I don’t often procrastinate, but there are a few exceptions. Going to the doctor is one of them. I think it might help if they’d skip that first step of having to step on the scale with all my clothes on and get weighed, but that’s a topic for another post.

There’s very little that I enjoy about the experience. The front end people treat everyone as if they are incapable of knowing anything, and requests to forward information to at least the Dr.’s nurse are summarily denied because ‘they know better’ and the request was somehow non-standard.

The nurse shows up and takes the vitals and maybe asks a few questions, which get written down. Then the Doctor shows up ( yay, finally ), and he knows nothing about any previous conversations or documentation that was written down. Glad you’re here to save the day, doc. Sure, I’ll start over, why not?

If the problem is outside needing some codeine cough medicine, I get referred to a specialist ( great, another appointment, but I have to go through this clown to see anyone else ). No thought goes into the questions asked, so not much is revealed. He looks in my ears, taps on my sinus areas, feels my feet for swelling ( same shit he did for the last 50 patients ), and then sends me on my way to the pharmacist with possibly a referral to go see someone who really knows what he’s talking about.

One time I tried to be proactive about bringing up weight management as I find that is getting more difficult in my old age. Nothing. Watch your quantities. Really? Is it that simple? Just go on the “Eat Less Food Diet?” Why didn’t I think of that? When can I come back for more advice?

Last week I had a very unusual medical event take place during work hours. I was working from home as I usually do and trying to hold a conversation with my boss on the phone. In the middle of talking to him I lost vision in my right eye. “Hold on”, I said. “I think I might have a medical issue here.”

I proceeded to get up and walk around and a couple of minutes later my vision returned, but I was spooked by the event just the same. The first concern I had was stroke, but I didn’t want to over-react. In talking to my relatives who are in the medical field in the Seattle area, I decided to make the appointment and not risk it. Better safe than sorry.

So I call the Dr.’s office and make an appointment. He’s off today. Really? It’s Thursday. Okay, what do you have on Friday? I can come in on Friday at 1:30. Okay, should be fun.

By Friday I’ve also contracted a really nasty flu virus ( quite coincidentally ), and am in need of some cough syrup and whatever else helps a person get through the flu. So I go in the doctor and I get weighed ( screw it, I’m leaving my shoes on, I don’t care what it says this time, I’m not here to talk about that ), and go through the usual routine with the nurse.

The good doctor finally shows up and sets me down in the corner chair opposite where he is sitting, noisy keyboard and terminal in front of him. “So are you here to get your blood pressure checked again?”

“Well, no I.. CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK had this awful thing happen with my CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK right eye.” You see last Thursday CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK … At that point I realized that I wasn’t having a conversation with anyone. I was talking to a wall and some idiot was trying to type in my words and make some sense of it all before sending me off with my cough medicine. 20 minutes later I leave pissed off with a prescription for cough meds + 2 referrals, one to an eye doctor ( I don’t need his referral to see him ) and another to the hospital to get someone to do an ultrasound of my neck. It’s Friday at 5pm by the time I get home. I don’t have time to deal with this shit now and besides, nobody is open for any of these appointments over the weekend. I’ll deal with it on Monday.

Sunday rolls around and the flu is an order of magnitude worse. I mean my head hurts, big time, and I’m coughing up a lung. It had been a long night so I planned to just get up and see what I could salvage from my day. I got downstairs and started doing some basic kitchen duty and then I felt kind of dizzy. Then really dizzy. And then I hit the floor. THUD. For the first couple of minutes on the floor the room above me was moving all around, spinning out of control. I knew something bad had just happened but there wasn’t anything I could do. I yelled for my wife but she was upstairs in bed, unable to hear me. I rolled over to my stomach and then the crazy dizziness slowed down some and I was able to crawl over to my cell phone. I called her and thankfully she picked up and came down to help me. We crawled over to the couch and I worked my way up to a sitting position on the cough pretty shaken about what had just happened.

I had two thoughts. The first was stroke. The second was vertigo, somehow related to this flu I was having. Since I was at the peak of my flu experience, I was hoping for the latter. Nevertheless I resolved to get back to my brilliant doctor to gain his incredible insight into this situation — only this time I was bring my wife with me. Of course it’s Sunday and he doesn’t work on Sunday’s either. Sure, I’ll wait.

At this point I”m feeling one step above doggy dung and I looked the part. I couldn’t sit straight.
I could barely talk. The flu is a nasty, nasty flu and it was causing me discomfort in so many ways and yet I had these other problems too that I needed checked out.

Lucky for me they were able to get me in at 1:30 on Monday for yet another appointment with Dr. Brilliance. His first observation? I haven’t gained any weight since last Friday. Really? Is that what we’re here to talk about doc?

So I take the position of honor over in the corner and go through the ask a question try to give a response for a period of time before I takes another look in my ear, puts the stethoscope to my back, checks my feet for swelling and sends me on my way with another prescription and a few more referrals. On the way out he closes with me, reminding me that my blood pressure and weight were pretty much the same as last time, which was last Friday. Thank you!

Turns out I could do two of the referral appointments on Tuesday ( Christmas Eve ) at 4pm and 5:30 respectively. The first was for an ultrasound of my neck. I guess they were looking for occlusion or any other reason that blood may not be flowing to my brain. I asked the technician how it went after a fairly lengthy test and he thought the doctor would be fairly happy with the result, but couldn’t guarantee anything. Off to do an MRI.

So I get all hooked up to go into the Iron Lung and nobody bothered to communicate with me about how long I’d be in there. 1 minute? 10? 20? All I knew is that if I coughed ( and I sure needed to ), the test might have to start over. I was in there for a long, long time. 20 minutes seemed like 4 hours to me, especially when I needed to cough, but finally I get out. Whew, I can go home now. I’m tired, hungry, and I got all of these necessary pain the ass procedures out the way so I can relax now.

As I headed out of the room a new doctor who I ‘d never met, greets me in the hallway and starts asking how long I’d been having a hard time. “Do I know you?” “You’ve had a stroke”, he said. “I what?”

Now I’m in disbelief. He further counsels me to go straight to the ER and get admitted. I was wondering how bad it was, what was next, surgery? I’m not sure I’ve even come to grips with it yet, 24 hours later.
I felt fine. My vertigo symptoms had pretty much disappeared from Sunday. I was walking on my own. No other symptoms. I could talk fine. No paralysis. What was this guy talking about?

Once in the ER waiting room I get hooked to all of the instrumentation ( I’m still finding sticky patches to pull off my body ) and an diagnosed with hypertension. Blood pressure is 210/110. Can’t go home until that’s fixed. 4 hours later, they decide to do an XRAY because my cough doesn’t sound too good. Too much wheezing. They suspect pneumonia and that is confirmed by the XRAY.

So for all my trouble of going to see Dr. Brilliance, he got nothing right. This is not surprising. You can’t tell how bad of shape your patient is in if you’re looking at your keyboard and screen.

I have a suggestion for a new flow-chart, doc. LOOK at your patient. If he looks like SHIT, then something is wrong.

At age 52, the Great Recession forced my hand into a job change. I count myself as one of the lucky ones. I had a job I used to enjoy a great deal and I ended up in one that like even better. I don’t take that for granted.

A big part of what made Xerox tolerable post Ursula Burns being anointed as CEO was the human interactions. While the Sr. Execs demonstrated daily that they could care less about the employees, at least I had my local peeps. They were smart, funny, and a true pleasure to work with. There was never a shortage of people I could learn from and I valued that a great deal. My hope is, after 18 years that perhaps I may have imparted some words of wisdom on a few souls myself.

The outsourcing movement changed everything. The trendy thing for Vice Presidents to do was to use the words “Software” and “India” in the same sentence as if that was the magic bullet that would catch everyone’s attention. With about 10 years to go, instead of looking to finish my career at the place I was most comfortable I found myself not just disgruntled. It was much deeper than that. I was insulted. Pissed off. I felt genuine contempt the Sr. Management team on a daily basis and found other things to do when they came calling to spread their message. Every time they opened their stupid mouths, morale went down the toilet. When I was managing a team of Tools Engineers, it was impossible for me to get on board and act like a part of the management ‘team’. Instead, I was right there with the employees thinking – you guys are flaming idiots that have no idea what you’re talking about. I worked a couple of years there beyond what was healthy for me. I didn’t want to have regrets by making a major career move ‘in haste’, but in the end, the way I felt about it I was either going to have to leave myself or I knew I’d eventually say something that would get me fired. I simply — couldn’t stand it anymore.

Coming to terms with leaving after 18 years was hard. Having recently gone through a divorce after 27+ years, I would say the experience is somewhat similar. Humans don’t deal with uncertainty very well and I’m no exception. I like to know where my next paycheck is coming from.

But after you make that break, it sets you free and that felt good.

My job search was much shorter than I expected. I applied at my wife’s company and didn’t hear anything for a few weeks. I figured my resume was buried under the pile, especially in this economy. Most companies still weren’t hiring but Cambia, being front and center in the Affordable Health Care Act, was hiring like crazy. One day my wife Donna asked if I had heard anything about my resume submittal. “Nope”. Oddly enough, about an hour later I got a call and it turned out that position was a pretty good fit for me.

One of the features of the new job was that everyone in my group worked from home. As a team we are spread out over Oregon and Washington with my manager living in Bellingham. I’d see him about 3-4 times a year, maybe. This was a new concept to me and I wasn’t sure how well I’d do with working from home.

It’s been just a tad over a year and I can tell you, I LOVE working from home. I didn’t have much of a commute in the first place but now it’s zero, zilch, nada.

I can be 2x productive from home — at least. The simple reason? Interruptions. Nobody can come over and camp outside my cube.

Working from home I can get into deep thought. This was more rare when I had to go into the office. There are some programming tasks that require deep, uninterrupted thought. Figuring out how to deal with a complex data structure is one. When I was on-site, I could get half way through the thought process and then get interrupted and have to start over. The ramp up time is significant and sometimes a barrier to getting back into it.

I’ve learned so much technically over the past year because I’ve had the type of environment that supports deep thought and productivity.

Another aspect of acquiring more technical knowledge over the past year is likely that I’ve had to go and figure some things out for myself. I didn’t have anyone to lean on. It’s sort of sink or swim. I find that I’ve gotten better at using my available resources in looking things up myself.

One of the things that makes working from home and also being a part of a team possible is a tool from Microsoft called Lync. With Lync, your teammates are never far away. One might think that working from home would present challenges in terms of being distracted by other things taking place at home, but I’ve found that not to be the case. With Lync, you’re really on kind of a short leash. The expectations are that if someone needs to talk to you and it’s working hours, you’ll respond to an IM fairly quickly. This both good and bad. There ARE interruptions, just less so and you never have that guy who camps out at your cube and doesn’t know when to leave. You’re just as much in control of the conversation as the next guy.

I set up shop in an office that used to be one of my children’s bedrooms. If I get hungry or thirsty I don’t need to find a vending machine I just go down to the fridge and pick out what I want. There’s a nice bathroom across the hall and I have to say, don’t underestimate the benefit of having your own private bathroom. The cans at Xerox were sub-standard. ‘Nough said.

I now put about 4k miles on my truck every year. Mostly it just sits there which is fine with me with gas at $3.79 a gallon.

Put this one in the category of ‘highly recommend’