I love my job.
Oct. 15th, 2004 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thejunipertreeThe other day, I was outside smoking a cigarette with one of my co-workers and she offered to give me a tour of the medical office upstairs. You see, the company I work for has about thirteen offices all over the east coast. One of them is in the same building as the administrative office, which is where I am currently working.
When I had been hired, I was only given the twenty-five cent tour. "This is the lunchroom, this is the reception area, this is the medical office's front desk." But, I had never been brought into the back to see any of the procedure rooms or get to see any of the instruments.
My co-worker usually works in the administrative portion of this company, but every Wednesday, she works upstairs in the medical office during what we call session. Session is when we actively see patients for abortion procedures, among other things.
On this particular day, session had just ended and all patients were gone from the premises and we thought this would be a fabulous time for me to get the full monty.
Jo-Jo, my co-worker, took me upstairs. First, she showed me the procedure that she normally works in. It's quite tiny, the second procedure room is much larger. The instruments were all taken out and cooed over (O, curette, how I love thee) and the vacuum aspirator was demonstrated (well, demonstrated as much as possible without an actual patient there).
I got to see the recovery room, with all of its recliners lined up in a row, and the spartan doctor's office. She showed me cannullas and tubing and jars and speculums. All the sizes of cervix dilators. The best part, THE BEST PART, is when one of the other techs came over to us with two bags in her hand.
They each had one small cup in them. For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of being drug tested, you would say that they resembled urine collection cups. I remarked how closely they resembled these cups, myself.
In each cup was a mass of reddish tissue, floating suspended in some kind of liquid. I held a cup up to the light, peered closely at it, and saw what looked like a black frog's eye. It was, however, not the eye of a frog.
It was a nine-week old fetus, but I couldn't really make out anything in the cup. Not anything distinct, really. Nine-weekers are, generally, fairly blobby to begin with.
I was then brought back into scrub, which is where the 'products of conception' are brought to be cleaned, weighed, measured, pieced back together (to ensure that all bits were indeed removed from the woman's uterus), and readied to be sent to either pathology (which is actually only done in offices that go over a certain gestational age, later in the pregnancy) or biohazard.
The tech took out a plastic bag and dumped it into an oversized, square petri dish. Filled it with a bit of water and placed it on a light box. Using a pair of long nosed tweezers, she began fishing bits out and showing them to me.
That's an arm.
That's the other arm.
Here's the torso and legs.
There's an eye.
Bottom part of the face, nose and mouth.
An 11-week old fetus.
She held the bottom part of the face up to the light, to show me how the mouth opens and explained to me, in Reader's Digest format, what happens in scrub. I was completely fascinated, absolutely hypnotized. It all reminded me of how I used to want to pursue a career in forensic pathology. She cleaned everything up and replaced it back in the bag, then got it ready for biohaz. Thanking her profusely for allowing me to see this, I left and went back downstairs.
I've always had a general idea of what was done and what things looked like, but I've never been completely confronted with it before. Not face to face. And I'm fairly proud at how I stood up to it. Every day I'm constantly reminded of the great work we do here. How I'm no longer just pushing papers around on a desk; I'm working for a company that actively strives towards maintaining reproductive healthcare.
It's brilliant.
I would love to be able to do what Jo-Jo does, working in the medical office once a week. Or even when they're just short staffed. I know that I can be compassionate and kind to patients and I can handle what more weak-stomached people can't. Hell, I even have a fabulous pair of purple scrubs (we're not allowed to wear black ones, so purple was the next best choice). But right now, the HR department just has too much goddamn work to do.
hrmph.
One day.
When I had been hired, I was only given the twenty-five cent tour. "This is the lunchroom, this is the reception area, this is the medical office's front desk." But, I had never been brought into the back to see any of the procedure rooms or get to see any of the instruments.
My co-worker usually works in the administrative portion of this company, but every Wednesday, she works upstairs in the medical office during what we call session. Session is when we actively see patients for abortion procedures, among other things.
On this particular day, session had just ended and all patients were gone from the premises and we thought this would be a fabulous time for me to get the full monty.
Jo-Jo, my co-worker, took me upstairs. First, she showed me the procedure that she normally works in. It's quite tiny, the second procedure room is much larger. The instruments were all taken out and cooed over (O, curette, how I love thee) and the vacuum aspirator was demonstrated (well, demonstrated as much as possible without an actual patient there).
I got to see the recovery room, with all of its recliners lined up in a row, and the spartan doctor's office. She showed me cannullas and tubing and jars and speculums. All the sizes of cervix dilators. The best part, THE BEST PART, is when one of the other techs came over to us with two bags in her hand.
They each had one small cup in them. For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of being drug tested, you would say that they resembled urine collection cups. I remarked how closely they resembled these cups, myself.
In each cup was a mass of reddish tissue, floating suspended in some kind of liquid. I held a cup up to the light, peered closely at it, and saw what looked like a black frog's eye. It was, however, not the eye of a frog.
It was a nine-week old fetus, but I couldn't really make out anything in the cup. Not anything distinct, really. Nine-weekers are, generally, fairly blobby to begin with.
I was then brought back into scrub, which is where the 'products of conception' are brought to be cleaned, weighed, measured, pieced back together (to ensure that all bits were indeed removed from the woman's uterus), and readied to be sent to either pathology (which is actually only done in offices that go over a certain gestational age, later in the pregnancy) or biohazard.
The tech took out a plastic bag and dumped it into an oversized, square petri dish. Filled it with a bit of water and placed it on a light box. Using a pair of long nosed tweezers, she began fishing bits out and showing them to me.
That's an arm.
That's the other arm.
Here's the torso and legs.
There's an eye.
Bottom part of the face, nose and mouth.
An 11-week old fetus.
She held the bottom part of the face up to the light, to show me how the mouth opens and explained to me, in Reader's Digest format, what happens in scrub. I was completely fascinated, absolutely hypnotized. It all reminded me of how I used to want to pursue a career in forensic pathology. She cleaned everything up and replaced it back in the bag, then got it ready for biohaz. Thanking her profusely for allowing me to see this, I left and went back downstairs.
I've always had a general idea of what was done and what things looked like, but I've never been completely confronted with it before. Not face to face. And I'm fairly proud at how I stood up to it. Every day I'm constantly reminded of the great work we do here. How I'm no longer just pushing papers around on a desk; I'm working for a company that actively strives towards maintaining reproductive healthcare.
It's brilliant.
I would love to be able to do what Jo-Jo does, working in the medical office once a week. Or even when they're just short staffed. I know that I can be compassionate and kind to patients and I can handle what more weak-stomached people can't. Hell, I even have a fabulous pair of purple scrubs (we're not allowed to wear black ones, so purple was the next best choice). But right now, the HR department just has too much goddamn work to do.
hrmph.
One day.
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Date: 2004-10-15 05:18 pm (UTC)