It was the Pecan Street Festival last weekend, and it was perfect weather. It's been such a cool Spring here, makes it more pleasant to be outside. But of course, there's the grumbling I do as I run to my car in my sweat-soaked clothes before it's even light in the morning. Not digging the cool weather then. But that time appears to be over. Anyway, Pecan St. was a real shopping opportunity, which I did not waste. And half the fun of anything in Austin is the people watching. Great city for that!
I'm still figuring out where I'd like to work. Yes, to quote the Shins, it's like I'm perched on the handlebars of a blind man's bike. I am pretty sure that I'm going to work for a psychiatrist in central Austin in private practice. But I did get a call from a large local psychiatric hospital last week, and they are seem very interested because I have a variety of psych hospital experiences, both here and in NJ. There would be advantages to working there, but the biggest downside is the traffic. I would certainly have to be there for morning rounds - probably at 8:00 - and the traffic would be a nightmare. If I didn't want to be late, I'd need to leave an hour before. The advantage would be higher initial pay, full benefits, but mostly the variety of patients (including those serious mentally ill, which I love but won't see in this practice) and working collaboratively with a large team that includes psychiatric residents. And I'd be their first Psych NP, so it would be ground-breaking. But working in private practice, I can shift my work hours -- arrive at 9:00 or even 9:30 -- and voila, no traffic. Yes, the flexibility would be divine. I have spent 2 days with the Doctor and his existing two NP's and I like/respect all three of them - it feels like a good fit. And this morning, I got an email from his office manager basically asking if I was ready to start job negotiation. Still thinking about checking out the hospital.....urggg, but that traffic.....of course, that's only for two years. When Nile graduates, Ken and I plan to move closer in.
Anyway, that's all been on my mind. Here's something funny. Antipsychotic medication (things like Thorazine, Haldol, Risperdal, Zyprexa) are being found useful for more and more things. They work as mood stabilizers for bipolar disorder and work as an augmentation agent for treatment-resistant depression. But when you say the word "antipsychotic" to a patient, they just hear PSYCHOTIC and flip out. What? I'm not taking that drug! So my clever professor advised us to call them.....broad-spectrum psychotropic medication. Isn't that great? You also see that when you tell a bipolar patient their diagnosis - they envision the Hollywood mania and get pretty upset - WHAT? I'm not manically crazy! I haven't spent every penny and had sex with every man on the street!
I have an Ebel Beluga watch that I bought a couple of years ago on Overstock.com. I saved a few hundred dollars on it and figured that was great. The bracelet broke and I took it to be repaired, which the jeweler said that they could not do. All repairs have to be done by authorized Ebel jewelers or I can ship it to Ebel. I went online to get a repair order and ship it....and guess what...it's counterfeit. The serial number is invalid; it's not even the correct number of digits and letters. Now what? So I googled around and found someone that offers to repair any watch -- I sent it to them. But here's the fun part of this story. I dreamed that night about my watch, that I opened it up to see the inner workings and then I ate them. Yep, crunched up all those little delicate metal pieces. Yum. (note to you: don't buy luxury items from that web site)
Graduation is on the 17th. I'm excited but it will basically be a hellish day. Because of the Boston bombings, security will be super-tight and everything will take longer. Graduates cannot bring any bags or purses. Guess I'll stick my lip gloss in my bra. Spectators have been advised to only bring a bag/purse 12" or smaller, and warned that lines for those to be searched will be long. Better to just go through the metal detector and carry nothing. Oh boy.
I had an interesting conversation with my hairdresser this week. It was the day that they discovered those three women held captive for 10 years. She wanted advice on whether to bring it up with her two young daughters. We talked about the risk of scaring them unnecessarily vs. letting them hear about it on the news, and talked about the relative risks of stranger danger vs. someone a kid knows (stranger is actually quite rare, most common is parents stealing kids in a bad divorce, but behind that is relative/acquaintance). And we talked about the nature of evil, which is the only thing I can call this. I'm an atheist, so I have no biblical beliefs about the devil and what caused such a thing. Is he mentally ill? Well, of course, it would actually be fascinating to do a psychiatric evaluation of him (if he would talk, surely his lawyer is putting the kibosh on that). Deep down in my bones, I know this man is just plain evil. Very few mentally ill people are violent or motivated to do something like this. And here's the thing - you can't really tell. When I worked at a state psychiatric facility in NJ, we had some of what you call "forensic" patients and a few of them had done absolutely terrible things. I can still remember that one of my patients needed to go off-site for some specialized medical test, and in big red letters inside his chart it said "must be accompanied by two mental health officers for any off-grounds appointments". I had seen orders to have one officer, but two? Then I read further in the chart that he had been a serial rapist. Great. (Rule on the first day: never let the patient get between you and the door.) But was there any clue when seeing this patient in the milieu with everyone else? Absolutely not. Just another guy.
One more pic. These are my fellow UT Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner graduates, professor (far L) and program director (far R) for 2013. We are a small group, there are many more Family NPs and also about six Pediatric NPs.
No comments:
Post a Comment