Started summer school Thursday. Feels like nothing really ended, but that's OK. The class, on Healthcare Policy, appears to be very manageable. I'm even planning to work about one day a week. Enjoyed my review class in Boston, although I'm very angry at Expedia and will never, never use them again. I paid for my room, at $440 a night, at the Boston Sheraton because that's where the course was held. I paid for this 2 months in advance. Friday night before I leave on Monday, Expedia tells me that due to a "system error", they have to move me to a hotel 5 miles away. I talked to them for over an hour, spoke to the supervisor, to no avail. The hotel contact really wanted to help, but they were having a telecom conference at the same time and were completely booked. She said that Expedia does this all the time -- they oversell their rooms and then move people. So if you care about where you stay, don't use them.
Nile and I have had some good times at the Austin Animal Center performing cat care duties. Here's Nile with "Noisy" as they named him. He is a tiny kitten who can't bear to be away from people & will cry and fling himself against the bars when left alone. Someone really lonely needs to adopt this little guy. We clean cages, talk to customers, feed cats, and of course, play with them a little. It's great. And they really need cat volunteers badly. Seems like everyone wants to work with the dogs. We are thinking about fostering some kittens, we got an email Friday that the shelter is "negative 8" for cat space -- meaning, eight cats are sitting in carriers because the cages are full. Look at these statistics (shocking): in May 2011, the shelter took in 750 cats. This year, we took in 1000. Something is terribly wrong with that and it points to a serious spay/neuter need in this community. I know that Austin offers this service free, but obviously people aren't utilizing it. I wonder what we could do to make it easier and more accessible?
Dani graduated. Here we are at her graduation party. She has a summer of nothing ahead - well, nothing required, let's say. Idil will visit, she's going to Houston for a week, and we've talked about her taking a nurse's aide training class, but it's a lot of time relaxing. We bought tickets for the NYU delivery in August, we'll spend about 3 days in the city. (that's what they say up there in Jersey - "the city". I'm cool, I know the lingo. ha.)
I've worked a lot in May. I've had two patients with interesting cases - one has Renfield's syndrome, which if you look up, is clinical vampirism. Yes, he believes he's a vampire, namely he receives sexual stimulation from consuming blood from his partners. And he really looked the part, I must say that he put some effort into that, down to the blue nail polish. Won't say any more to preserve his anonymity, but this is the first case of this I've observed. The other patient was someone who we first believed to have squeaked in through the cracks - we are not a forensic unit, meaning we don't take patients who've committed crimes as part of their recent hospitalization, but we certainly have a gray area around that. For one thing, they can be under investigation but not charged. And we have many patients with a criminal history - every day I'm there, at least one patient has a tear-drop jail tattoo on their face. So this guy was under suspicion of killing his wife, then making a suicide attempt. Last year, I had a patient with this exact same scenario (who ended up being convicted) and both of these guys had a very similar affect -- they were wooden, dead, "flat" in our terms. How are you today? "fine". Are you feeling suicidal, as you were when admitted? "no". Have you attended group therapy and found that helpful? "no". Tell me why you haven't gone to that. "don't want to." And so it goes. Eventually you give up. Later, I was told that murder charges weren't going to be filed against him, just domestic violence ("just") although that could've caused the death. Not a good, solid endorsement.
I've been able to swim almost every day now - it's divine. Ken and I walked the Lakeway trail last night and the little streambeds are all full of water. Vastly different from last year. Cross my fingers that it continues.
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