Catch-22 situation, with Pedro caught in the middle. I don't know what the final agreement was. At one point there was talk about having to hire an ambulance and private nurse to transport him to the outpatient facility. The other option was to give the outpatient doctor temporary hospital privileges for this one patient. Eventually he got the procedure somehow. Mind you, he's a doc in the community and my mom used to be an exec at this very hospital* and there was escalation up to the high eschelons of the administration. Politics! Can you imagine what happens with patients who don''t have such a strong advocate as my mumma??

Anyway, today's Pedro's birthday. He's a gem, and he's able to walk now.

Happy Birthday!!




*This is the same hospital where I worked for a time on a food line spooning crazy-hot beef broth into plastic containers for the patient food trays. Yay hair nets!!

p.s. Am less tired. I only worked 7 hours yesterday, and it made all the difference. I also mowed the lawn, and enlisted the neighbor to help me move the garden bed off the porch. My lawnmower is human-powered, so there was exercise involved. I'm also leaving early today, and plan to get the second bed created this p.m. before the rain hits us!