Everything Breaks (At Some Point)

Over the past three days, the following items I possess have either broken, gone missing, or stopped working:

• My digital cable box
• My Palm Pilot
• My stethoscope
  
• My Goffstown EMS Jacket

I at least know where the stethoscope and the jacket are; they, at the moment, are in New Boston, the next town south of here. We intercepted them this past Tuesday night for a patient who was having abdominal pain with nausea and vomiting. My protocols say that I am not authorized to treat abdominal pain because it would mask symptoms and make it more difficult to find the cause of the pain - not always true, but I honor it anyway (unless I get orders from medical control to treat it) because I don't want to have my ability to practice medicine taken away from me, or worse, lose my license over it. But I can treat for nausea - this woman, 49 years of age, has a history of ovarian cysts, and this is not the first time she's had difficulties with them. I was at least able to give her Zofran for her nausea and vomiting. That helped her, but she was still nasty and bitchy because of the pain. I don't blame her, though; I have a hiatal hernia, and when I'm having a bad day because of it I want to curse God and everybody.

Anyway, I digress. My cable box is trying to download new software to itself and keeps looping. I don't know if the problem is one with our cable loop or with the box having trouble, so we're going to do the easy thing and replace the cable box. My Palm, not so easy - somehow I managed to crack the interior side of the screen. The glass on the front isn't broken, but the inner membrane is. It looks like a mushroom cloud on the display when I turn it on. Otherwise it still works.... I called Palm support yesterday, and they told me that screens aren't covered under warranty, and it's going to cost me to the tune of $150 to have it repaired. I'm not happy about that, but I do use the Palm every day, as I keep my calendar on it, I have Epocrates installed on it to use as a medical reference, and I have multiple SD memory cards that I keep music on and I use it as an MP3 player. Unfortunately, I can't see the applications to load them. That's a problem.

The snow is melting in my driveway! We have most of the driveway open now, and we're waiting for the back to open up so that we can use it to drive through again. The pool yard is starting to clear out as well; the walk closest to the driveway is clear and the area where the plants are is becoming less snowy. The pool, however, is still full to the top with ice, and it will be interesting to see what happens when it finally breaks up. I have a feeling we'll be pumping water out of it, just to get it to the level where it belongs. Plus, it will be cold. But I don't expect to swim in it for another couple of months or so.

I am working in Goffstown from 6:00-11:00PM tonight. The EMS officer, my supervisor there, called me Friday and asked if I was available at all during the weekend. He was sort of pleading, and I felt bad (plus I can use the extra money), so I agreed to work tonight. I'm hoping it's not a terrible night to work as I have to get up early tomorrow to go to Manchester.

In any case - it's time to change laundry. More later.