I returned to telecom to work the holiday with my friend C. Per usual, I arrived at the building early only to see that the entire parking garage had been barricaded. The ramps are being worked on again, and there is the chaos of going up the down ramps and vice versa. Tonight the whole place is shut down. I park in a spot reserved for patients undergoing endoscopy.
I entered the building on the main floor, having a brief chat with the security guard who is seated at a desk, eating a messy sandwich, with sauce dripping down his chin. He tells me, "The best way to get to your office is to go up the North elevators to the second or third floor, walk past the construction in the garage to the South elevators and take it down to the basement." Okay, mission accomplished. I realize that I associate health center basements with morgues, because, well, that is where the morgues are.
The medical assistants who initially screen the calls arrive and so does C. Again we are fairly busy answering all sorts of questions, dealing with issues, and providing support to people who we don't know. Thank goodness, there are electronic records, though not for every practice that we cover.
One of our earliest calls dealt with a 7 year old, who unwitnessed, claims that he had been bitten by a mole in an outlying town. The medical assistant who triages the call giggles as she gets the demographic data from the father. C. agreed to take the call, and thus began all the deliberations. It is so funny to think of two middle-aged Jewish women sitting in an isolated basement having a talmudic discussion on the bite of a mole and if it constitutes a rabies exposure. Calls were made to residents in TCH emergency department and to infectious disease people. The likelihood of a rabies exposure is small and how the hell did this kid have a run-in with a mole? Still, rabies is the most lethal bacterium known to man, and cannot be totally ruled out. So many calls were made back and forth, so many resources tapped, and so many references are read. Advice is made to have the kid go for an evaluation and possibly start the rabies series. The medical assistant who did the laughing googled moles in that region of the state and it appears that they have proliferated.
The evening went on, with lots of strange calls, lots of unhinged parents asking out-of-the-blue questions, with a moderate amount of sending children to emergency rooms, and so on. Again, this kind of work is a brain drain with "What to say, what to do?" circulating in our minds.
JSN knows that I don't like to be told that I HAVE to do anything, and that I have a slow to warm-up temperament. She advises everyone in the family to back off and let me acclimate myself to the basement life. Mostly, I'll be working above ground in my regular job and will only intermittently be working in the pits.
C. and I left the building by taking the elevators up to the fourth floor, where our pediatrics offices are, walking across the different deserted departments, to the North elevators down to where we arrive near our parking spots. I shivered, and told C. that this whole process gives me the creeps. "Scaredy cat," she replied.
