Cysts, Moles, and Making Doctors Uncomfortable

Today for the first time in my entire life, I received external stitches. Let's go back to January, when a mysterious blue bump appeared on my face. I tried popping it with a needle, but it just made it a huge red bump. After talking with Katie Cullen, we decided that it was a cyst. I talked to the nurses at my work and also the nurses at the ER (when I was there with a patient) and they all told me to just put hot compress on it. Well, I did and nothing happened. I still had a blue dot on my face. So I decided to go to the dermatologist because my Utah State insurance will end in August.

So today I went to the office and let me just say it was something start out of Trout Creek, Montana. It had dark patchwork-pieced-together-carpet, dark woodwork, white plastic walls, and random pictures of nature. They had me go sit in a room and wait for the doctor. The doctor came in and asked "I'm Dr. Stone, this is my PA assistant. How can we help you?". I stated "Get this thing off my face" pointing to the cyst on my face. I told him "It's a cyst and it hurts when you touch it". He said "You said the exactly the right thing 'It's a cyst and it hurts when you touch it'. We'll take it off". I stated "I also have moles for you to look at". Before I even finished making this statement his assistant was inspecting the mole on my arm. Now I have been to numerous doctors who have looked at the mole on my arm and stated "Just keep watching it". I also showed the doctor the mole on my left breast. Without hesitation the doctor, to no one in particular, stated "Ok take out the cyst and the moles are gone". I began to lift up my shirt so that the doctor can remove the mole. The doctor stated "No, no. Just pull it down this way so that you're more comfortable". What he really meant to say was "You having your shirt up is making me and my assistant uncomfortable". I said "Whatever works for you", because since I regularly sit have naked while people rip the hair from my 'crotch' I have grown very comfortable exposing myself in rooms full of people.

I continued to ask a million medical questions as usual. The doctor administered the shot into my breast and I looked the other way. Then he states "You won't feel anything, just a little pressure". I look down at a swollen, bloody mole and a scalpel and said "Cool". "What are you studying?" The doctor asks. "Psychology" I nonchalantly state. "Have you ever considered medicine?" he asks me. "Yes, but I'm very, very bad at chemistry" I reply. The doctor states "Well in high school I was bad a chemistry, but in college it was different". I told the doctor "Yeah, my high school chemistry teacher told me 'You might as well give up now because you'll end up in retail'". The doctor, his assistant, and the nurse spent the next mole removal trying to tell me how wrong my teacher was and all that jazz.

I asked for a mirror to watch the removal of the cyst. They used a mole punch to cut straight to the core of the cyst. My face was bloody and the doctor was pulling chunks out of my face. It was awesome. Then it came time to stitch up my face. I begged the doctor to let me do one of the stitches. He said that because it was in such an awkward spot he couldn't. He told me that if I get a mole off my stomach, then he will allow me to. He also told me to go home and "look in places where the sun doesn't shine for moles and I will gladly take them off for you". Good thing I got a brazilian wax so I can examine places the sun doesn't shine.

When it was all over, I asked the doctor how soon I will be able to go swimming. He asked, "Well, try to stay out of public pools for a while." I asked "What about the lazy river at Seven Peaks?". He said "That will be fine as long as you use waterproof bandaids and put vaseline on them every half hour. And try to keep your head above the water". Little did the doctor know that I rarely put my head under the water.

Moral of the story: don't try to lift your shirt in a dermatologist's office, wear sunscreen, check places where the sun doesn't shine for cancerous moles, and if there's a blue bump on your face for numerous months, it's probably a cyst.

Fire Crotch

Today at work I got kicked in the crotch by one of my patients. No, it wasn't the one who normally targets me (our most aggressive patient), nor was it the black man who thinks he's white who throws things. It was our brandnew patient who has an IQ of 56 (for all of you who aren't psychology nerds, the average IQ, well depending on what test is administered, is 100 with a standard deviation of 15). Anyways, this patient did not want to come in from the courtyard, so he sat down in the middle of the hallway. My co-worker went over and picked him up while I held the door. The patient started kicking at the wall so my co-worker shifted his weight and the patient kicked me. It was like a slow motion movie. He turned and face me. Looked directly at my crotch and then delivered a very hard swift kick. Among the panic that insued, I remained calm. I was even making jokes. He had actually kicked me in the best place possible, because it didn't hurt when he kicked me, probably from the fat that is contributing to my small veins. So after he was escorted by other co-workers of mine, I returned to the courtyard to bask in the sun, laughing to myself that I had just been kicked in the woman parts.

When I returned to the unit the nurse asked me how my shin was doing. I told her my shin was fine, but that wasn't where the patient kicked me. I had to explain it was my crotch. Now I am a very open person, but I like to use anatomically correct terms. But apparently there aren't anatomical terms for the front of the crotch. I had to fill out paperwork and type up reports on the incident, and with every 'crotch' that was written I became more and more uncomfortable. Why? Because I couldn't use words that I'm used to using like uterus, vagina, or cervix. No, I was stuck repeatidly writing 'Crotch' and like a 7-year-old-schoolboy I was embarrassed. I didn't even know how to spell crotch, I had to ask the nurse.

Then the doctor came in to assess the situation. The nurse so kindly told him "Whitney here got kicked in the crotch".There was that word again. Crotch. Crotch, crotch, crotch. By this point I had embraced the fact that I had been kicked in the crotch. The doctor asked "Are you ok?". I turned to him and stated "I don't think I'll be able to have children, but other than that I'm fine.". Everyone laughed but then when I was filing an incident report the paper stated 'are you injured?' and you had to check yes or no. Well, I didn't know. Can you break your crotch? I had to make a new box that said 'unknown'. The nurses told me that I wouldn't know until I used the bathroom. So naturally I was terrified that when I went the bathroom I would be in extreme pain. So an hour later, when I got the nerve to use the bathroom I was suprised to find my crotch was not broken.

Don't worry, since I filed an incident report, if anything happens Utah State Hospital (ie. Tax payers of Utah) have to pay for it.

Plasma and the Lack of Donation

So this past week I finally got the nerve to donate plasma. After stalling for about 3 hours I went. When I got there I was told I needed my social security card, which I didn't have. But the man decided to "look at my veins". After a few minutes of pumping my hand the man informed me that my veins were too small. Yes, that's right your veins can be too small. The guy behind me told me, "Yeah, think of a caprisun straw, that's about the size of the needle" and why he tried talking to me I have no idea. I turned to him and said "I can handle that" and turned back to the phlebotamist and stated "Are you freaking serious?". He was freaking serious. I thought my friend Caroline was the only person in the world with small veins, because she has small arms. I plead with the man, "I've never had any problems donating blood with this vein" pointing to the fatty vein in my left arm (I've had to do a lot of blood work this past year because of mono and working at the State Hospital, don't think I'm a drug addict or anything). "You need two veins so that if something happens to the first, we have a backup". That should have been a redflag right there, but I want the money that comes from the donation. So I asked what I could do and he stated "Do bicep curls with low weights and high reps". (Katie Cullen are you listening to this?) Sounded easy enough, but because I'm not a fulltime student BYU won't allow me in the weight room. So therefore, I can't donate.

As I sat pondering about my donating failure, I realized what a fat joke this whole thing was. Exercise to donate plasma? No thank you. I'd rather spend the money I should have earned by donating on McDonalds.

Is Arthritis Fun?

No arthritis is not fun. Let me give you all a background on the latest development in my life, yes it is arthritis. Ok, so we all know that my mom is crazy. Well now she is a crazy who is training for a marathon. And since her recent weightloss is giving me a complex, I decided to train for a marathon too. Yes it is true, diets don't work, Weight Watchers does. Anyways, so I've started running, I know can you believe it?! Me running. Ok, stop laughing, this is serious. I now have arthritis in my right knee, due to reasons I'm still not sure of. And I'm supposed to wear a brace on my leg and dope myself on ibprofen. Yes, I do have the body of a 75 year old balding man at the age of 21, and yes I am still not married. What is a single BYU co-ed about mission age female with arthritis supposed to do? I've decided to eat as much as possible because food loves me, it never gets mad at me, and it is always there for me. Ok, maybe that's what I want to do, but I'm really doing nothing.

For all of you interested in the rest of my life, I will give you an overall update. For those of you who aren't interested, you can stop reading now, but I bet you've stopped along time ago, or why are you still reading this? Anyways, as you can see I have no life. Well, actually I do have a life, just a really, really boring one. I work about 60 hours a week at the State Hospital in one of the forensic units (no, not like CSI, forensics means that it is a prison). Yes I work at a prison, and I love every minute of it. Especially being called the "B" word almost everyday (I'm going for the Queen B title), walking into "inappropriate" situations between two patients (one with his pants down), having water poured on my head, being spat on, and being a target of the most aggressive patient on my unit. I absolutely love it. A

So my advice is don't run, ever, unless you want arthritis like me which is still not fun. But I really can't complain because my brother has had arthritis since he was 2. He's my hero, I love you Duke!

Oochie Wa Wa

So today I experienced a Brazilian wax for the first time. Not as awkward as I thought it was going to be, I mean sure I was half naked surrounded by four people looking at my cauch, but I didn't feel awkward at all. And the girl who waxed me was from my freshman ward, yes, Provo is that small. If you need a Brazilian wax, let me just recommend the place I went, very classy. It wasn't a dark alleyway like I thought it was going to be.

This wax is a continuation of a year in which I am doing things that terrify me. I have now eaten every part of a lamb, donated blood, waxed my cauch, and tomorrow I am going to donate plasma (well hopefully I will if I can get my pulse rate low enough). My list continues as I realize what terrifies me and I continue to do it. If you have any suggestions, just let me know.

Trying but Failing at Being a Good Samaritan

So, my calling in church is "emergency preparedness co-chair". Basically I am in charge of letting the ward know where to go in case of an emergency. I also am in charge of all the food drives and blood drives. Well, today marked the second time our ward/stake had a blood drive. Last semester was the first time I had ever donated blood. Minus the minor freakout I had where my body went into convulsion shaking, it went all right. Then the American Red Cross kept sending me all of this propaganda about how only 25% of first time blood donors ever donate again, and basically made me feel like a horrible person for keeping all of this clean (minus living in Eastern Europe, mononucleosis, and the occasionally drug use) blood inside of me. So I decided out of the pureness of my guilt-ridden heart to donate for a second time, just to beat the statistics. Anyways, so I woke up early today (10:00am) in order to make it to my appointment at 12:15. I get all the way up there (on campus) and go through the whole screening process. On the outside (and I thought on the inside) I was calm and collected. I passed the blood pressure and iron scan with flying colors. Then all of a sudden the lady told me to take deep breaths. She kept telling me to do this, and I was like "What?! OK." Then she told me that my pulse was too high to donate blood and that I needed to find my 'happy place' and keep breathing deeply. 5 minutes (5 actual minutes) of namaste breathing later, and my pulse was still way too high. It has to be under 100, which is what most people's are when they are exercising heavily, but mine even after the "cool down" process was still 106. She then told me that I was not able to donate blood today. You may be asking, why was your pulse so high? Because I was panicking, and hate needles going into my flesh. My mom told me "Well at least you didn't yell at the lady like you used to. It's kind of funny how you used to say 'get away from me lady' and now they are telling you to go away." Yes, I used to yell at nurses, but let me just tell you I have had ALL of my shots that you get throughout your life, three times (yes three) because we switched doctors so many times they lost my records twice. Anyways, the whole ordeal wasn't such a bust because she told me that I could still get snacks from the snack table. I went over and saw the glorious Famous Amos cookies and was content. But, there were people all around the table and they were all staring at me. It was one of those awkward moments where you have to say something, and I said "Well I can't donate blood, but they said I can get refreshments anyways." There was an awkward silence and everyone was staring at me, so I grabbed myself a bag of Famous Amos and said "I don't have AIDs I promise" and left.

Well, I killed two birds with one stone, I didn't have to donate blood, and I still got some cookies.

FYI

I would just like to inform everyone, that if you for some reason see someone with wrist-to-waist handcuffs being escorted by two regularly dressed individuals, it is STILL not polite to stare. I had to take one of my patients to the emergency room last night and everyone just sat there staring at us. Not just the little side stares you give when you want to see what's going on, no, it was the full-on stop-conversation-so-there-is-silence-when-you-walk-by, turn-and-look-with-a-gaping-mouth-stare. I wanted to say "What? You've never seen someone handcuffed before?!" Now, I can understand the kids and the old people staring who were there, but you'd think the idiots who are in the ER on a Saturday night would have some manners. But then again, there are in the ER so they can't be too bright. But nonetheless my patients (usually) do not stare at you, so therefore, do not stare at them.

Thank you.