Excited

Playing pool at The Garage with Candace, Seth, Margie, Alex, and AnJuli. Seth and Alex just jumped into the pic...it was supposed to be of the 4 of us in the front. But Alex and Seth decided to crash our pic. Funny.

We eventually split up to two tables since Juli, Candace, and Jake arrived. So here's one table. The class of 2001 HNA girls against Johnnie and Margie. We won. Here's to good times.

Who's excited? I'M excited!!!!

You may be asking yourself why. Well, as of yesterday, I am a part of the Orthopedic Surgical Team making their way to Tegucigalpa/Juticalpa, Honduras March 5-12!! I can't wait to be doing somehting I love again. It's gonna be a whole new experience in terms of location, team (some I know, some I don't), hospital, staff, sister organization, etc. but I'm sure the routine'll pretty much be the same as Guate. I just released a sigh of happiness and excitement.

Alas there is a drawback to this trip. When I had looked on Orbitz a week ago for flights from Seattle to Tegucigalpa, they were six hundred some odd dollars. I just emailed the Healing the Children travel agent and well, now airfare is a jaw-dropping $869. Yes, that's U.S. dollars. My wallet is going to be in a bit of a pinch, but I love going on these medical missions so I'm thinking that it will be well worth it. And I might be able to take a side trip back to Guate and meet up with some friends there. Maybe...

In other news, work at the lab is going well. I'm still the lowest on the proverbial totem pole, but no worries there. At the moment I don't mind doing some of the busy work, although that may change soon enough. But I'm getting paid and doing something with my time. Granted I am getting extremely large doses of estrogen everyday, but there are times where some testosterone is around in the form of Marcos (part-time lab tech), deadbeat John, Steve (Kati's husband/our comp tech support), couriers, cab drivers, UPS/FedEx guys, and when I make my way to Swedish to pick up specimens.

Alas, though the week is only half over, it's been excitement filled. In a not so good way.

So Monday starts off as a bad day. Waited at Discount Tires for them to fix my right rear tire for-freakin-ever, decide to leave and switch cars with the Lexus. Turns out, need to fill 'er up (premium, ouch). Wait in line at the gas station, wait in line to leave the gas station, air bag indicator light turns on, tail light indicator light turns on, and what do I hit? That's right. Traffic. Sit in traffic for-freakin-ever and finally get to work. That was a bad Monday. The one redeeming factor to the day was that I hung out with Margie and watched D2: The Mighty Ducks and discussed her birthday plans. We're such dorks. I can't believe we thought that movie was so cool back in the day. Hahahaha...but Mike Vitar (a.k.a. Benny the Jet) is in it. I wonder what happened to that guy...

Yesterday. Tuesday. Here's the fun stuff. So my sister has been having really bad leg pains for the past few months. Turns out her legs were numb when she woke up to get ready for school. So my mom takes her to work and keeps calling our doctor's office to see if she can get squeezed in somewhere since he was booked. They go to the doctor's and by this time her legs are ok, but her ankles and feet are numb. She literally couldn't walk without someone helping her. Then they come home, pack a bag, and are admitted to Swedish for observation. She's there all day and is supposed to get an MRI at 6pm. They finally left the room about 2 hours later. And this is a two hour procedure. Woulda been three, had they scanned her pelvis as well. Halfway through the MRI, just as they finished injecting the contrast...she cries bloody murder. She'd been doing really well before that, but then she tenses up, cries, and screams like there's no tomorrow. Fantastic.

The only good thing that came out of this was that the doc looked over the results and said that everything looked ok and that we could leave that night. We left Swedish around midnight. And she was doing well...until tonight around 11pm when she got a fever. So she might be coming to work with us tomorrow. Needless to say, those were good times for my sister and mom. =P

In addition to Jackie's whole ordeal, Kairu decided that yesterday would a fantastic day to have an accident at work. She was chopping a specimen when she suddenly slipped and cut her finger. After she had already cut the specimen with the same scalpel. If she had been doing anything else, it would have been "pass the Neosporin and a band-aid, please." Instead, she went to the ER at Swedish (mighty popular hospital) and got an AIDS test, HEP test, and got a Tetanus shot. Here's the funny part about this story: when the P.A. was asking her if she needed a pregnancy test, she said "I don't think so." To which Lisa, our bookkeeper replied "well, you either need one or you don't." And if you know Kairu, you'd find this hilarious. AND the P.A. told her to practice safe sex for the next 6 months. Another hilarious comment. If you don't know, let's just say Kairu doesn't get out much. ;)

Anyway, the scary part of the situation is that she has a miniscule chance of being infected with something, but the patient whose specimen she was working with is in a low-rish category. But they put Kairu on a nice preventative cocktail called Combivir just in case. So now she's nauseaus and possibly worshipping the porcelain gods at this moment.

And that was Tuesday.

Now I'm off to bed in search of a peaceful slumber.