Seriously, Let's Get A Grip, People

In the last couple of weeks, there's been a big hullabaloo over Netflix raising its prices. Let's put it all in perspective.

First off, to continue the plan I've been using, the ten buck "one disc out, unlimited streaming," will go up to 16 bucks. Okay, yes, that is a 60 percent increase. But let's put in perspective. I went out running tonight and ran 40% further than I ran last time. This meant, in reality, that this fifty-year-old ran 16 blocks instead of twelve. Sounds like a lot more when you say "40 percent," but in reality not much more. The fact of the matter is that at 16 bucks, my plan is still a great deal. My kids stream their South Park and scary movies and I stream my documentaries (many of which are only available this way), old television shows and artsy movies. And I can get my one disc at a time-- usually classics and more arty movies. And we can watch different shows at once, on our big tv connected to the Wii, on most of the household computers and even on our ipods.

I've followed Netflix-- and been a customer (as well as getting my folks started on it) for 6 or 7 years now. They've taken a daring business model and improved on it, as technology has changed. And they've actually been able to turn a well-deserved profit; according to Wikipedia, they turned a $283 million profit on a $2.17 billion gross, a healthy 13% profit. As they expand the percentage of their offerings as streaming, they'll absolutely have to pay more. That's the way the world works, kiddies; if they're offering more service, they'll have to pay a little more for it and so shall we. I still consider the sixteen bucks a month I pay for Netflix a bargain.

The "Quiet Night In" Friday Random Ten

I'm in my second month of training to be a dialysis nurse. In the last week, my preceptors have been letting me do most of the treatment. I've finally gotten the hang of setting the dialysis machine up, and connecting the patients up to it. Since most of my patients are "acute care," most of them have venous catheters, but some have "fistulas" or grafts, which entails putting needles in. I've gotten to do that twice in the last week. I don't find it terrifying anymore. I'm realizing that a lot of what I do would make a lot of people faint. It comes with the job.

They've been trying to rotate me through the hospitals I'll be working at so that I can know where equipment is, who I'll have to talk to and work with, etc. I've still got a couple of hospitals to go. Ironically, they're two of the ones closest to my home.

There was a lot of work this week. I had to leave work by 1:30 today, because I'd hit 40 hours; my manager doesn't want us to go into overtime while we're training. After we're done training, overtime will be no problem; we can work as much as we want or can handle. With a kid going off to college in less than a year and a ton of bills left over from nursing school, I'm okay with that.

It wasn't all work, though, this week. My old friend Larry was in town. We met when we were next-door neighbors in a dorm at Eastern Illinois University in 1982. I watched the last episode of MASH in his dorm room (he had a then-coveted color tv in his room). I found myself wishing that I didn't have to get up at 5am the next morning, and that I had about 20 more hours to talk to him. He lives in Connecticut these days and is hoping to move back here to Chicago, where he's from. I, for one, can't wait. He's proof that great friendships are like fine wine, improving with age.

In the meantime, as this week draws to an end, I find a bit of humor. I never thought that an eight hour workday would seem short. I never thought that being able to run a couple of miles without my knee screaming would be so thrilling. And I never thought a quiet night in some good tunes, a glass of Merlot and blogging would be my idea of a great night. But here it is.

1. Magical Misery Tour- National Lampoon
2. White Rabbit- The Jefferson Airplane
3. Breaking Us In Two- Joe Jackson
4. Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy- Devo
5. Senor- Bob Dylan
6. Chemistry Class- Elvis Costello
7. Long Time Gone- Crosby, Stills and Nash
8. The Stripper- David Rose
9. I Believe- Joe Satriani
10. I Got You (I Feel Good)- James Brown


Notes:
1. A spoof of John Lennon composed of actual (and outrageous) John Lennon quotes that was performed by Tony Hedra, who is best known as Spinal Tap's road manager and his best-selling book "Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul."
2. My son and I were just discussing this song last weekend. Love the scene with Benecio Del Toro in "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" revolving around this song.
3. This song takes me right back to my life in 1982.
4. From the first Devo record, which still blows me away when I hear it.
5. From 1978's "Street Legal." Not Dylan's best album by any stretch, but it has its moments, including this haunting song.
6. Man, "Armed Forces" still sounds great.
7. David Crosby wrote this after Bobby Kennedy's assassination.
8. I've actually got the 45 of this, which I got from my aunt in a big batch of 45's she gave me years ago. That seems very, very wrong, somehow.
9. Rock critic Dave Marsh, who I generally respect, called Joe Satriani one of the top ten stupidest rockers in his 1981 book "The Rock Book of Lists," but I love this song.
10. One of my earliest memories was being about four years old, at my neighbor's house, watching James Brown sing this song on the television. I was hooked for life.

The "One Month In" Friday Random Ten

Today marked the end of my first month as a nurse. We had three days of classroom training, ending with a final on Wednesday. I got a 93%, well above the minimum 85% I needed to get. I was happy to finally get into the field and work a couple of days as a nurse. I'll be working with a preceptor for the next month.

Yesterday, I had an experience that made me realize I'm beginning to know what I'm doing. My patient was doing well, then suddenly her blood pressure started dropping fast (we monitor the blood pressure constantly). She told my preceptor and I that she had a headache (a common side-effect of dialysis), and then I noticed a change in her demeanor and pallor. My preceptor, who obviously had a lot more experience than I, noticed it too. We tried a couple of interventions without result, and quickly decided to end the treatment. She quickly recovered. I was happy to realize that I had recognized this event that up until now had been just something we talked about in the classroom.

Today I was working with my first patient of the day, who had only recently discovered he had renal failure; this was only his third dialysis session.

When a patient is either new to dialysis or a temporary patient, we use a catheter to gain access to their veins; it's similar to an iv, but has two lines and is placed in one of the big veins in the neck or upper chest. We try to limit their use because they are prone to infections. This can be a real problem because they can spread infections throughout the body since they're placed in big veins. If someone will be getting dialysis for a long time-- even the rest of their life-- surgeons create a thing called an arterio-venous fistula or an arterio-venous graft. In the first, a surgeon connects a big vein and a big artery in the upper or lower arm, creating a place we can access for dialysis. In the latter, a surgeon uses either a donor vein or an artifical tube to connect an artery or vein. It doesn't look pretty, but it's way safer for the patient, with only 1/7 th infection rate of a catheter.

In any event, my patient was clearly scared and confused. My preceptor and I answered a few questions he had. Later, a young resident walked in and told him that he would go later for an ultrasound to map out his veins for a fistula or graft. As she blabbered, I could see the anxiety and fear level in his eyes rise. I tried as politely as I could, trying not to step on her toes, to suggest that a little "patient education" might help. She completely missed the cue. She walked out, and so I explained to my patient what fistulas and grafts were and why they were beneficial. His anxiety level dropped notedly.

I helped my preceptor set up the last patient of the day. He was obviously diabetic, and had lost a leg to the disease. A son and a daughter. who were in their forties, were there caring for him. The son had to leave for a while. As we were getting ready for the dialysis, it became clear that our patient needed his adult diaper changed. His daughter struggled to change it, and was going to call the nurse's aide. I told her I would help, and showed her how a little easier way to do it. She was very, very grateful. I realized later that she had appreciated not only the help but that I'd helped her father preserve his dignity. Between this moment and the others in the last couple of days, I realized that I was in the right profession.

1. Soul Survivor- The Rolling Stones
2. Baby, I Love Your Way- Peter Frampton
3. Crystal Ship- The Doors
4. Low- Cracker
5. Just Got Lucky- The Joboxers
6. Livin' In a Fool's Paradise- Mose Allison
7. Theme From Shaft- Isaac Hayes
8 You're On My Mind- The Dirtbombs
9. Morning Sky- Chris Hillman
10. Incense and Peppermint- The Strawberry Alarm Clock


Notes:
1. The closing track on "Exile On Main Street," the greatest rock album ever recorded.
2. Was never crazy about this song, but reconsidered it after hearing Lisa Bonet singing it in "High Fidelity."
3. My son was telling me a year or so ago that he was surprised to discover that the Doors' self-titled first album was not a "greatest hits" package. A phenomenal debut.
4. Just have to crank this one when it comes up on the radio or shuffle. Got one of my top ten favorite lines in a song ever, "Don't you wanna go down/Like a junkie Cosmonaut?"
5. This snappy little single stood out, even in a year full of snappy little singles, 1983.
6. Heard this song a lot as a young guy, but didn't know who did the version I heard. Thanks to Youtube, I was able to figure out it was Mose Allison.
7. Issac Hayes had written lots of hits for others before he finally had one with this smash hit. This song was on the jukebox at the Gingerman Tavern in Chicago in the late eighties through the early nintie; it was played 25-30 times a night, and every single time, every patron (myself included) would shout "Shut yo mouth" at the appropriate time.
8. This was originally done by Ronnie Wood's old band The Birds (not to be confused with Chris Hillman's old band, The Byrds).
9. Hillman's a founding member of the Byrds (not to be confused with Ronnie Wood's old band, The Birds)
10. I never get tired of hearing this big hunk of psychedelic cheese.

The Progress Report

Facebook has had a new feature-- either that or I never noticed it until recently-- in which it puts up a couple of posts from the same date a year or two ago. Today, one of the old posts was from two years ago; two years ago today, I started nursing school.

On Monday, my nursing license number was finally posted on the Illinois state website, meaning that it's officially official-- I'm a nurse.

A couple of funny things have happened in the last week. First, I was sent to a hospital in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. As I walked into the hospital, I looked at the pictures they always post of the big honchos at the hospital. I had a good chuckle as a I saw the picture and name of the chief of surgery at the hospital. It was Michael P., my high school nemesis.

Actually, he and I had run into one another in 1999 at our 20th high school reunion. It seemed like everybody at my high school had become either an architect or a physician (one high school friend, Fritz, had become an architect, then a physician, no joke.) I ran into Michael P., who was now a physician. He had, for reasons known only to him, deemed it his life's work in our freshman year of high school, to make my life miserable. At the reunion, he was polite and contrite. I imagine I'll run into him at some point. I'm glad we buried the hatchet more than a decade ago.

Running in to old enemies seemed to be a theme recently. In nursing school, I got on fine with almost everybody there. Okay, everybody but one person. "S." had some kind of chip on her shoulder about me. I never figured it out. But we just did not mix well. And of course, we always ended up in clinicals together, and were always stuck with one another, unwilling partners.

Yesterday, I was at St. J's, a hospital I love working at. As I was walking in, S. and I ran into one another. Turns out that she works there now, on the same floor that the dialysis "acutes" room I'll be working at when I'm at that hospital is. I had a good chuckle. We made our polite hellos, but I had to fight a smirk. Whatever her problem is, it's her problem, not mine. She's got to deal with me.

In any event, I'm digging the work. Dialysis is a whole bunch of problem solving. I'm a problem-solver by nature. It appeals to me a lot. I think that eventually I'll want to try other areas of nursing, but for now, this one is suiting me just fine.

A Good Exhaustion Friday Random Ten

I've just finished my second week of training as a dialysis nurse. The dialysis machines, which looked impossibly complicated two weeks ago are beginning to make sense. I'm starting to understand the medical difficulties of dialysis (more on that another time) and the management difficulties.

I'm working the last few weeks of the waitering job I worked through school. I was supposed to work tonight. I was not looking forward to it; I'm exhausted from my nursing job this week. It would be merely tiring as it were, but the huge amount of stuff to learn is making it even more exhausting-- but a good exhausting. Fortunately for me-- unfortunately for my co-workers who don't have another full-time job like I do-- it was dead. Not a good sign in a restaurant that was packed to the rafters on Friday nights before the change in ownership. I was glad to turn around, run home and take care of things that I didn't have a chance to do this week-- like laundry, post to my blog and relax over a glass of red wine.

I did make time this week to do something fun-- a parent always makes time for what's important for their kids. There was a revival of the musical "Grease" in it's original incarnation-- it was originally about "greasers" in the late fifties in Chicago's Norwood Park neighborhood. This was a resurrection of the original down and dirty non-Hollywood-sanitized stage version that played at the Kingston Mines, which is normally a Blues club, in the early seventies. I knew my daughter, who loves theater (she's entering high school in a drama program in a couple of weeks) would love it; it was a once-in-a lifetime experience. She did.

1. Cruisin'- Smokey Robinson
2. Then Came You- The Spinners (with Dionne Warwick)
3. Up On The Roof- The Drifters
4. Living In Hard Times- Wendy Waldman
5. 3/4" Drill Bit- Killdozer
6. (Cross the) Heartland- Pat Metheny Group
7. The Message- Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
8. Our Love Is Drifting- The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
9. Find Somebody- The Young Rascals
10. In the Flat Field- Bauhaus


Notes:
1. I somehow never heard this 1979 gem until the mid eighties when my friend Eddie played it at a party. I admit, I stole the record a few months later, but returned it to him as a wedding present a year later.
2. Might be a top ten song for me.
3. One of many, many incredibly good songs Carole King and Gerry Coffin wrote for many singers and groups.
4. Ms. Waldman's wrote a lot of songs for others, but this one, a favorite from the mid-eighties, is all hers.
5. Saw these guys live in a long-gone club, Crosscurrents, in 1986 with Scratch Acid and Big Black. We were hanging with our buddies Jeff Pezzoti, John Haggerty, and Pierre Kezcy (also known as Naked Raygun). I remember that the guitar player for Killdozer was wearing a Motorhead t-shirt. For pants.
6. I'm not a big jazz fan, but I love Pat Metheny's American Garage album.
7. I'm not a big rap fan, but I love this song.
8. Mike Bloomfield was busy in 1965, playing lead guitar on two iconic albums, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band's self-titled debut album
9. The Young Rascals taking a slightly psychedlic turn.
10. My friend Ron was already one of my best friends, but turning me on to Bauhaus was a bonus.

The Return

Yesterday I had a "field day" at work; when I was in school, we called them "clinical days:" a day in the hospital rather than the classroom.

When I was in school, I was terrified of clinical days. It meant doing a bunch of new-- and terrifiying-- things. Giving shots, hooking up IV's, giving a med through a JG tube (a tube that goes directly into the patient's GI tract). All of them were new to me at one time. But I survived them all, and more, and here I am now, a Registered Nurse.

I had been told that SJ's would be one of the hospitals that my company is contracted to provide dialysis care for. SJ's was my favorite place to have clinicals at. For one, it was where I had two med-surg clinical rotations with Ms. Beaumard, my favorite clinical instructor. She rode us hard, but it was for a purpose: to make us better nurses. It was also where I liked working with the staff. No matter how busy they were, they were always able to answer our questions. They seemed to remember that they were once nursing students too. And on top of that, it was also a beautiful location-- see the picture at the top of the post. When they built the hospital in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood in the 1960's, it was probably because the land was dirt cheap; Lincoln Park was then a fairly rough neighborhood. Nearly fifty years later, it's almost laughable; the view the patients get in the lobby/sunrooms that are on each floor are views that Chicagoans now pay a premium for. The sunrooms overlook Lake Michigan, the now-tony Lincoln Park and Belmont Harbor, where the richest of the rich pay to dock their yachts.

I was told to get to the hospital at 8 am. I parked, and went to the desk in the downstairs lobby to get my employee parking pass. The lady at the desk, who remembered me-- and remembered that I always bought the candy bars that she was hawking for her daughter's school fundraiser-- gave me the free "courtesy pass," rather than the already heavily-discounted employee's pass. I was reminded of my reminder to my kids to always be nice to everybody-- you never know who will return that to you. She was delighted to see me returning as a full-fledged nurse, and I was delighted to be returning as a full-fledged nurse. She told me that my friend-- my friend Alina, who I'd shared rides with there when I was in clinicals-- was working there. I told her that I knew that, and hoped I'd run into her that day.

I went up to the 11th floor ("Mine goes to 11..."), where the Acute Care Dialysis Room was, and waited for my preceptor. It turned out that she'd overslept (very likely she'd worked an 11 or 12 hour day the day before) so I hung out while I waited for her. While hanging around the floor, I discovered something I'd heard about while I was in clinicals at the hospital, but had never seen before: the beautiful chapel. Later in the day, someone told me that when the hospital was sold to a major hospital chain, one of the quid pro quos was that the chapel would remain.

My preceptor finally arrived and we got to work. We had two patients. One had an "AV fistula" and the other had a catheter-- two different means of hooking up the dialysis machinery. My preceptor was great, answering the many questions I had, and let me do as much as I was comfortable with.

My first patient was on the 8th floor, which was the cardiac telemetry floor; I had done a clinical rotation with my friend Alina on that floor, and knew she now worked on that floor. When we ran into one another, we were both delighted. Every time I run into her lately, it has been followed with good news. I had run into her last month when I got of the el when coming home from the NCLEX test (and passed it), and then had run into her a coupe of weeks later on the way home from my interview with this company (I got the job). It was cool to be running into one another on the floor we'd worked on as students.

And do you think it was cool to be working on that floor, running into nurses I'd pumped for information as a student, being able to tell them I was back, but this time as a nurse? Oh hell yeah!

The King and I

I had a busy day-- another day of on-the-job training, with a triumphant return to a hospital I had clinical training at. Post to follow.

Today, though, I was reminded, on the television and radio, of the fact that it was the anniversary of the death (or disappearance) of Elvis Presley.

On August 16, 1977, I was working a shift at my very first job, as a stock clerk at a Walgreen's, when a woman woman walked in and said that she'd heard that the King was dead. Since the tabloids (readily available near the check-outs at the Walgreen's) had nearly daily stories about the death-- or alien abduction-- of Mr. Presley, at first I dismissed the story. Soon, more customers came into the store with the same story. Alvina, our bookkeeper, turned the radio in her little office in the corner of the store to the news station and we gathered and listened. The King was, indeed, dead.

I have always been and will always be an unabashed Elvis Presley fan. His fusion of gospel, country, blues and of course good old rock and roll is irresistible. His magnetism, his kindness, the stories about him-- he'll always be a favorite. And of course, the infamous road trip some friends and I took to Graceland in the Spring of 1985 will always remain one of the highlights of my life. A couple of years ago, I reconnected with my friend Alan, who was the driver on the road trip. Recently, I mentioned that trip to him, and he commented that it was one of the favorite memories of his life. Mine as well.

There is one other memory of that date, in 1997, exactly twenty years after we lost Elvis. August 16, 1997 was supposed to be the date of my first wedding.

In the Spring of 1997, I was preparing to do my student teaching. I'd had to apply for it two years earlier. I was dating someone seriously, and embroiled in an ugly custody fight for my son, who was then four. I had asked the woman I was dating to marry me. I was crazy about her. My friends, I later discovered, were not so much. Maybe they saw things I didn't. She and I had planned to marry on August 16, 1997, specifically because it was the 20th anniversary of Elvis' death. With the custody fight and my preparations for student-teaching, we decided to move the wedding date up to April 19th. Had we known that it was the anniversary of the Branch Davidian fire and the Oklahoma City bombing, we might have reconsidered. It turned out that April 19 was a day of disasters.

As my custody fight got more heated and ugly, my wife decided that she didn't want to be a stepmom any more, and that she didn't want to be married any more. She asked for a divorce on July 4th, 1997. This led, of course, to one of my most infamous stories, and a life-long standing joke, "It's all fun and games until someone gets an eye put out... and then it's REALLY funny..."

But the irony was that it was on August 16, 1997, the day we had originally chosen for our wedding day, that I moved out.

I was to begin student-teaching, the last step to becoming a teacher, in a few short weeks. I had little time and even less money. And that's when people stepped up to the plate.

First was my lifelong friend Viktor Zeitgeist, my partner-in-crime in the July 4th story. He Fed-Ex'd me a check to cover the deposit for an apartment so that my son and I were not homeless. And then there was Mike.

Mike was my friend Tas' boyfriend. I had met Tas when I was working at a racetrack one summer. She was half British and half Pakistani, but had grown up in a suburb of Chicago. She's full of the proverbial "piss and vinegar," and is one of my favorite people in the world. Her boyfriend at the time (she's now married to a Chicago cop) was Mike, a Korean immigrant who defied easy categorization. He was a tech geek, stoner and the best rock guitarist this side of Hendrix. And he was the sole volunteer to help me move that day.

The only place I was able to rent a truck that day, at the last minute, only had trucks with manual transmissions. This was no problem. I learned to drive with a stick shift.

Mike and I loaded up the truck at the apartment I'd shared with my wife. As we finished, I noticed storm clouds brewing in the distance. As we raced to my new place, I looked in the side mirrors of the truck and they seemed to be following me. I parked the truck, and Mike and I furiously unloaded my stuff into the bottom of the covered back porch of the building. Just as we got the last boxes in, an epic deluge poured forth. I hugged and thanked Mike, who had to run off to a band practice.

Looking back to that day-- and the incredibly difficult days that were to follow-- I see that the storm clouds were foreshadowing. But that day, between Viktor and Mike, I had enough to get me through the travails of that day. Today, as I was driving home from my day of work, "Suspicious Minds," a song we played repeatedly on that infamous road trip, and a song that's been a favorite since I was a kid, came on. For a moment I thought about the long trip of this life. I remember back in 2003 when I turned 42, the age Mr. Presley had died. I'd always thought I'd die young. I passed his age, then made it to 50 this year. I feel like everything from here out is bonus. I feel like I've lived long enough to discover what I most love and am really good at, being a parent. I've lived long enough to find a career I really like and will allow me to provide for my family well.

In the course of the move, I've had a chance to re-organize my stuff. I've found things that got buried with old bills and other miscellania. One of the things I came across was the paper copy of a thing I started maybe 8 or 9 years ago. I've alluded to it before in this blog. It was inspired by a story I'd read in the New York Times about a woman who had been killed in the World Trade Center in 2001. Her parents, who were farmers, brought the stuff from her apartment home, they'd looked at the contents of her laptop and discovered a "bucket" list. I was fascinated-- and inspired-- by this. I've been looking over the list and starting to take some concrete steps to fulfill the wishes on it.

So remembering Mr. Presley this day, I think about the enjoyment his music has given me over the years, and will for life. I consider the fact that my genetics and dietary and exercise choices I've made over my lifetime have given me more years than he got, despite the fact that there were some hard miles in my case. I don't even dream that I'll ever sing "Kentucky Rain" remotely as wonderfully as he covered the Eddie Rabbit/Dick Heard composition. But I'll sing it nearly every time I pick up a guitar. I'll always dance a little when I hear "Burnin' Love" or "That's All Right Mama." He packed a lot into those short 42 years. His art and life give me joy and inspiration every day. He reminds me with both his life and death that you've got to dream like you'll live forever and live like you might die tomorrow. Thanks, Elvis.

The "One Week In" Friday Random Ten

Finished my first week as a nurse. It's all training right now, but yesterday, I was in a hospital, in scrubs, helping another nurse with dialysis. Today I got to hook up a dialysis machine, but it was just in the training offices. It'll be a bit before I will hook a person to one.

I have to admit that I was thinking a little about money. Things were so bad the last two months at my restaurant job, it was a relief knowing that there'll be a good paycheck soon. I don't feel bad about it at all. I worked hard to get here, and realize that dialysis nursing will be hard work.

Normally I would have picked my son up on the way home from work, but he's going with his mother to check out a college in Buffalo, New York. Hard to believe he'll be 18 in a just under seven months. Hard to believe I'll have two kids high school. Lots of transitions.

1. Lucky Man- Emerson, Lake and Palmer
2. Driving With Your Eyes Closed- Don Henley
3. Green Tamborine- The Lemon Pipers
4. Imagine a Man- The Who
5. Stubborn Kind of Fellow- Marvin Gaye
6. Theme From Valley of the Dolls- Dionne Warwick
7. Why Can't We Live Together?- Timmy Thomas
8. I Will Survive- Gloria Gaynor
9. Hashish- The Hair Soundtrack
10. The Ballad of Spider John- Jimmy Buffett


Notes:
1. A subtle anti-war song.
2. From "Building the Perfect Beast," one of my favorite albums of the eighties.
3. I know, it's just bubble gum, but I like it.
4. "The Who By Numbers" was not only one of my favorite Who records, but had a great cover.
5. I never, ever get tired of hearing Marvin Gaye's music.
6. I love me some Dionne Warwick
7. Great little one-hit wonder
8. This song got lost in the disco shuffle, but I came to love it over the years.
9. Finally bought the original Hair soundtrack on CD a while back. It still stands up great.
10. Written by Willis Alan Ramsey, who only had one album. This bittersweet, heartbreaking song is one of my favorites, especially as done by Mr. Buffett. It's so good, in fact, that I can almost forgive Ramsey for also writing "Muskrat Love." Almost.