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.

"Who put the hyphen in Troy?"

Right when I got to work today, Tonya and I left for the the HR Department of the hospital to get me an official ID badge. The person in charge of HR is Lisa Ramos, who also happens to be the only Spanish interpreter for the hospital. She said that she would be willingly to let me help with some of the translation whenever a doctor called for her services. This would definitely be a good way for me to get involved with the Hispanic community.

Back at the hospital, Tonya and I worked out some of the paperwork we had to submit to Minda like the Memorandum of Understanding. We tried to work out a schedule for Friday since Tonya was going out of town. Tonya arranged for me to work with the other Tonya in the Helping Hands Free Medical Clinic. We decided that it would be a good idea for me to get a head start in there today though since Tonya Martin had to finish up some more interviews. I followed Tonya McKenzie back through the "dungeon" as it is affectionately called to the Clinic. She gave me tour of the facility again, but this one was more detailed. She walked me through the process of a patient coming in for a visit. They start off with Miss Carolyn who screens all of the patients for business. Basically she sits down with them and makes sure they have all of the proper paperwork to be eligible for the free clinic. They then go into a holding type room where they can have some privacy to get meds or discuss what they need. After that, they get the basics checked in one of the room like heart, BP, glucose level, etc. They are then moved to one of 2 procedure rooms for whatever services they need. With the recent grant money they were able to buy a new EKG machine and that was in one room while the old EKG was in the other room. That room didnt even have any instrument for looking inside ears. All they had was a cheap flashlight. It was surprising that they did not even have basic equipment like that. I asked why it seemed like there was so many supplies for dealing with diabetes in the clinic, and she told me that diabetes is the number one ailment of people who come in. She said the majority of people actually are diabetic. Asthma is a close second, especially with smoking being so prevalent. Tonya then showed me where they store the medicine and the process for documenting its arrival and dispensation. After that, she spent a long time going through exactly what each paper means in a patients chart and described exactly what services they offer and what the eligibility requirements are. There people have absolutely no health insurance, not even Medicaid or Medicare. I asked what the average income of people were who came in and Tonya replied $12,000 to $15,000 per year. It is hard to imagine the quality of living for these people.

A went back to the nursing center to wait for Tonya Martin to get out of her interviews. It took longer than I expected so I basically sat around doing nothing for an hour. I skimmed over some of the copies of forms Tonya McKenzie has given me, but that didn't take long. I wandered around outside again and was about to go get lunch by myself from the cafeteria when Tonya came back. We went over to the cafeteria together. I found out that lunch was free for me from the cafeteria so that got me pretty excited. And today was chicken tenders, fries, and apple pie. It was all delicious, even for a nursing home cafeteria. Tonya and I ate outside in the courtyard. She told me a little bit about her employment history and how she had been an ER nurse, and started a Home Medicine business, quit that, and then became the Administrator of the Nursing Center. Deanie (sp?) joined us and they discussed some of the difficulties they have with relatives coming into the nursing home and accusing them of mistreating their loved ones. They said it is hard for these relatives to realize the bigger picture when they don't come that often. They also talked about the guilt many of them feel for placing their loved ones in nursing homes and they take it out on the staff.

After lunch I sat in on a conference call with Tonya and Jerolyn. It was a speech done by CMS (the nursing home rating system) on how to earn a 5 star rating. It sounded like pretty boring stuff to me since I wasn't really that familiar with the technical terms and forms they were referring to. The residents were having activity time outside. The activity for today was horseshoes. I watched as the wheelchair were rolled around in a circle with the post in the center of them as they took turns tossing horse shoes. When one of them scored, everyone threw their arms up in excitement and joy. They all looked so happy. I was glad that I got to witness this from the window. It was much more interesting than the conference call.

Tonya McKenzie came back and got me for some more orientation. She showed me where all the bathrooms were and some of the empty space they were hoping to turn into a lounge. The "door" to this "lounge" was actually a whole in the wall in the medicine room that I had been in earlier. However, before, there was a bookcase that has been covering the entrance but was now pushed aside. It had a secret passageway type feel to it. Tonya gave me the assignement of going over the papers she gave me to proofread spelling and grammar and to make sure the readability was easy and on the level of a 6th grader. In Marion County, the average reading level is that of a 6th grader.

I finished up kind of early for the day, and Tonya Martin was leaving early as well since her husband had gotten free tickets to the pre-opening of the Freestyle Music Theme Park that used to be the Hard Rock Theme Park. She was glad that I enjoyed the clinc. Tonya told me that the other Tonya had been really excited I was coming to work with them this summer when she first found out about me. This made me feel really good. I then realized that I would be able to help the most and "serve" in the free clinic, while I would gain experience and opportunities to benefit myself through the Nursing Center. I got a ride home with Leslie, the secretary, since Alice was still at work.

After hanging around the house for a while, Charlotte and I decided to go for a walk around town. We went pretty far down main street and then took the bike trail and back roads back through the neighborhood. There is a lot of stuff you miss while driving. We saw some quaint antique stores along the side of one of the blocks. We then encountered a group of kids probably a little younger than us. We didn't say anything to each other, but we were pretty sure we could feel them staring at us as we walked past them. I guess we really seemed like outsiders. We admired all the architecture of the old homes and how simple yet pretty they were. Once we turned around we found a beautiful meditation garden next to the Presbyterian Church. You have to walk underneath a trellis to get in and immediately a smell of honeysuckle envelops you. We stayed there for a little bit and then continued our trek back. We kept an out for the library but didn't really find it. We decided to take a little detour and go up the steps to the courthouse. We were admiring the iron work on the steps when we realized that there were letters and words worked into the pattern. On the way down the steps on the other side we realized it was the name of the architect, Hayward Bartlett. Continuing, we found a small side alley that was actually well kept. It had a trellis with ivy at the entrance and landscaping and a brick pathway. We then discovered it right next to Tio's (which we thought was Italian but then others claimed it was Mexican, but then we saw it was advertised as International food). We got sidetracked by a fountain on the way back and realized it was the biking trail so we walked back through that way to the neighborhood. We saw a lot more kids out playing in the park and on the tennis courts which was nice since we hadn't seen many people our age yet.

Since Alice, Noelle, and John Deans had gone with Dr. DeMarco to dinner and symphony in Florence, we decided to go out to eat tonight. We ended up going to T-Roy's. The general consensus was that it was satisfying food, but overpriced for what it was. I decided to make it my goal to try all the sweet tea at every restaurant so I could deicide what was best. This sweet tea was very sweet, but not obnoxiously sweet. It definitely had a sense of drinkability. The onion rings were actually the best onion rings I have ever had, or at least that I can remember.

Back at home we watched Ocean's Eleven, and I worked on proofreading the documents for Tonya. It was already pretty late so we didn't do much else for the night.

I'm Fixing to Do Some Good

I was pretty excited for my second day working at the nursing after having such a great day yesterday. Alice and I drove to Mullins together for the first time. For some reason her GPS wasn't working so we had to wing it direction-wise. We actually faired pretty well navigating the town. We arrived in Mullins with plenty of time to spare.

When I walked inside the building, I was surprised at how many of the staff and patients I immediately recognized. I was also comforted by the fact that they remembered me too and my name. They set me up outside of Tonya's office since she hadn't arrive yet, but Tonya got their quickly. She had me start right away on filling out all of the paperwork that the HR department sent over for me. I had to read an orientation handbook, a guide on confidentiality, and take a test on those packets as well. Most of it was pretty straightforward and not too difficult. I probably could have taken the test without even having read the packets. If only school was that way too . . .

I was in the middle of going through all of those when Tonya invited me go with her to the local radio station in Mullins, WJAY. She was going to do a spot on the air advertising the nursing center. I had heard her say something about this yesterday to some of her coworkers and was secretly hoping I could tag along. Obviously I was thrilled when I could. The radio station was a small concrete building in between Marion and Mullins not really near anything else. The DJ was the only person working there so he let us in. His name was James "Pee Wee" Hayes. I would definitely describe him as being jolly. He was super friendly and nice, as have been almost everyone I have met down here. We had apparently gotten there quite early so all three of us just sat down in the studio and talked a little bit. They went over exactly what they were going to say in the "interview" and Tonya told James what questions she wanted for him to ask her. Some of the main points were that 1.5 million people are in nursing homes. Last week was National Nursing Home Week. Nursing Homes offer more skilled specialized 24 hour care than assisted living centers. Nursing Homes do not have to be permanent--many have temporary rehabilitations and go home. And more things like that Both of them were also interested in how hard Duke actually is. I responded saying I thought it lived up to its difficult reputation (at least from my experience with premed classes). As they wrapped up the TV spot, James shocked me by saying "And we can't forget about Intern John from Duke University (in his most radio host announcer voice possible) who provided much information for us. Say hi to every, John." Of course, I said "Hi Everyone." Short and sweet. James was definitely interested in having all of the duke interns come back sometime to do a show on the radio and I think this could be an exiting opportunity for us. I got his business card so we could do some business in the future. What I took away from this experience is that you really need to do something that you truly love. Both Tonya and James stressed that to me.

Back at the office, a psychiatrist had arrived and was working with some patients. I went up and got to see some of the work she was doing. The psychiatrist was Dr. Bhatt from Conway. She was new at the nursing center and this was only her second time here (psychiatrists come every 3 months or so). Mostly what she did was look at the charts of patients that the nurses had flagged. Dr. Bhatt would look over the old psychiatrists notes on the patient, her own notes from her last visit, and take into consideration what the nurses told her. She would then fill out a new sheet with what changes needed to be made in the medications. I always have a hard time remembering, but psychiatrists CAN prescribe medicine, psychologists CANNOT. I learned some of the shorthand doctor lingo like F/U = follow up and a circle with a minus sign in it means NO. Dr. Bhatt was also very friendly (there seems to be a trend here). She took time to explain to me what all of the different medications did and how it affected certain neurotransmitters. Of course, my experience from Neuroeconomics helped out a great deal when she talked about dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine. It was a little unnerving thought that she didn't even see hardly any of the patients. She only observed briefly about 3. She said that geriatric psychiatry was not her specialty and can be difficult sometimes with limited communication. She compared it to children's psychiatry because of limited language capabilities and slow metabolism. Another unnerving that fact that I came upon dealt with Patients' Rights. Under that clause, a patient can refuse or request any medicine they want. I developed a new hatred for those cheesy medicine commercials because I didn't realize how much they target old people. A lot of the residents sit in their beds and see these commercials and feel compelled to try them and the nurses must honor their requests. It can get complicated. I also got to hang out with some of the nurses that were helping out Dr. Bhatt, notably Joyce. I was impressed with how compassionate they were and how much they cared about the residents. They keep a secret stash of Coca-Cola for one of the patients and they always know when he comes around wanting it with lunch. He doesn't even have to ask. Dr. Bhatt left me with some helpful advice. She said that if you become a psychiatrist you will NEVER be out of work because they are always in that much of a demand. She also was excited that I went to Duke because I must know a lot of Indian people (she gave the example of people with the last name Patel), and she was ecstatic that there was a girl named Khadijah BHATTi living here in Marion with me.

I then went back downstairs to the office with Tonya and finished up all of my paperwork. Some of the other administrators (Leslie and Jerolyn) brought pizza so I just ended up having that for lunch. For drinks, Tonya and I got sweet tea from the cafeteria that they always keep in stock throughout the day. However the sweet tea is TOO sweet so Tonya showed me the trick of mixing half sweet and half unsweet. Perfect combination, if you ask me. Some more people joined us from pizza, including Deanie (sp?). I really didn't do much work after lunch at all actually about none. Tonya had to run off and do two interviews for administrator postitions. The nursing center recently had 3 important people quit and they are scrambling to find more people ASAP. Apparently what happened is they downsized positions and just gave existing offices more responsibilities. But those people couldn't handle more responsibilities so they quit. While she was interviewing she gave me some information to read about the Helping Hands Medical Clinic, including some stats and the grant report. This is coming to be one of my major projects of proving how they used all of the grant money and wear so they can get more. However, it didn't take me long to read all of that stuff so I just kinda sat around doing nothing. I wandered in the courtyard a little bit, but that was it. It was a little disappointing to not have anything to do but I justified since I had a pretty exciting morning.

Alice came and picked me up. Apparently she had an even more unproductive and boring day than me. We are hoping that our enthusiasm from day one wasn't just all glamorous and now the real summer is sinking in. I have faith though that it will be good. Alice and I did decide to go to lunch together though sometime soon during our lunch break.

John Deans and David Womble and I decided to buckle down and get our gym memberships. The gym in the hospital was better than we expected. We all had to squeeze in the cab of John's truck so it was pretty tight quarters. John Deans let us do the honor of shifting the car into reverse and drive.

At home we talked about some of the ethics dealing with the family refusing chemo for their boy and pretty intense topics like that. This was left over night so I fixed myself some Mac 'N Cheese. We caught most of the finale of American Idol. The house was overwhelming a Kris Allen fan so we were glad that he won. Although Adam Lambert put on quite the show. PS - WHAT WAS HE WEARING?!? I finally taught Charlotte how to play Euchre so hopefully we can play sometime soon! Once again, I am the last person up. It is going to be an early morning (although not as early as John Deans!).

The Duke Intern

Tuesday signified the start of our first day at our internships. For my internship this summer, I am working at under the Marion Regional Healthcare System at the Mullins Nursing Center and the Help Hands free health clinic. My supervisor for the summer, Ms. Tonya Martin, picked me up at our house around 10:30 a.m. today. Usually Alice would be giving me a ride to work everyday, but Tonya had a senior staff meeting from 8-10 today that her boss assure us as being to boring for me to attend. Since I am working in Mullins, Tonya and I had about a 15 minute drive to work from our house in Marion. Tonya is really nice and very friendly and we immediately got along well together.

Tonya drove us into the back entrance of the nursing center and we made our way to the front from inside. I met some of the staff who work there. They all seemed really nice and friendly which is definitely a good thing since I will be spending 9 weeks there. The first thing we did was take a tour of the facilities. There wasn't much on the first floor. Most, if not all, of the administrator's offices are on the first floor with of course the main desk. There's also a smoking room for patients who still smoke. According to Tonya they had to implement a policy about smoking in the nursing center in order to contain the smoking. If the residents were previous smokers they could smoke; however, if they had not smoked previously they would not be allowed to start the practice. Only one person in the building is allowed to have a lighter as well. There is also a nice outdoor courtyard on the ground floor. Across the courtyard there is the employee cafeteria which apparently has pretty good food. I'll have to be the judge of that and try it sometime though. I also saw a rehabilitation room that looked like a lot of the equipment they used needed some rehabilitation themselves. Also in that room was an alcove for employee fitness that had some funky treadmills from the 70's. Tonya also decided to set up my office in that area of the hospital as well. It is a little gloomy with no windows or anything, but there's a nice desk and a computer. Hopefully I can spruce it up a little bit over the 9 weeks! Oh, and also across from the administrative offices they had the beauty parlor where the residents got their hair cut, and the activities room. In the activities room today, they had the bingo store. When they play bingo they win fake money and during the bingo store they can buy items with that money. Some of the women's strategies were to buy only things they absolutely needed like extra tissues and soap, while others opted to spend the money for gifts for their friends and family. One woman was pleased with the handcloths she bought for her daughter.

We rode up to the second floor with some of the bingo shoppers and there I got to meet a lot of the other patients and nurses. The nurses seemed almost a little intimidated of me when I was introduced as the "Duke Intern." There was a little eating area for those that could not make it downstairs themselves for food. We saw a room that was really well-kept and decorated by the patient's family. We also saw a woman's room who did beautiful paintings in her prime. Now that the she has aged, the only way to calmer down when she gets into a fit is to give her some crayons and paper. The third floor was pretty similar to the second. I saw some of the machines they used to lift the residents into their beds. I also met a woman who was convinced that my name was Kevin. I insisted that it was John and started to walk when she said, "Boy, come over here!" Of course I obeyed and spent another minuted convincing her my name was John.

Back on the first floor (did I mention that the elevators are really slow?), Tonya asked one of the male residents if the he was feeling okay because he looked a little down. His response was just "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine." He obviously wasn't, but that is all he cared to share with us. Since I am also working with the Helping Hands free health clinic, Tonya gave me a tour of that as well. Even though it is in the same building, the entrance is in a roundabout way so we decided to take a shortcut through the bowels of the building. Through some double doors on the first floor of the nursing center we entered what used to be the old hospital that closed sometime around 1997. It was actually a pretty dismal sight. Everything was in disarray. It looked like a creepy/scary hospital from a horror movie. Ceiling tiles were falling down, lights were burnt out or flickering, old hospital beds were shoved up against the sides of the walls, walls were partially torn down, the floor has black stains on it . . . I think you get the picture. We followed the maze around and found the entrance to the free clinic's office. There were two nice ladies in there. One of them, whose name was also Tonya (last name McKenzie), would be my supervisor for when I worked in there. Tonya Martin described Tonya McKenzie has being an amzing woman whom she admired for her dedication to her patients since she even took money out of her own pocket to pay for their visits when they couldn't pay themselves. However, she has a lot of skepticism for the health system itself and focuses too much in its faults sometimes. I feel like that may be a lot of people's opinions around here.

We spent some time going over the various paperwork I needed to fill out then decided to take a lunch break. Tonya took me out to a local Bed n' Breakfast called Webster Manor. They serve a southern style country home cooked meal that is an all you can eat buffet. It was quaint and very cute. The food was delicious. This is apparently one of THE places to eat in Mullins. After lunch, we took a tour around the city of Mullins and saw some of the more prominent neighborhoods. I saw the Pecan Point neighborhood and the "Horseshoe" street. A lot of important people live on the Horseshoe like surgeons and judges. Both my supervisor and her twin sister also live on the Horseshoe too.

We didn't really have a whole lot to do after the lunch, just more paperwork. The only snag in our plan was that I had to have a 2-step TB test before I could work in the clinic so I would be a little bit behind. I got the test today, but I have to wait a week for results to come in. While I was waiting in there, Tonya was notified that one of the patients had passed away that morning. It made me wonder what happens behind the scenes in that sort of situation.

Since Alice was going to be a little late today, Tonya just decided to give me a ride back home. She had to go by the hospital anyway which is pretty close to Marion. On the way home, and throughout the day, Tonya and I talked about a lot of things--especially about the problems that face the area. Tonya talked about her decision to put her kids in a private school over the public school, the limits of Medicaid, the economy's effect on the lack of growth in the town, and a lot more. I look forward to hearing more about all of her thoughts.

Overall, I am really excited after my first day of the internship. So far, it has exceeded my expectations and I am looking forward to tomorrow and the next 9 weeks.

Back at home we all exchanged stories of our first days. Everyone seems to have really enjoyed it and is happy, albeit exhausted. I took another nap! John Deans came out with Mr. DeMarco's grill so him and David Womble served up some huge burgers and hot dogs for dinner. We spent so much time talking after dinner that we didn't even realize that it had become 9:00 p.m. already! The day flew by. Everyone took it pretty easy tonight. I think we are all excited for tomorrow to start!

The Calm Before the Storm

First thing David and I did today was go to the bank to deposit our checks. However, the closest Bank of America was in Florence, which meant we had a long drive ahead of us. It takes about 30 minutes to get there. It is pretty much a straight shot there, but the speed limit changed like every mile. Totally ADD. After we deposited out money and walked out the door, a man called out to us. David had dropped some money and he was returning it to us. I guess that makes up for Santa Claus the other day . . .

Today seemed to be a day full of errands since we also made a trip to Wal-Mart (Supercenter!) to buy all of our grocery's. I let everyone else take care of all the communal food, so I went ahead and bought my secret personal stash of food. The only stuff I really had to buy of course were my things I wanted to put in my bagged lunch. Basically everything that I got was what I had for 4 years straight in high school.

Right next to the Wal-Mart was the gym, so we all made a stop of their to get signed up at the hospital's fitness center. We weren't really sure where to go since the hospital is kind of a big place, but we figured that the emergency entrance was probably not the right place . . . Anyway, we ended up finding it. The gym was a little nook near the main entrance of the hospital. The staff was friendly and gave us all applications, so we will be all set for our first visit.

All of this running around got me pretty tired, so when I got back I ended up doing my favorite thing--I took a nap. A 2 hour nap. It was very nice. I woke up just in time for our first group dinner, cooked by Chef Khadijah and Chef Alice. They served up some delicious spaghetti and salad. Actually A LOT of spaghetti and sauce. We will be eating leftovers for a while now!

Now we are just sitting around the living room and watching Diary of a Mad Black Woman (thanks to the new DVD player we bought!). My supervisor will be picking me up at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow for my first day on the job!

Welcome to Marion, SC . . . Population: 7,042

It's about the end of our first full day in Marion, South Carolina. I got to our house yesterday around 12:30 p.m. so it has been about 36 hours now that I have been in the small town South. After visiting the house in Cheraw, SC, I was little hesitant about what I may find. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the house was. And "pleasantly" is definitely the right word to use because the house is quite quaint. It has the old Southern feel and is decorated festive to boot . . . almost with a bit of Christmas cheer! David, John, and I ended up taking the bedroom with the bunk beds so it looks like John Deans and I will be rooming together for another 9 weeks . . . good thing that I brought Rachna and Libby's beautiful finger-paint artwork! We explored the house a little bit and found some nasty surprises (I HEART UNC). A little bit before dinner, some of us decided to explore downtown Main Street to see what was going on. Saturday was actually the Fox Trot Festival which is apparently one of the biggest events of the year. My expectations for the festival were low, so when I caught a glimpse of the carnival rides and all of the people, I was definitely surprised. It seemed a lot like the NC State fair with the hordes of people and stands that sold fried-just-about-everything. Deej and I decided to get a smoothie (which we had been craving for a while now) from one of the vendors. While I was standing in line, waiting for my smoothie to be made, the man in line behind came around in front of me and picked a wad of cash from beneath the table. He didn't ask if the money was mine . . . he just pocketed it and said "Merry Christmas." This wasn't really a big deal or anything, especially since the money wasn't mine. However, my natural reaction would have been first to figure out who the cash belonged to.

Walking "the strip," we saw more food and novelty item vendors and got to see more of the shops and businesses along the way. As we were walking, it was quite clear that we were outsiders in the community. This was mostly because most of us were clearly in the racial minority (especially Deej and Alice). I am not really used to this coming from private schools so this was a new sort of experience for me. It is not that I felt uncomfortable . . . OK, well yeah, I did. We came to the end of the road, where there was a karaoke stage set up with some Marionites who were singing gospel songs. We listened to a few then went on our way. They were no American Idols, but not terrible either.

For dinner, Minda took us out to Pizza Hut where we had our first "challenge" of ordering and sharing pizzas with everyone. I would say we passed, since I definitely left feeling quite full! We made a pit stop at Piggly Wiggly to get some food for the next day afterward. When we got back to the house we had a surprise party for Lauren's birthday, with cake and everything. In the evening we had some pretty intense card games going and then watched some excellent youtube videos.

The next morning I woke up to the lovely sound of Minda's voice. We were having our makeshift retreat in our house. Actually, in our living room right next to my bedroom! We talked about all the essentials and necessary things for living together for the summer. In the afternoon we had some free time and I decided for go for a run around the neighborhood. After making an interesting set of turns I ended up finding the park, the track, a football stadium, and the bike/running trail. After I managed to find my way back to the house I ended up going back to the park with Alice, Lauren, and John on a walk. On the way we got caught in the rain and had run back. We were soaking wet. There were no piña coladas. However, what DID have piña coladas was Zapata's restaurant. We all went out and met up with the DeMarcos and Minda for a last meal. The chips and salsa were excellent (and spicy). Our end of the table dominated on chip destruction (yeah Brandon, Noelle, and Charlotte!). Minda left us a few hours ago, so now we are officially on our own, and ready to start our summer!