There are certain things in life that pose, without malice, a certain amount of awkwardness and difficulty. One of these I encountered this morning and it entailed pealing the purchase sticker off a small potted cactus. Why Lowes needed to put such a large and very sticky sticker on said cactus, I am not sure. I believe a smaller UPC code would have been quite handy on the bottom of the pot, where I could have left it indefinitely. Martha Stewart explained to me last month that succulents are the new hot ticket item. Naturally, I went out right away to purchase. Heaven forbid someone walk into my apartment and not see a perfectly quaint Oreocereus trolli. More importantly, it is pretty unlikely that I will kill this “plant” and thus I have a friend to come home to.
Another one of those uncomfortable and almost tiresome life tasks is meeting people. I was more than excited to move to a beach town. I love it here and have more than enough fun riding my bike and jogging at the beach. However, this is the first time I’ve moved to a place where I actually have no friends. It’s not like when you go to college or when I went to optometry school and you are given a set pool of people and you actually get to pick and chose who you want to hang out with. I’m here, alone, living in a 1 bdr apartment. Above me is a 40 yr old woman with cats. She is actually quite nice, however a constant reminder that this is a potential course in life in which I do not want to take. I cannot even begin to explain how much I loathe cats and would much rather peel cactus labels for life than end up old and alone surrounded by felines. So how does one make friends? It’s been suggested numerous times that I go to a bar by myself. I think this is about as good of an idea as investing in a litter box.
I am happy about my move and really love my job; although it poses many difficulties itself. Just the other day I had a elderly woman explain that her eyes were empa~nadas. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how it would be a problem for her eyes to be small warm cheese filled dough pockets. My stomach rumbled and I paged one of the girls in to translate. That tilde sure makes a difference, as she was saying her eyesight was blurry… this did not, however, help the fact that it was noon and clearly I was starving. The next patient came in complaining of lingering images. When she looked at an object and then looked away that object remained superimposed in front of whatever new she was looking at. As she explained this to me, in English – thank g*d, the lovely image of Dr C popped into my own head. He vaguely resembles ‘Doc’ the bushy eyebrowed old man from Fraggle Rock. When he stepped into the classroom that first day of Visual Perception, I was instantly in love. He not only is the kindest, nicest man ever to live, he was also a pretty good teacher and thus I knew I had me a case of palinopsia. That’s about all I knew and as soon as I dropped her (dilation) I went to the nearest computer to google it. Fantastic, Wiki tells me ‘attributed to a number of conditions affecting the brain including, but not limited to, medications], seizure disorders, tumors, occipital lobe or visual pathway lesions], subcortical hemorrhage], and dural arteriovenous malformations. Her eye exam was normal as I expected. Now the hard part: how do you explain to someone who already has extreme anxiety ( a side effect of palinopsia, as most people think they are going crazy), that she may or may not have some serious business going on in her cranium. I am young, but I am fairly professional in the exam room (well, on occasion). Most of my newly diagnosed glaucoma patients believe they just won the lottery as rainbows fly out my ass when I explain they probably only need a drop or two to prevent them from going blind. The difficulty in being a doctor is explaining things that are scary without making a patient crap their pants or leave not really knowing the severity of their condition. This was a sticky situation. Worse yet, trying to convince a person (with which docs in general are against their religion/way of life) that doesn’t have insurance that she needs to be seen by a neurologist and have an MRI/CT scan. I did my best, and fingers are crossed but Im not even sure she will show up for the follow up with me. I clearly can do nothing, but bring people back almost just to ask them if they have done what I have said. When I was at the VA I made about 20 phone calls a week making sure my patients went to retina evals or were taking their meds properly. I got a text from my former boss last week letting me know a patient came back complaining about the drops I ordered for him. Betoptic a beta blocker which I only ordered through the VA since its cheap, but the Rx came from his Glaucoma specialist MD. Apparently this gentleman had been feeding the drops to his cat and now poor fluffy is no longer with us. I generally felt really bad about this (really, hehe ok well maybe), but take zero responsibility for his cats death. I cannot be held accountable for stupidity, I only saved you some money dude. But, in general, compliance is tough.
So I left work with a bit of a knot and not an empanada in my stomach- hoping for the best. I came home to my cactus and the pitter patter of cat paws upstairs. And, against my better judgment, I let a colleague set me up with someone. I haven’t met him, although accidently facebook friended him. He is clearly not into me, yet I’ll keep attempting to make this work because frankly, I don’t need a guy so much as someone to hang out with. My cactus doesn’t answer when I talk to it. I have maybe a chartreuse thumb. I’m not horrible, I have a pretty decent herb garden growing on my porch. However, when I went home last weekend and checked on the pumpkins I planted in the spring, I came across a 2 ft zucchini. Clearly this would’ve been the time to mark a plant with a giant, difficult to remove barcode.
Another one of those uncomfortable and almost tiresome life tasks is meeting people. I was more than excited to move to a beach town. I love it here and have more than enough fun riding my bike and jogging at the beach. However, this is the first time I’ve moved to a place where I actually have no friends. It’s not like when you go to college or when I went to optometry school and you are given a set pool of people and you actually get to pick and chose who you want to hang out with. I’m here, alone, living in a 1 bdr apartment. Above me is a 40 yr old woman with cats. She is actually quite nice, however a constant reminder that this is a potential course in life in which I do not want to take. I cannot even begin to explain how much I loathe cats and would much rather peel cactus labels for life than end up old and alone surrounded by felines. So how does one make friends? It’s been suggested numerous times that I go to a bar by myself. I think this is about as good of an idea as investing in a litter box.
I am happy about my move and really love my job; although it poses many difficulties itself. Just the other day I had a elderly woman explain that her eyes were empa~nadas. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how it would be a problem for her eyes to be small warm cheese filled dough pockets. My stomach rumbled and I paged one of the girls in to translate. That tilde sure makes a difference, as she was saying her eyesight was blurry… this did not, however, help the fact that it was noon and clearly I was starving. The next patient came in complaining of lingering images. When she looked at an object and then looked away that object remained superimposed in front of whatever new she was looking at. As she explained this to me, in English – thank g*d, the lovely image of Dr C popped into my own head. He vaguely resembles ‘Doc’ the bushy eyebrowed old man from Fraggle Rock. When he stepped into the classroom that first day of Visual Perception, I was instantly in love. He not only is the kindest, nicest man ever to live, he was also a pretty good teacher and thus I knew I had me a case of palinopsia. That’s about all I knew and as soon as I dropped her (dilation) I went to the nearest computer to google it. Fantastic, Wiki tells me ‘attributed to a number of conditions affecting the brain including, but not limited to, medications], seizure disorders, tumors, occipital lobe or visual pathway lesions], subcortical hemorrhage], and dural arteriovenous malformations. Her eye exam was normal as I expected. Now the hard part: how do you explain to someone who already has extreme anxiety ( a side effect of palinopsia, as most people think they are going crazy), that she may or may not have some serious business going on in her cranium. I am young, but I am fairly professional in the exam room (well, on occasion). Most of my newly diagnosed glaucoma patients believe they just won the lottery as rainbows fly out my ass when I explain they probably only need a drop or two to prevent them from going blind. The difficulty in being a doctor is explaining things that are scary without making a patient crap their pants or leave not really knowing the severity of their condition. This was a sticky situation. Worse yet, trying to convince a person (with which docs in general are against their religion/way of life) that doesn’t have insurance that she needs to be seen by a neurologist and have an MRI/CT scan. I did my best, and fingers are crossed but Im not even sure she will show up for the follow up with me. I clearly can do nothing, but bring people back almost just to ask them if they have done what I have said. When I was at the VA I made about 20 phone calls a week making sure my patients went to retina evals or were taking their meds properly. I got a text from my former boss last week letting me know a patient came back complaining about the drops I ordered for him. Betoptic a beta blocker which I only ordered through the VA since its cheap, but the Rx came from his Glaucoma specialist MD. Apparently this gentleman had been feeding the drops to his cat and now poor fluffy is no longer with us. I generally felt really bad about this (really, hehe ok well maybe), but take zero responsibility for his cats death. I cannot be held accountable for stupidity, I only saved you some money dude. But, in general, compliance is tough.
So I left work with a bit of a knot and not an empanada in my stomach- hoping for the best. I came home to my cactus and the pitter patter of cat paws upstairs. And, against my better judgment, I let a colleague set me up with someone. I haven’t met him, although accidently facebook friended him. He is clearly not into me, yet I’ll keep attempting to make this work because frankly, I don’t need a guy so much as someone to hang out with. My cactus doesn’t answer when I talk to it. I have maybe a chartreuse thumb. I’m not horrible, I have a pretty decent herb garden growing on my porch. However, when I went home last weekend and checked on the pumpkins I planted in the spring, I came across a 2 ft zucchini. Clearly this would’ve been the time to mark a plant with a giant, difficult to remove barcode.
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