Well, first, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! And second, sorry it has been so long since
my last post. A very long and
uncomfortable cold (well, are colds ever comfortable?) and a bit of writer’s
block has kept me away far too long. I
have found when you blog and build up several posts, you can forget what you
already wrote about. So from time to
time, I need to review so I won’t bore you with repeat ramblings.
If you are a regular reader, and I thank you for that, then
you know back in September I made mention of how heart attacks thankfully don’t
run in my family, but they do seem to creep up in my life from time to
time. We had settled into Idaho as our
new home, and I had gotten pretty busy with my service as I noted in my post
from November of last year. Within 2 weeks of moving to Idaho, my service
was up and running, and by the end of 1997, I was very busy with full-time
work.
Then in January of 1998, things changed literally in a split
second with one phone call. It was a
Saturday morning, and Joe was going to go to the mall to try out as an extra
for a movie that Bruce Willis was making in Twin Falls. He never made it to the mall. That phone call was his office informing us
that one of the physician’s, the one who was Joe’s main referral source and the
one who kept me the busiest in my service, had dropped dead of a heart attack. He was skiing in Sun Valley. He loved doing that so much that he also
kept a condo up there so he could spend the weekends without having to drive
back and forth. It was about a 75 to
80-minute drive from Twin. He also had
plans to expand their practice up in that area as well.
As a side note, Sun Valley, Idaho, is one of the most
beautiful places on earth, at least for me.
If I ever win the lottery (or maybe that progressive on that favorite slot
machine of mine at my favorite local Vegas casino), I would build a log home in
Sun and maybe never leave Idaho again.
Even just driving into town and seeing those mountains, it just sucks
the stress right out of your body, and you feel like you don’t have a care in
the world or that the world has any cares.
I’m not a skier, but you don’t have to be to feel the essence of those
mountains deep down in your soul.
At least Dr. M. died doing what he loved most, apart from
being a physician. He was at the top of
the mountain and mentioned he was not feeling very well. He skied to the bottom and said it again and
fell to the ground. His heart more or
less imploded, and he was dead before he even got all the way down. The ironic thing was that it was his first heart
attack, and previous to that, there was no heart damage. Even more ironic—he had a doctor’s
appointment that following Monday for a checkup, and more than likely they
would have found the blockages, fixed him up, and he would have been good as
new. Timing…
So overnight I lost one of my busiest accounts. I did have some of his dictation to finish
up, which was needless to say very difficult to do knowing he was no longer
with us. He always finished each chart
note or letter with “end of dictation.”
So those were the last words I ever heard from him.
One thing I always drive home to my students is to always
keep your skills up, especially if you are working in only 1 or 2 specialties
or even if working for a national company.
Things can happen at a moment’s notice.
Maybe not something quite as drastic as a death, but companies get sold,
doctors retire, or new technology comes in to eliminate the need for your
services. Keep up with your skills and with networking,
and if you lose a job suddenly, it should not take you that long to replace
what you lost. In the summer of ’98, a
friend told me the national service where she worked was needing MTs. I had picked up a little more work on my own
since the death of that physician, but I definitely had time to do more. I had
never worked for a national service, so I thought it would be a good
experience.
