D What the Heck

I'm on the verge of rapping up the grant. I'm really just waiting on invoices from various supply orders and specialist referrals. Since I was just waiting on those things, and wasn't too bust, and everyone else preoccupied with DHEC stuff, I decided to join in on the residents arts and crafts session. I worked on coloring on a picture while the residents painted, played with play-dough, or made bead bracelets. Immediately when I started coloring, a woman from the other end of the table noticed I was left-handed and said "He's left-handed. He's smart." That made me pretty happy since I pride myself o being left-handed. I also was sitting across from a 98 -year-old woman who managed to put together a puzzle. Granted it was a four piece puzzle, but still. It was impressive for a woman her age. She didn't want to leave me when the session was over and tried holding on to the table and not letting go. The staff had to gently coax her into going back upstairs. I have been hanging out with Sherri lately. She's been serving as the interim Activities Director in addition to her other numerous roles she has. She always teases me about not answering the phone, but she says that she only teases because she likes me. She also told me how she overheard a group of nurses talking about how sharp I looked today thanks to wearing the shirt that Maggie got me for my birthday/Christmas ;)

Tonya Martin and I worked on revising some of the stuff I had written for the grant and while I was back in the administrative offices, I saw all of the head nurses and administrators busily going through files trying to provide the DHEC people information. It was like a quiz type thing. I guess you never really get away from quizzes even after you leave school. By tomorrow DHEC should be gone, and we should know out rating, dum dum dummmm.

Catch Up

I have been very lax about keeping this blog up to date, so I attempt to play some catch up. I probably have not been writing anything because nothing too exciting has really happened. I've mainly been working on the grant or Helping Hands Clinic. It is more of the same of what I have been doing. Pulling files, searching the rolodex, etc.

I went home for Maggie's graduation and all of the aunts and Abbie were in town. I got to see a lot of people from high school which was good. Kristy and I went to the new CCHS Dukie's grad party and then went to Emily's house for S'mores! I used my Boy Scout skills to build a fire WITHOUT rubbing two sticks together. Sorry, not possible. Brandon and I drove back to Marion together. We got a little lost towards the end, but like people say, it is a small town and not that hard to find your way back if you get lost.

Same 'ol same 'ol at the office. Grant writing. It is actually called the Interim Evaluation Report. One day we lost power in the Clinic, but the lights came back on quickly because the entire hospital system is on several generators. Apparently the power outrage reached all the way out in Marion.

Saturday was Benton's graduation party, so the Cheraw kids came down and we went to that. We met all of Benton's family, including another graduate going to Duke next year to play football (he has a good name. It's John). When Stormi was trying to park the car there was kind of a horse in the way. Don also came down and spent Saturday with us. We all decided to go to Broadway at the beach and ate out at Tripp's. Since Stormi knew people who worked there we managed to get our tables combine which was actually kind of a big deal.

Nothing too much happened at work this week . . . or so I thought. On Tuesday, I was working back in the Clinic when Tonya McKenzie got a phoen call from the Nursing Center saying that DHEC was here. DHEc stands for Department of Health and Environmental Control. They are the people that inspect the nursing home and give it its star rating. They give a surprise inspection every 18 months or so and it had been 17 since our last one so we knew they would be coming any day now. Before I could leave for the day I had to go back to the Nursing Center to get all of my stuff. But before I could go, Tonya made a point of photocopying a bunch of information like their Acronyms for hospital procedures (RACE = Remove, alert, contain, extinguish for fires) and Codes (like Code Red, Code Blue, etc.) She made a point of saying it was my right to have those papers in case a DHEC official stopped me and quizzed me. This got me kind of worried. Luckily nobody stopped me. I did see a posters up on all the doors announcing the inspection and certain dates. The signs said they would be there through Thursday. When I saw Tonya Martin, she looked pretty shaken. This was a big ordeal and would be a very long, tough, 3 days for her and the nursing center.

This pretty much catches me up to today's post.

Two Weeks Late . . .

This morning I got in and there wasn't much for me to do, so I copied and read another article from the Discovoer magazine. It was another article having to do with the brain and how it reveals your preferences. I was pretty skeptical because a lot of it seemed more like pop neuro stuff. I did a lot more waiting around for Tonya to come in and get my assignments.

Leslie eventually gave me the password to Tonya's account so I could get started on making some of the graphs for Made the Geographical distrubtion graph on excel it was pretty easy. It ended up looking really nice too. Very colorful. Maybe I will include some of the graphics in my blog once I finish the entire report.

I would have kept working on some more of the graphs, but I had to get off the computer because they were working on the system. I waited around, a little bit bored to go back online. I got some more information for the report, so I decided to make a "strategic workplan" in my spare time.

I went to lunch with Tonya in the cafeteria today and we sat at a table with Anson. Apparently he lives right behind us. It's a pretty small town I guess. He thought that was a funeral or something at our house because there were so many cars parked out front.

We then went to the hospital to get some paperwork for ordering items and services. Specifically, we went to Dr. Suggs office. He would be a good doctor to shadow. One of the secretaries names was Candi. Tonya said that Candi is really good at her job. She catches people clocking in and out at the wrong time and who try to "cheat" the system.

Back at the nursing center, the residents were playing Trouble and dancing to jazz

Back at the house, the girls had a barbecue at Fresh Start, where Deej works. She borrowed my catchphrase and apparently it went over really well.

Me, David Womble, and John Deans went to gym. I saw Tonya McKenzie there. Went to walmart for fishing license and it took forever. The cashier also thought I was David. We also finally found the redbox

The guys then grilled out.

Me, Deej and Dave-0 went bowling with 5 of bens friends in florence it was a lot of fun. They were really nice, easy to talk to and just fun in general. I, however, was not a good bowler. It was raining pretty hard on the way over, so the girls pulled over . . . and still beat us. One of them brought up their classmate who had recently drowned in an accident. Russ was a pallbearer at the funeral. They were all on the baseball team togerther and had been really close.

Marion's graduation is tomorrow.

This may be two weeks late . . . but at least its here!

Discover

I got to the Nursing Center today and apparently Tonya wasn't going to come into work at all today. Oh well, that didn't really matter since I was planning on working in the free clinic the entire day. I got started right away, even before 8:30 working on finishing the demographic report. That took most of the morning. Since I was working in the office area of the clinic I was able to hear the patients as they signed in and went through the screening process. Some of the people had really tragic stories to tell, but it was such a shame because we couldn't actually help them since they didn't have all of their paperwork. I was able to finish most of everything up til mid-May before lunch. I ate lunch outside, having the pizza and fries from the cafeteria. The food is very convenient and good there (and free most importantly), but it's definitely not very healthy!

After I finished the geographical distribution tallying, I got back to work on going through the inactive files. That was pretty much it for the day at work. Nothing too interesting happened. There was a social worker there who helped out in the morning who was sweet. She invited me to her Methodist church in Mullins on Sunday but I'll be back in Charlotte. Apparently her husband went to school the pastor at the Methodist Church in Marion though. I was also really confused when Ms. Carolyn introduced herself on the phone as Mary White. When, I asked her about, her and Tonya burst out laughing because there seems to be quite the joke about Ms. Carolyn's names. Her full name is Mary Carolyn White Steel Platt. Or something along those lines.

While I was waiting for Alice to pick me up I started reading the Discover magazine in the lobby and photocopied an article on the cerebral hemispheres. I found it interesting since that is what I had written my major research paper on during the first semester for one of my classes. Alice and I stopped by Movie Gallery on the way home to inquire about becoming members. The worker was really pushing for the Unlimited Plan, but we decided to wait.

I went for a run around town right before dinner. I decided to run down Main Street and then go down the biking trail for a little ways. I actually passed by Jessica and Brandi from yesterday again on their bikes. Small town I guess. I made it to the 3/4 marker where the bridge is before heading back. Got back just in time to shower before dinner with the Mayor's wife and daughter, Melia Berry and Hayley Tucker. Charlotte and Deej made an awesome shrimp and pesto pasta, garlic bread, and brownies. Melia talked a lot about her She Magazine. A lot of the girls were interested in possibly writing for it. Dinner turned out to be great, and Melia invited us to a pool party she was throwing next week so that should be exciting.

After dinner, Charlotte and I went on a walk again. With our luck, it was no surprise that we got caught in the pouring rain walking back. There were still no pina coladas. Alice tried teaching to play a group game called Contact. We kind of got the hang of it but I think we may still need some practice. Charlotte and I watched an episode of Glee. It was entertaining, but I don't know if I will watch it in the fall. Probably not.

An Object in Motion Will Remain in Motion

OK, almost caught up now. Back to work. Today, Alice had some weird hours, but luckily Noelle was driving to Mullins this week so she was able to take me in at about my normal time. It was nice to be back in the office. I was starting to recognize more and more of the other nurses and they were recognizing me too.

First thing that Tonya Martin and I did was go over some numbers of patients who visited the Helping Hands clinic between January and April. Once I get set up on a computer, I'm going to make some charts to augment the Grant Report that I will be developing. In looking over what goals they had established in the grant request, I suggested that we try and prove that the patients are indeed from Marion County (one of the requirements). Then we came up with the idea of making a pie chart showing what area of Marion County their patients come from so that they can see what areas need to be targeted better. This became another main project of mine. Tonya also thought that it might be a good idea for me to design a poster for the emergency room at the hospital informing people coming in about the health clinic. Tonya said that so many people come in who cannot afford to pay their bills that don't even need emergency treatment that it really drains the system of its money. Those people really should be applying for the clinic.

Today was also the luncheon for the graduating nurses (Licensed Practical Nurses aka LPNs) from Marion County Technical Education Center. The Nursing Center sponsored the luncheon and had to set up everything so people were pretty busy with that in the morning. In charge of talking points for the event, Tonya tried brainstorming some ideas for them but drew a blank . . . so she came to me for advice. I suggested finding some interesting facts or some statistics or possibly going into some of the history of the LPNS. We tried googling some facts about the number of people who use the hospital a day to show the ever present importance of them in our society but weren't really drawing up anything good. I was itching to get at the computer because I knew I could find what I wanted in a short amount of time. I guess growing up with computers really helps efficiency in working. Finally Tonya gave up and let me have a stab at it. I was able to write up three pretty good speeches in under an hour. For the CEOs I talked about the importance of nursing today and how they were joining a fellowship of 700,000 LPNs (interesting fact - they are called licensed VOCATIONAL nurses in Texas and California) nationwide. For the other speech I referenced Florence Nightingale since she was the "pioneer of all nurses" and was known as the "Lady with the Lamp." I got real corny and said that is was the LPNs to take take light passed down from Nightingale to serve those in need. I thought it was also clever that the largest nearest city that has big hospitals is named Florence.

After finishing those we went over the cafeteria to help finish setting up. The director of the school, Mr. Crandell, came in pretty early by himself. He struck up a conversation with me and asked what my major was. I told him I was thinking of Neuroscience and the first thing he related that to was war veterans coming back from overseas and having psychological problems. Not quite the same thing, but close enough. Some more official looking people came in early and another guy, the CEO, came up and started talking to me too. He was actually originally from Charlotte so we talked a little bit about my hometown. He said that he didn't really miss the city that much and acclimated nicely into Mullins. He was amazed thought at how much the city had grown.

For lunch I sat at a table with Joyce, the head RN for the second floor. We had our food plates set out in front of us: chicken salad, croissants, grapes, cheese, and of course sweet tea . . . but we had to wait for the CEO to finish his remarks first. He mainly talked about Obama's plan for reforming the health care system and congressional problems and things like that. Joyce and I were both glad we could finally eat when he finished. She told me about how she originally started working as an emergency room nurse but then transitioned to nursing unexpectedly. She said she liked the lifestyle changed, but her heart was still in the ER. Next, the head teacher lady came up to give a talk. Her main theme was that of "professionalism." I sort of saw her point, but I really did not like her speech. It seemed like she was talking to little kids and telling them to behave. "No one likes a snitch, but you have to be the one that points the finger. It's the right thing to do." I didn't think that graduating nurses needed to be told what to do like that. Maybe I take knowing things like that for granted. The next lady that came up was the Chief Officer of Nursing, Kay White. She was an interesting person. She seemed very well put together, friendly, and polite. Her hair was pulled tight back behind her head that gave the impression that she meant business. She referenced the laws of motion and how you can relate those to your ambition in life. She told a story of how when she returned from college she wanted to meet up with her friend from childhood. Her grandmother reassured her that she would find her in exactly the same place she has always been. Ms. White took that to mean that the girl had no dreams or motivation in life. She would never aspire to be anything more than what she was now. She encouraged us to always be looking for new challenges and ways to improve ourselves. Of course, she referred back to the other speech and continued on the concept of professionalism and said simply get to work on time. That is the number one issue they have to deal with in the system: tardiness. They called up all the new nurses to get a complimentary backpack after that. The Exec finished out by working off of the script I had written. That felt good.

Also, an interesting observation, all of the women (and yes, they were all women) had kids. This seemed not to be their main ambition in life and seemed to be like a side thing. Earlier Tonya had told me that they really all could try for their RN but lack the drive to do it. It's not that much harder to get and the pay and work is better. Also one of the speakers noted that everyone was female and asked why was that. One woman responded because "We're better." The thing was everyone agreed that women are genuinely better than all men at being nurses just because they are women. I don't really like that mindset.

After the luncheon I went to work on the demographic project back in the clinic. Nothing too exciting there. I got to use the rolodex there to look up everyone's location. It seemed like it would be a lot easier to me if it were computerized . . .

Some patients came in the afternoon to sign up for appointments and get screened. One lady came in with a major attitude. Of course she had none of the proper paperwork and refused to realize it. After she left, I thought the atmosphere in the office would be serious, but Tonya McKenzie and Ms. Carolyn didn't seem bothered by it. I guess they deal that sort of stuff al the time and don't take it too seriously. Some more people came in with sad stories, but we couldn't help them without the paperwork. I also got to meet Ms. Roxie who is another nurse that helps out in the office. She was quite the jokester and really friendly.

It was Brandon and my turn to cook dinner so we decided to do Taco Tuesday (even though we had Tacos the night before in Cheraw . . . oh well. I was in charge of cutting up all the toppings while Brandon took care of the meet. The meat ended up being pretty salty because we had taco seasoning to already pre-seasoned beef. Oh well, you live and you learn.

After dinner Charlotte and I went on a walk around the neighborhood to check out Debby Jordan's pool. We were walking down the street and we waved to 3 girls who rode by on bikes. They rode past and then we heard them say "Are those Ben's friends?" We heard and said that we were. They recognized the Duke logo on my shirt. We talked with them for a little bit and then made our way to pool. It was nice to go for a walk in the early evening.

I decided to teach Deej, David Womble, and Brandon how to play Euchre. I think it was pretty much a success since David and Brandon ended up beating me and Deej. We then introduced David to "the youth culture" but showing him SNL videos online. He wasn't that impressed. Oh well.

Cheravin'

Continuing with the weekend roundup . . .

We didn't do too much on Saturday. Some of us went to FATZ (I felt the need to capitalize it) for like a 3 o'clock lunch. The weather was not the greatest because it was raining on and off again. When we got back we decided to watch a movie. Since a lot of us had not seen American Beauty we opted for that. Definitely a good choice, we all loved it. I would watch again, and I don't say that for many movies. Later that night Maria and I watched the Virgin Suicides since it was a double feature with American Beauty. Bad choice. The movie was horrible. NEVER watching it again. I guess we couldn't have gone two for two in one day. I had to kill a cockroach up there too. Not cool. However, the upstairs apartment was actually a pretty good setup and roomy (without 5 girls there it was actually pretty nice). The second floor porch was also a good place for us to hang out and listen to music as we looked out over the neighborhood.

Sunday was really fun because we all went to the Cheraw State Park to go canoeing and kayaking. We did the usual thing and paddled over to the docks so we could go swimming. Unfortunately just as we got there it started to rain pretty hard. We and all of our stuff got soaked. Since we were already wet we decided to jump in the lake anyway. It was a very cinematic experience to go swimming in the lake while it was raining. The rain actually let up pretty quickly though and got sunny which was nice. As Maria and I were boarding our canoe to head back, we had the unfortunate experience of capsizing and falling in the lake after we had dried off and put all of our dry clothes on. Oh well, things happen. After we got cleaned up from the lake (which was pretty dirty) some of us decided to go out to a Japanese restaurant. The food was incredibly good. We got back and Ben, Nancy, Maria, and I decided to watch The Godfather since only Ben had seen it. The girls didn't quite make it through the entire movie, but Ben and I enjoyed it.

On Monday, Charlotte, Stormi, Davis, and I headed over to the Spears' pool to go swimming and lay out since it was a really nice day. Charlotte, Stormi, and I had gotten pretty acquainted with the pool last year when we visited so it was nice to go back again. The dogs may have been a little bit more intimidating at first though, but once they got quieted down they were softies. After the pool we checked out the local bargain clothing store for some awesome, and always useful, thrift clothes. Back at the house we watched Night at the Museum (man, we watched a lot of movies this weekend) and had tacos thanks to the Alejandro. Driving back, we managed not to get lost and arrived back in Marion for the night.

Free File-in'

Since I am writing this on Tuesday night, that means I have to summarize all of Friday, the weekend including Memorial Day, and this Tuesday. So i might be brief . . . but I tend to be a little long-winded sometimes.

Tonya had to take the day off to do PTO stuff at her kids' school so that meant that I was g

oing to spend the entire day working with Tonya McKenzie over in Helping Hands Free Medical Clinic. I have gotten pretty used to navigating "the dungeon" by now so I can get around by myself now. Tonya came up with a pretty big project for me to tackle over the next week or so. Basically what she wants me to do is go through all of their inactive files of their patients and figure out exactly why those patients went to an inactive status. In addition, I was also to transfer and order numerically all of these files from the main cabinet into another in one of the back ones. I think that the clinic probably has had about 800 patients since its inception, but I'm not really sure how many of those are considered inactive. If I had to guess, I would probably say 50%-75%. It is hard to tell though.

The process was not as straightforward as it could have been. I also had to get a feel for what to look for when I searched through the file. After getting a pattern down, I would first check to see when their last visit was. Most of the files I had were the oldest ones so it been 5 or so years since their last visit. A patient becomes inactive if they haven't returned in 6 months, so that pretty much may have been the reason for all the inactive patients. Next I would look for any notes left by Tonya or a doctor on the patient's last visit info sheet. Usually their wouldn't be any notes indicating anything, although occasionally there was a "Received Medicaid" or "Gained Private Insurance" note. After that I looked at the patient's year of birth. Once a person turns 65, they become eligible for Medicare, which disqualifies them from the services offered at the clinic. Sometimes the birthdate would be hard to find so I would have to go back through all of their forms to find it which got pretty time consuming. It was pretty tedious work, especially since the patients' names were misspelled and I had to verify/correct them. I saw some pretty interesting/interestingly spelled names too. I probably got through about 250 or so when all was said and done Friday.

I ended up having to finish early since Tonya had to work restricted hours so Charlotte came and picked me up from work. We stopped by the gym on the way home which was really convenient and probably a good routine to get into. We got home for some a

wesome oven fried chicken which was totally delicious. Charlotte and I decided to make a trip up to Cheraw for the weekend so we got packed and left shortly before dark. We thought we had pretty accurate directions . . . but apparently not. We didn't really spot some Governor's

highway and ended up getting lost in the middle of nowhere, on E, at night. Not the best recipe for success. Oh, and did I mention there was no cell phone service to top it off either? We finally decided to stop and ask for direction in Mechanicsville. It was as small as it sounds. There was a man and and his wife working the cash register and they gave us really detailed directions using some back way. Sure enough, every directions was dead on. We owe that guy a lot of thanks. There was a little bit of sunlight left which made or a picturesque sunset and colorful sky with all of the rustic scenery in the background. Of course, I decided to get my camera out and take some pictures and we decided to stop to get some higher quality ones. We saw a dirt driveway to park on . . . BUT as soon as pulled off the car behind us WOULD pull into the driveway as well since it was their house. Awkward. We snapped a few pictures and got back on the road.

We finally made it Cheraw only about 20 minutes behind schedule. Everyone was excited to see us and we just hung out and caught up on everything.

I'm going to stop this post now since people tend not to read really long ones.