It’s really no good when you’re having a bad week.

 

Yesterday was by far the worst day that I’ve had here at the clinic.  I started my morning with fifteen scheduled patients, alreasy too many.  Throughout the day, there were five add-ons.  That means I finished my afternoon having done twenty ultrasounds.  Twenty.  I know, mathematically speaking, that is not a very large number.  But when you look at the fact that on my very worst days at the Hospital, working a twelve hour shift, I usually do somewhere around fifteen… twenty ultrasounds in less than eight hours is horrible.  Unbelievable.  Ridiculous. 

To make matters worse, three of the ultrasounds in that list were “sonohistograms.”  These are a special type of procedural ultrasound done with the physician present.  They take about 20 minutes longer than a regular ultrasound, and they involve inserting a small plastic catheter into the uterus, and blowing it up like a balloon with saline.  This allows the ultrasound to see the entirety of the endometrial cavity, so we can determine if there is anything there that might be causing the patients problems, like a fibroid or a polyp.  They’re actually sort of fun to do on a case by case basis.  But not three in a row.  And not all scheduled in the same hour, like they were yesterday.

 

I walked out of my last sono-hist (the short term for the procedure) and noticed I was four patients behind – nearly an hour off schedule.  I saw that another patient had shown up, and remarked out loud that she was here.  Dr. H was sitting next to me, and looked over… he knew what kind of day I was having.  He said, “You know she’s twins right?”

I laughed at him.  “Don’t joke around with me like that, I’m having a bad day.”

He immediately got very serious, “Mandy, I’m not joking with you.  She’s twins.”

I took in a deep breath, to hold off my tears of frustration, and soldiered on.  I couldn’t believe that the schedule was so horrible.  I looked ahead at my Friday schedule, and there were only eight patients.  Something here in this office is broken, and it needs to be fixed.

 

All I could tell myself last night was, “Tomorrow will be a better day.”  So far it has been.  Thank goodness.