Day Off

I took the day off today to go to my brothers office. I got my teeth cleaned and a crown started. I know I've said before how great it is to have a brother for a dentist. It never costs me any money to have my teeth worked on.  Luckily I have dental insurance so he's not working on my teeth for free. Even though he would. He has before when I didn't have insurance. Just charged me for the cost of  materials.

This has been the longest winter ever I think! I'm so glad it's almost the end of February. All the snow we've had and the frigid temperatures have taken their toll on our roads. It's kind of like this:

LOL! This may be funny but it's pretty true! You either have to drive half on the shoulder, half in oncoming traffic, or hope it's in the middle of the road and you can straddle them!

We're going to be seeing lots of orange barrels this summer!!!

Shauna and Brad are going to be signing the contract to book the venue for the wedding. Then the date will be official May 30, 2015 and we can start planning! I am so looking forward to it! 

I have been trying to work some overtime. I worked last Saturday for a few hours. This normally very busy hallway looked like this:

 

Like a ghost town! That first door on the left is the entrance to the pathology department. I wish it could be like that all of the time! No one around...no line in the cafeteria....easy parking. But I guess if it was I wouldn't have a job! 

We plan on finally putting a floor in the upstairs hallway this weekend. We ripped up the carpeting a few years ago because it was worn and gross looking and we've never replaced it. It's just been the plywood sub floor. No one ever goes up there except for us and the cats so we've never been in a hurry to do anything with it. Last weekend we finally went to the hardware store and ended up getting whats called Vinyl plank flooring  It looks like wood but it actually strips of vinyl that lock together.  It's supposed to be really durable and I think it will look nice. Of course, there will be before, during and after pictures! 

In a few weeks we are planning a little anniversary trip. We are going to Traverse City for a night and then a night at the Soaring Eagle in Mt. Pleasant. We went there last year but neither one of us felt very good and we didn't enjoy it very  much. This year hopefully will be different. Plus I plan on meeting up with a old friend that lives up there.

That's all for now. In April I'm going to be doing the A to Z challenge, where I'll post every day from the 1st to the 26th using one letter from the alphabet per day! I've already got most of the posts planned!

Until the next time....

What Goes Wrong!

So last post I let you know what a big part of my job at U of M entails. Sending slides out for patients to get second opinions when they've been diagnosed with cancer or some other disease.

About 50% of the time things go pretty smoothly. We get the request, pull the material, get the pathologists approval and get the stuff shipped out, all within 24 hours of receiving the request. I love that part!

However, this is a teaching hospital with heavy focus on research. Besides all of our regular labs for routine diagnosis, we have tons of research labs scattered all over the campus.

Many time when I send in a request for slides someone has already beat me to them.

For example, here I put in a request for two sets of slides for the same patient.  The first set was pulled by Dr. Lim in December, probably for her research lab. The second set is just not in file; which means what it says, the slides are not there and there is no tag saying if they were pulled for someone else.

In this case I can either contact Dr. Lims secretary and have her check with Dr. Lim to see if she still has them. !

Or, I email the doctor directly.

Or sometimes I page them if I'm getting desperate and need their attention immediately!

 If I get no results either way, I can send a mass email to the whole pathology department! In all my years there, however, that's only worked once or twice.

So eventually I just have to request the blocks and have new slides made. That causes a delay of a few days and lots of times I'm getting phone calls from patients or the requesting hospitals wondering what the delay is. I can't exactly tell them that we lost the slides so I have to be careful what I say!

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This is the pile of trouble cases that has been on my desk all week. Each tray is a case in various stages of trying to find the slides or getting recuts! No stress there!!

As a side note: See that jumble of cords under the desk? One time I spilled a glass of water on my desk and the water ran down the back of the desk and all over that power strip! Luckily I was able to reach the main power cord before it blew everything out!

Finally the most frustrating thing is when I finally have all of the materials together and I go to prepare the shipment and I get this

The FedEx site is down! Thankfully it doesn't happen too often but when it does it can be for the whole day! Then we have to hand write a label! Terrible!!!!

So that's part of my job.  The other parts include

Receiving requests from clinicians for specialized testing and having to send materials to one of our specialty labs.

Answering phone calls from clinicians looking for biopsy results on their patients. We are not allowed to give them the results before the pathologist is finished, but we are allowed to give them the pathologists pager so they can contact them themselves.

Scheduling patients for our cytology service, which is fine needle aspirations, like for cysts.

Returning pathology materials that we have received from other hospitals. Although that actually is done in another area we are the back up when they get behind, which is all the time!

I'm also a member of the Employee Appreciation Committee. That committee plans any events and outings that the department does for the employees. Once a year they do a outing for the whole department. Last year it was a day at the Toledo Zoo. This year I think it's going to be a murder mystery dinner. We also  have a little award luncheon once a year for people who have been there 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. We plan that and arrange food and decoration and gifts. Plus March 7th is Employee Appreciation Day so we have some stuff we're doing for that.

I'm also on the Workplace Recognition Committee. Every month people send in nominations for one of their coworkers who has gone above and beyond on part of their job. After we've gone through the nominations and decide who get an actual award, my job is to type a nice letter to them, make sure the head of that particular lab signs it, get the  letter to the employee and copies to the head of the pathology department, the nominator and their supervisor. In May there will be a nice luncheon ceremony with the presenting of the awards. We'll plan all that!

I received a customer service award a year and a half ago. I posted about it here.

It keeps me busy but truthfully, I was getting bored with all the usual stuff so this has definitely helped! A little stressful at times but worth it!

So that's pretty much it. Other than having to take a bus from my parking spot to the hospital every day, it's a good job with great health insurance for me and Rich with minimal cost to me and a retirement plan that is second to none!

And that is worth it's weight in gold!

Until the next time!