Reasons why I believe my job will lead to alcoholism

A) Voicemail messages from patients you have called to confirm their appointment (that they chose the date and time of) saying that they are outside your office at 5:45 p.m. the day before their appointment and they can't understand why we are not there when we distinctly promised them that we were open til 6 that day (technically the following day) :s
B) Patients who phone to cancel their appointment THE DAY OF their appointment and reschedule it... then show up... and don't remember cancelling their appointment two hours prior (WTF?).
C) Patients who are referred by Dr.'s or better yet, hospitals, and come with no info. NOTHING. Plus they don't even know why they were referred.
D) Pharmacies that send URGENT questions about medications, refills, or other requests and leave no return contact info. No fax. No phone. No contact numbers, names or sometimes... even names of the drugs. Seriously.
E) Specialists offices who call for patient data, who have no idea where the patient was referred from or what they need. At this point, I like to play go fish with them... do you have a PHN? no? Go fish.
F) Patients who show up 2 hours early and then spend their time asking how long the Dr. will be, if they should pay for more parking, is he running behind... and various other astute and fundamentally important questions just to distract me from working.
G) Patients who get the voicemail during business hours and yell, swear or ask questions like "do you not answer your phone? are you on vacation?" and then when their call is returned... continue to question why their phone call was not answered. I have many times bit my lip attempting to not respond with sarcasm... my specialty. Soon I will not have a lip left to bite and nothing can stop me then.
H) People who complain about coming into my office and hearing Christmas music. If you weren't early it wouldn't bother you... try to schedule having a life 2 hours before your appointment. There is a coffee shop in the lobby sans Christmas music. Go be a scrooge outside of my cave... err office.
I) Insurance or compensation places that call for patient information without patient consent and then get snotty with me when I won't provide any details. I actually like these calls cuz I'm allowed to give attitude back to them... and if they time it correctly, I've already been holding 6 hours of attitude for them to have :)
Lastly, J) I have a bar fridge behind me.

The Perils of being a "Medical Secretary"

Right, so I'm a medical secretary. Sounds lofty and its definitely not a horrible position, especially for me. I even enjoy parts of it. I even LIKE some of the patients. However, lately I have found more and more people who seem to think they know everything about A) my office B) their condition and C) my Dr. (boss) than I do. Perhaps this is true in the case of their condition because I'm not a Dr. and frankly I neither care to hear about, discuss or help to identify your medical conditions. In fact, I'd rather not engage in communicating with you at all in most cases, especially about the state of your bowel movements. Save it for the Dr. or the person stuck in an elevator with you.
TODAY alone I have had more than my share of annoyances from patients and now I have been forced to blog it out of my system.
Let me start by saying, if you are going to interrupt the Medical Secretary/MOA/Receptionist or what have you in your Dr.'s office, make it a question that A) they can actually answer, B) that you want an answer to and C) that you will listen to. Don't ask me questions from the forms I've given you to fill out and argue my answers. I don't care if you fill it out properly in fact because I don't have to read it. The Dr. does. I'm assuming you actually want medical help because, after all, you are in a specialists office so when you ask me "Do I have to put down here that I've had a couple of cases of bronchitis" and I say "yes please" do not respond with "Do I REALLY have to" because inevitably I will inform you to do whatever you like as I'm not arguing whether you want to write down your medical history or not. It doesn't affect my job, however, taking the time to argue it with you DOES affect my job.
Further, asking if you have to write down a medication that you are not currently on but may be taking again in future. I always tell people, if unsure whether it might be important or not, write it down because then we have it on file in case it is important in future. You asked me, thats my answer. Don't argue with me that you aren't currently on the medication because that was previously established.
Also, when going to a specialist for the first time, do not barade the secretary with questions about the Dr. I understand that you are nervous, but in all honesty, I haven't known him all my life so I'm not entirely sure where he grew up, what he did, who he is, whether he is related to someone you know or if you have met him before. I'm not his keeper... I'm just the keeper of the office he has. Ask me if you've seen him "professionally" before and I may be able to help you. I have limited background knowledge past that, but I CAN tell you his ethnicity because you are now the 1000th person to ask. Congrats.
Further, if you are unsure of the specialty of which the Dr. is, please only ask the question once. When the answer is given (and usually it is quite generic, but its a simplistic answer so that I may continue working at what I was doing before your leered over my desk at me), please leave it at that or ask the Dr. a more specific question. Do not ask what are all the "diseases and conditions" he deals with . Are you seriously kidding me? That list is a million pages long. Do not start asking specific diseases or conditions unless you actually have them and are taking a genuine interest in whether he can help you with them. By the way, you were sent for specific reason and he knows about that already, your Dr. told him, so his main focus at this point is that condition and making it go away for you.
Do not argue with me over the phone about your appointments. Do not pester me for a different time that I've already told you I don't have. No we aren't open on weekends and I'm sorry that you work outside of that... so do I. I'm not coming in on a weekend just for you and neither will the Dr. He already works on weekends half the time with patients in the hospital and he's already staying ridiculously late hours for people who are working regular hours... if you work 8am to 8 pm M-F, you will have to make other plans or find a different Dr.
Please do not ask if the allergies section is where you put your allergies. I really can't answer that without a sarcastic and rude remark.
I am more than helpful to you when I can be. I'm actually HAPPY to help you find a good appointment date, time, fix your problems, help re-fill your prescriptions, listen to your (brief) description of your day... I'm genuinely a great person but I draw the line at attitude and stupidity. Please don't expect me to happily deal with either from you. I deal enough with it from other Dr.'s offices and hospitals. You wouldn't want to accept it from me so don't give it to me. I'm actually past the point of caring whether its professional or not to give it back to you... the only reason I haven't stabbed you through the eye with a pencil or used my elastic bands to fling paper clips at you with lightening speed is that for the most part, you are sick and I feel bad for you... and my mom would kick my butt if she knew I was being rude :p

The amazing one handed typist!

Ok so I'm not really completely typing with one hand but its only one hand and a couple fingers. This past Thanksgiving weekend isn't really one I'm thankful for.
-I am thankful for the fact that neither dog did any damage to the other in their fight on Saturday night, however,
-I am not thankful for the fact that I sustained a pretty deep bite from trying to break up the tiff.
-I am not thankful for spending the long weekend worrying about it.
-I'm not thankful for it becoming painful and infected.
-I'm not thankful for spending 4 hours in emerge, suffering through a tetnis shot and taking antibiotics, although
-I am thankful that all of this was available to me.
-I'm even less thankful that the tetnis wasn't necessary and the antibiotics were wrong and not the least bit useful, as the specialist
-I'm THANKFUL I saw this morning informed me.
-I'm thankful for new medication which hopefully won't react with me like it has in the past and that it will do what its supposed to do!
-I am thankful that I work for a Dr. who cared enough to give me advice and that his advice and string pulling got me the help I actually needed! Now I'd be very thankful if the swelling in my hand would go down.
-I am very thankful that nothing hurts (apart from the muscle the tetnis was shot into).
-I am super thankful for a wonderful family who cared and amazing super-hero of a boyfriend who took care of me and put up with a weekend of blubbering :p
-I am thankful that the new meds are cheap and that God is watching out for me.

Public Washrooms are mine enemy

Here it is... a blog dedicated to the one public bathroom that creates the most rants in my life. My bathroom at work.
Alright so TECHNICALLY I have a bathroom in the office here... but its creepy and wrong and who knows if or when ANYONE ever cleans it... plus the seat is cracked, the floor is gross (and carpet may I ad) there is hardly any light and people can hear EVERYTHING you do in that bathroom if they are anywhere in this office space. EW!. no. Thank you.
SOOO I choose to venture to the main women's public bathroom on my floor. You need a key to access this washroom and it is a one toilet room, a rather large room actually.
My problem comes in with the whole "keyed" bathroom thing. I do not understand how people just go about life completely unaware of the fact that perhaps there are OTHER people who also have to use the bathroom. I have many examples of this. Mostly out of annoyance, I actually remember them. I can't count the MANY times I've gone to use this bathroom and actually walked in on someone IN the bathroom. This befuddles me each time as there are TWO locks on this door... the one on the bottom unlocks with a key, but the deadbolt on the top turns the OUTSIDE screen to "DO NOT DISTURB" in red letters. Kinda hard to miss unless you are an idiot and there are apparently MANY of those. How do people not bother to lock the door on a public washroom. There are 20+ Dr.'s on this floor... so I'd assume at any given time there are at least 25 people here to see Dr.'s... of these 25 people do you not assume that someone MAY also have to pee at the same time as you. Or worse... leave the GI Dr.'s office and have to suddenly evacuate or something. Why would you not lock the door?
SECONDLY... why would you walk up to said public bathroom and NOT notice the bright RED letters saying do not disturb and at such point where you use the key and it does not in fact open the door (despite turning the handle)... why must you persist in trying to RAM the door open? Are you not aware that perhaps it may be locked? Perhaps someone is already using it? Perhaps you are not the only person on this floor at that particular time that has to pee?
But really... if the door does not open on your first 6 attempts, why do you continue to jiggle handles and push knobs and repeatedly try keys... before attempting to battle ram the door itself with your entire body. At this point, I'd seriously consider making a habit of going to the bathroom before you get to the point where this type of behaviour becomes a necessity. Agh.

Superhero costumes must come off.

Why can't I be a superhero? Why can't I have the patience and endurance to do everything that my mind seems to think I can do? Sleep is over-related... imagine all you could accomplish if you added those extra 5-7 hours to your day. Why can't I be as strong as my brain says I can and why do I fight it when I know I'm not. Everyone says you can't do it all, and part of me knows that is true, I still fight to do it all and prove them wrong.
Maybe I can blame the phrase... "I am woman, hear me roar" :p

Pressed down, shaken together and running over

I don't know why I'm writing in this blog... I guess I just feel more free to write here, and possibly I'm slightly more attached to that freedom and the fact that this was originally my blog and I refuse to get rid of it. Sooooo here I go :)
At church a little while ago, the pastor used the reference from the title of this blog... and I was transported back through time to a place where I used to feel like myself and had a second family. My church. My pastor back then (Pastor Bloomfield) used to recite that saying over and over and over again. He'd get the entire congregation to repeat it after him. It has been stuck in my head every time anyone has ever said "pressed down". Even though that church and that part of my life is nothing but memories, I cherish them.
It amazes me over time how much people change. The person I am now, is nothing like the person I used to be, and not necessarily always for the better. Life experiences teach you things... and some things I wished I didn't have to learn but the choice of how you deal with them, or not deal with them, leads you to where you are now.
The last Sunday I was at church, I realized what type of person I have been becoming (that sounds grammatically wrong)... and as much as I like the person I am, I do miss the person I used to be at times. Especially times when working with the public or other people or when driving, when I'm reminded how I can seem bitter, annoyed, road raged or haggard. I have an attitude that I've developed over the years that I never used to have... and people are rewarded for having attitudes, sarcastic comments and mean words. People think you are cooler if you can jab back with more enthusiasm then you were jabbed at. Wit is a powerful thing, both for good and for bad.
I've learned over the years how to worry, lose hope, doubt, dislike, and even at times manipulate. These are not traits I like or try to use but I've found recently a lot of people get by in life on negative traits like these, or worse.
They say to be yourself... but yourself changes. People change, lives change, situations change and really before a certain age of adulthood, you don't even know who you are anyways. The best part about that is that you can make yourself who you want to be and in that effort to try and be and do all the things that you want, you find out about yourself even more. What talents, gifts and inspiration you actually have. I've learned that I love to work with animals... that I am talented at working with humans although it takes a lot out of a person to do so at times and that God's timing is more important than your timing. I've also learned that you have to challenge yourself not to become what the world wants you to become... I've made a few key decisions recently and said a few important prayers and I'm excited to see what will come of it all in the next little while. I'm still learning (thank goodness) and growing and the person I am now, may not be the person I was or the person I will be... but I'm happy with who I am and thats all I could ask for :)
Holy rant batman. Sorry. I dunno why I apologize... no one reads this :p

A long time...

since a wrote a blog here, but its safe to say, hardly anyone will read this blog as they've all migrated to others of my blogging pages.. that makes me sound bad... like I'm cheating on my blogs with other blogs.
Either way, the point of this blog is to air out some frustrations in a random way and with the idea that I have the freedom to do so without the parties involved being able to see, or I suppose they could, but they probably don't know about this blog. Que Sera. Here goes my rant...

For OVER a year now, I have put a ton of thought and effort and faith and hope and blood and sweat (ok so maybe not blood... unless from a paper cut) into this association that I once thought so highly of... maybe that was the problem to begin with. If you set something up with expectations you are in for disappointment... not always true but in this case it seems to fit. We had a pub night in September last year and I and the Secretary canvassed the Coquitlam area for donations for raffle prizes. We actually had fun, although slightly unprofessional at times and kinda awkward. We managed to get a few things, and I bugged people I knew for other prizes... we ended up with quite the spread. Further, our ticket sales were pretty good, although I'm pretty sure at least 75% were my friends (as I had a billion tables I had to go visit) and we did like 4 50/50 draws and we raised $17 shy of my $1000 goal *shakes fist* and I was on cloud 9 for weeks thinking how great the association was doing with its fund... but it came near christmas and things started to disband a bit... I figured just for christmas... but as Christmas ended and New Years passed and things didn't pick up again like I thought... I got a bit discouraged. Not discouraged enough to completely lose hope, afterall I and the President are the backbone of said association (and I don't mean to make it sound like I'm full of myself... but its ACTUALLY true... we are the only ones to do anything). We had a membership drive in April that bombed and have been attempting to put together enough support and volunteers to pull off a Dog Walk-A-Thon in June. As of today, I've given up much hope for it. Not only are NONE of the registration forms available online for people who want to start collecting pledges now, but none of the links have been put up to the places that we were supposed to do link exchanges for. Not only do we look completely unprofessional and neglectful, but there is nothing I can do about it... I can't fix this as I have no access to the website and the person who does isn't doing what they've promised. I tried to be nice and ask them to, I tried to be mean and tell them to, and now its just to the point where I can't do anything more...

I don't give up. I'm stubborn and put my entire heart into things but sometimes, even those who do everything with their entire heart, can come to a block in a road that even they can't fight through.

I feel like I have all these things that I want to do, and all this stuff I NEED to accomplish and I try so hard to do everything that everyone else needs me to do and run around in 100 different ways at the same time and suddenly it just seems useless... like everything I've worked on up to this point has kinda been in vain because I can't control or even make things happen when they need to... the excitement has completely faded. The happy, enthusiastic, go-getter that helped to bring up this association has been beaten down into a nervous, upset and uptight person who no longer wants anything to do with it... but still would like to see it prosper... that is the person who must now go and be in front of the rest of the members without the President or Secretary and somehow make a meeting out of nothing... that is the person who sits here, head in hands... trying desperately to grasp at every last ounce of hope for this once AMAZING idea of an association... that is the person who sits here alone... more alone in this cause than she has ever felt before... and that is the person who will find a way to make it through and prove that every down has its up.... because that is the person who never gives up.