Hello! My baby. Hello! My honey.
Hello! My ragtime gal. Send me a kiss by
wire, Baby my heart's on fire!
If you refuse me, Honey, you'll lose me,
Then you'll be left alone. Oh, baby, telephone and
tell me I'm your own. Hello! Hello!

Hello! My Baby, Words by Ida Emerson, Music by Joseph E. Howard

Today just for kicks I thought I'd try to see if I could upload an image onto my blog. I’m doing it because I figure I should try and get my money’s worth since I signed up for Blog Plus. I hope it showed up. It’s my official face of the web.

On the work front yesterday I found out that our company will be relocating to a new building in Hunt Valley. It appears that the office space that we rent is a tad too high and the chief muckety mucks felt it would be less expensive to buy a building and rather than pay the rent. The company I work at has been in business for about 20+ years. I have no idea how long they’ve been at the location they are now. My only hope is that I remain employed there long enough to see them move.

Everyday I feel as though my job is in jeopardy. I live in fear of being homeless or having to move in with my father and my crack addict sister. I’m not sure if I mentioned her before but my older sister, Carleen is a crack addict.

It was horrible living in the same house with her after my mom died. I got a nervous stomach and had difficulty sleeping. I felt as though I was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. Who knows maybe I did have it or do have it...

She would steal things around the house, air conditioners, food, house plants, money, my favorite new dress, anything so that she could score another hit.

She would knock on my bedroom door at all hours of the night and beg for money. She would not stop. She was relentless. My father would usually give in and give her money to make her stop so that we could get some sleep. This would only temporarily calm the issue. She would leave out and buy her crack, smoke it up, and return to bang on our doors again. She would not bathe or take care of herself she lived solely for her next hit of crack. Her children, my nieces, Arlesia and Alexis and my nephew, Little David eventually got taken away from her and were placed in foster care. It was a bad situation.

In a sense she was responsible for my getting fired from Maryland General Hospital. My job at that hospital was my first true employment as a Medical Technologist. You see at the time I didn't think anything of giving my family members my phone number at work in case an emergency occured at home. My sister called me up at work that night and told me that she needed money because some drug dealers said that they would kill her if they didn't get their money. I felt shaky and worried that night at work wondering if it was a scam she had cooked up to get money from me or maybe it was the truth. All the same I just remember that night feeling very worried and wanting to get home. I could'nt leave as anyone who works in lab knows that are profession is chronically short staffed.

I wasn't paying as close attention as I normally did working my labs and I made a mistake doing a lab test. It was a CSF diff count for an infant. CSF is short hand for cerebral spinal fluid. A diff count is short hand for cell differential count. The cell count is done under the microscope using the high power oil immersion objectives. The differential is based on the morphologic examination of a wright-stained cytospin preparation. The cells are reported as number per ul; erythrocytes, total white cells, neutrophils, lymphocytes, eosinophils, and a composite group of monocytes-histocytes-macrophages. CSF's are ordered on small children primarily to check for Meningitis. Meningitis in young children may only have nonspecific symptoms like fever and vomiting. The disease is very rare and is only endemic when older individuals are infected and pass it on to others. Transmission of Meningitis is by repiratory droplets among persons who have prolonged close contacts such as family members living in the same household, and within crowded communities such as the military or college dorms. During the first 6 months of life, maternal bactericidal antibodies are protective against infants becoming infected. Mortality approaches 100% in untreated patients and approaches 15% when appropriate antibiotics are given.

Anyway, two days later on the same day that Tupac was murdered I was fired from my job. I never told them about my sister’s drug problem and how it was effecting me. I felt that it would be weak to say I couldn't think that night because my sister kept calling me to tell me that drug dealers were going to kill her. In short, I felt ashamed that my sister was an addict. I was probably the only person working there who was going through this. I doubt that I would have found a sympathetic ear. In the end I was culpable for the lab results not my sister.

I admit that I didn't like doing CSF counts. The sample that was given that night was short and the Dr. that ordered it had a habit of ordering spinal diffs on babies. It seemed to me as though if a baby was under his care it would get a CSF diff. CSF diffs are not the type of lab tests that people like to order willy nilly because they are very difficult to get and painful for the patient. Not to mention the fact that Meningitis is a rare disorder in babies!!! They're naturally protected against it!! I read about this in my college textbook which I still own, Medical Microbiology by Murray, Drew, Kobayashi, & Thompson page 89.

I felt like this doctor liked to torture infants because he ordered the tests so often on them. I feel for bad for writing this but this is how I honestly feel. No other doctor at the hospital ordered pediatric diffs on babies as often as he did. If that doctor. was working that night a diff would be ordered on an infant, as sure as the sky is blue.

In the end the baby’s diff count was normal. Her microbiology tests were negative. She did not have Meninigitis. As far as I know she's still alive and kicking. I assume the doctor is still working. Who knows, maybe he's stll at Maryland General happily taking spinal fluid from helpless babies crying out in agony. In case you're wondering this all happened during the late 90's.

Right now, all I know is that I have to do a good job at work so that I do not have to live in the same house with my sister. The scariest sound on the face on the earth to me is the sound of someone knocking on the door or the sound of a telephone ringing.

When I moved out of the apartment that I shared with my father and sister I made a point of not giving my new address to my brother or nieces and nephews. I did this for fear that they would tell her where I lived and then she would harass me all hours of the night for drug money. If that were to happen I would be forced to move from my neighborhood. The only person I could trust with giving my address to was my father.

In the end I did eventually give them my home phone number but I will not give them my work number or the name of the company I work for. My sister to this day has no idea where I live and I want to keep it that way. She is not going to drive me crazy again. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is not any fun and I don’t want to go through it again.