Hazel is a cutie!

At some point in the late 90's my cable was turned on by mistake when Comcast was hooking up my neighbor's line.

My first year of grad school, I got one of those special deals where I got HBO and Showtime free for several months, with the cable company expecting that I'd decide I wanted to keep them and pay for them after the free months were over. I cancelled after the free months, and the cable guy came to turn off the signal. He disconnected the cable box that the premium channels had gone through and connected the cable directly to the TV, then tuned to the channels for HBO and Showtime, and they were still coming in perfectly, even without the cable box. He just shrugged and left it like that, so I had free HBO and Showtime for about a year and a half, until I guess they fixed whatever what causing it. (I knew a couple other people in DC who had the same thing happen, and we were all living in apartment buildings where the cable first went through a connection for the whole building, and then was wired from there into out apartments, and when we turned on cable for the first time, the cable guy had to flip some switch in the whole-building connection, so we figured it must have something to do with that.)

Calico lap cat! Aw. Take her home, Jesse!

Biltong! I knew I was forgetting something at Trader Joe's! Do you guys know I have a thing for local flavors of chips? It's something I always seek out when traveling. So I was super excited that they offered biltong flavored chips on South African Airways.

She's beautiful Jesse, and I think Ginger's assessment of her expression is exactly right.

Now the process of setting up the damn transfusion has fallen through the cracks. I finally called to see why I hadn't heard anything and at least got a nurse I like, who is now trying to set one up.

To recapitulate: The lab on Tuesday didn't run the one test I told them was needed, the one that shows my hemoglobin level.

I went to the lab near me, and they said the test wasn't showing up in my computer orders, even though I've had it every week for the past year. Because they know me, they ran it anyway. My hemoglobin showed up at a level that should automatically set off bells and whistles, including a call from an excessively cheerful woman asking me if I was all right. I got nothing. I sent an e-mail to my oncologist to be sure. He replied last night that he'd sent the information on to someone to set up a transfusion.

When I heard nothing this morning, I e-mailed the person he contacted. When I still heard nothing, I called. In about 90 minutes, it will be too late for me get the blood test I have to have for a transfusion, which will set things back a day.

Aargh.

God, the incompetence of lab people infuriates me. Yes, there are lots of patients with confusing lab work! This means you work harder to make sure the information is there! It's not like they're worried about zits, people, this is their very life!

I have issues about this. I am not in the least ashamed of them.

edit: And if they pretended to at least understand why this is upsetting, it would help. These treatments are carefully choreographed, one person shrugging it off makes the whole thing collapse.

(fuck, it's been a year, no wonder this make me furious)

Augh, Ginger, I hope the good nurse fixes it.

Kitty!

That's all I've got. That and a brewing sinus infection that has me all "I can't feel my face" one minute and "o too much pain wish I couldn't feel my face now". Argh.

Oh argh, Ginger.

Ginger, that's infuriating. How do incompetent careless people end up working in healthcare.