Day 6: Friday in LA. A real gnarly day.
I woke up at 6:30, after 2 hours of sleep. The girls in the hostel were showering & packing up for the day & it woke me up... Once I was awake I started thinking about my phone call the night before with Dana, from my recruiting agency. She told me I had to re-fax some paperwork that they didn't receive, do a couple of online assessments, and get my drs office to send a form saying it was ok for me to work. I woke up & found the computers in the hostel & started doing the online stuff. I looked up the nearest FedEx to fax stuff. I made a million phone calls, begging my doctors receptionist to fax the form. My heart rate was probably 140 the whole time. Two hours sleep. No coffee on board. In a new city. Threats of canceling my assignment. I didn't handle this day very well. I spent four hours on the computer, completing every single online learning module... isolation precautions, math quiz calculating drip rates (who the heck even uses these??! Seriously?!), critical care nursing, HIPPA protocol, & JCAHO everything. One hour of this is enough. One hour, in Chicago when it is 5 degrees out and you have nothing else to do. Four hours, in beautiful, sunny LA, when you're supposed to be on vacation? Torture. Gnarly. One thousand gifts? Definitely not on my mind at this point.
The problem was that my agency didn't give me this list of things to complete until earlier in the week... When I was in the mountains & not checking my email. So, all of a sudden, it's Friday & it's an emergency to finish these things by the end of the day.
We finished the online modules, and then sat in traffic for two hours trying to get to a fedex for faxing & then to a labcorp to get my blood drawn. The whole time I'm still calling my doctor trying to get this dumb form faxed. I finally cracked in the lab waiting room... I had already sat in a labcorp in glenview, il for an hour, doing my drug test & somehow I was supposed to get my blood drawn too but neither I nor the tech knew that. So here I was again, stuck in a stuffy office with terrible jazz music, smelly chairs & 90's art. My frustration, lack of sleep, disappointment, and hate for LA traffic, boiled over & made me starting crying in the lab office. A lot. Not just like two little eyes full of tears that spill over. Big, angry tears. I was so thankful to have Jacey there to listen to me, and tell me it would all work out. But I felt so bad for her, like I was ruining her day too... There's no way you want to take vacation & sit around at a computer & fax machine! Especially when I could have done this three weeks ago in glenview! (Yes I'm still slightly upset about it)
Finally I get my blood drawn with a tear streaked face & red eyes. And then we go to leave LA. Basically we spent the rest of the day in traffic. We did get to see Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Sunset Blvd. That was pretty amazing. But not really worth it for the traffic... I think you have to go see it once, and that's it.
That night, we wanted to camp on the beach. It was Friday night in Southern California, and 70 degrees out. Everyone was camping. We drove to a few campgrounds & finally found one about 7 miles inland- Caspers Campground in San Juan. We set up the tent, made a fire. Our idea was to find a little seafood restaurant on the beach & relax and have dinner. Instead, we ate chex mix in front of the fire. Thats real life. We didn't even have matches or a lighter. But we had nice neighbors, and met Joshua who was camping next to us. He taught us how to build a fire & let us use some of his stuff. We were so exhausted we couldn't even think about driving in the car one more hour, so we made the decision to stop & enjoy this part of Southern California.
No comments:
Post a Comment