Hit and Run
Of all the things i have felt assaulted by this past week, I think the highest ranking is the Doctor who oh so irritatedly yelled at me for trying to track down him and/or his staff to help me procure the correct authorizations so the client he had discharged from his facility could obtain the insulin (a very common oft prescribed formulation of the stuff) that his insurance and the pharmacy was denying him. It wasn't really the attitude or the yelling but the fact that at the end of the day nobody involved with him or his staff or the facility was willing to do a single thing to ensure that my client wouldn't die over the 36 hour period it took me to rush an appointment with his community doc (who was entirely a different story, btw, thank god for awesome community doctors). It's cool, my client is still alive (again, thank artemis for awesome community doctors). My blood pressure might also be back to normal.
Other assaults include the fact that our being understaffed means we juggle priorities in this horrible way and i feel like i'm riding a string of broken promises to these people who i really want to thrive. But, you know, they live in the less glamorous part of the town served by this organization, and, surely they understand how that goes. (I'm rolling my eyes really hard right now).
So, yeah, then somewhere in the middle of the week i'm waiting at an intersection and i hear a crash scrape bang and my passenger side window goes pop and bounces back. I put on my blinkers and start to get out of the car and the vehicle that just hit me peals away. I repeat the license plate numbers loudly and when i get a pen in my hand write down what i think is the licence plate number on what is probably my clients' medical records. My client says "that was something" and is thankfully unhurt. The dozens of people at the bus stop look at me, is it blankly? I can't tell. I see a police car drive by and think about rolling my window down to say "hey, that was a hit and run", but I don't; the cop hurries off and starts to put his loud lights on and i wonder if there was some other reason why that car was in such a hurry it hit me at a not that congested intersection on a street with wide lanes. My car is definitely a little more battered and scraped, but the doors open. 311 deflected the call which i made in the moment of "oh god i need a police report for insurance so i can get the body work covered" and now i don't know if i want to do the in person follow through they told me they required.
I was rattled for a few and about an hour later my client said "that was something". And i haven't really talked about it since.
And maybe it really is all about who assaults you and why, and why they care less about you than what is going on in their lives at the moment. Maybe i'll just (not so) slowly let my car turn into a beater. But the pressure to let my clients do without insulin, lovenox, ativan, and home health nurses to check on their very infected wounds, and transportation that fits their wheelchairs, and diagnostics which catch their cancer on time, and labs in their neighborhoods which actually send their depakote, clozapine, and coumadin results to the right doctor. The pressure that stems for aquiensence to the violent idea that certain people don't as much deserve to live. That is just harder for me to brush off. So, I think i will just have to nurse that impending case of hypertension with a certain dose of resigned pride.
Other assaults include the fact that our being understaffed means we juggle priorities in this horrible way and i feel like i'm riding a string of broken promises to these people who i really want to thrive. But, you know, they live in the less glamorous part of the town served by this organization, and, surely they understand how that goes. (I'm rolling my eyes really hard right now).
So, yeah, then somewhere in the middle of the week i'm waiting at an intersection and i hear a crash scrape bang and my passenger side window goes pop and bounces back. I put on my blinkers and start to get out of the car and the vehicle that just hit me peals away. I repeat the license plate numbers loudly and when i get a pen in my hand write down what i think is the licence plate number on what is probably my clients' medical records. My client says "that was something" and is thankfully unhurt. The dozens of people at the bus stop look at me, is it blankly? I can't tell. I see a police car drive by and think about rolling my window down to say "hey, that was a hit and run", but I don't; the cop hurries off and starts to put his loud lights on and i wonder if there was some other reason why that car was in such a hurry it hit me at a not that congested intersection on a street with wide lanes. My car is definitely a little more battered and scraped, but the doors open. 311 deflected the call which i made in the moment of "oh god i need a police report for insurance so i can get the body work covered" and now i don't know if i want to do the in person follow through they told me they required.
I was rattled for a few and about an hour later my client said "that was something". And i haven't really talked about it since.
And maybe it really is all about who assaults you and why, and why they care less about you than what is going on in their lives at the moment. Maybe i'll just (not so) slowly let my car turn into a beater. But the pressure to let my clients do without insulin, lovenox, ativan, and home health nurses to check on their very infected wounds, and transportation that fits their wheelchairs, and diagnostics which catch their cancer on time, and labs in their neighborhoods which actually send their depakote, clozapine, and coumadin results to the right doctor. The pressure that stems for aquiensence to the violent idea that certain people don't as much deserve to live. That is just harder for me to brush off. So, I think i will just have to nurse that impending case of hypertension with a certain dose of resigned pride.