Blog 53 Continuing to Create My New Life

(Where do I go from here)

(For the next few blogs, I will be bouncing stories because they all happened around the same time as each other. I hope it does not confuse you.)

(trying to be the best!)

When I took the job at Presbyterian Hospital, I did it because they had the same equipment that I had learned on. They did have one that I had never used and I loved to learn new things. There were only three technologists, so we had to be on our best every day. I was the last hired, but I had the most experience. (NOTE: Do not ever go into a new job saying you have a better way to do a study! First, you learn new ways to do studies and second, it does you better when everyone is puzzled with a procedure and you can present another way of doing it.)

It was not long before I was always being treated like the lead tech, even though I was not. Within a few months the lead technologist quit and I got the position. It was sad, but at the end of the first year, I made over three times the money that my dad was still making. That was when I realized that God led me into a very special modality, and one that I loved. I began getting greedy and I told the Supervisor that I deserved a raise. She gave me a small one, but not enough to keep me there.

I am amazed at how many celebrities I had the pleasure of doing studies on during my thirty years. At Presbyterian, I met Greer Garson (Oscar winner for the movie, “Mrs. Miniver”). I had the mother of the actor who played “Dozier” in Cher’s movie “Mask”. When he came to see her at the hospital, she called me to her room to meet him. At that time he was doing movies with Kevin Costner and another with Madonna. He was a regular on the Redd Foxx Show, and was waiting for a third movie. I, also, did bone scans on a few Dallas Cowboys.

But, with cool things, there always are the “wish that did not happen” episodes, too! Once I had a sick patient in the hallway and he called me to get him an emesis basin because he felt like he would throw up. I brought it to him and he had sat up in his bed with his feet dangling. I stood there with a wet rag. First, he let out a cough and immediately followed it with a heave from his stomach and it went in my face, my uniform, and all over the floor. Needless to say, I used the rag to wipe my face, then carefully helped him until he was finished. I learned from the Navy to always have spare scrubs.

On the newer scanner, when we did heart studies, we were able to hear the patient’s heart beat during the scan. I had an elderly woman that I was starting the study. She asked me what the beeping noise was and I told her it was her heart beat. (To keep clear of radiation exposure, we stepped into our tech room.) The techs were talking, and suddenly my lady started screaming,”Help me! Help me!” and she started trying to climb out of the scanner. I ran in asking her what was wrong, and she said,”I’m dying, I’m dying!” I asked her why she thought that and she said, “My heart stopped beating! I’m dying!” I tried not to laugh while letting her know that it was just that her scan had finished and her heart beat that she had been hearing turned off! I told her to think for a minute. She could not be doing all the things she was doing if her heart was not beating! She simply said, “Oh, yeah! So get me out of here.” After that she was fine.

(Robert starts a new job down the hall.)

While we were in the middle of buying Bill and Mary’s house, Robert quit his job downtown with the law firm. He had to have a job to get the house so we looked at the hospital. It just happened that an opening came up in the department directly down the hall from me. He got the job. We had different hours, so we still had to take two cars most of the time. I got to meet the people he worked with and he had a great job.

Many things happened during this time period for us that I am going to be jumping around stories here. (Robert learns to snow ski!)

The church singles went on a ski trip that Robert and I decided to go on. Robert had never skied, so we promised we would teach him. We went to New Mexico, above Albuquerque. We decided that it would be easier to go to the top of the mountain than use the bunny slope because there was a large group of people on the bunny slope.

When we started getting to the top we started telling him how to dismount the lift. I do not need to say that our suggestions did not work when he got off. It is always funny watching people fall when it is not you! It took us about an hour to get to the bottom of the slope. Robert was having to learn by mistake. He was getting better every time he tried, though. So, by the time we got to the bottom, he was doing fairly well. As we each reached the bottom, we looked back for Robert. Suddenly, he was in sight and was doing great. As he came up to us, he raised his hands in the air and began giving “hoorahs!” that he made it to the bottom. When he got about ten feet from us, his skis came out from under him and he crashed right in front of us. (If we only had a movie camera!)

(Blog 54 to be continued….)