draggonlaady

yet anyway...
All my griping tonight has to do with timeing and equipment...

So tonight is taco tuesday at the bar (yeah, the place where I met Carmen!). Thinking that cheap tacos sounded like a good dinner, I was in the process of putting my shoes on when the emergency phone rang. Lovely timing, as my tummy was growling almost as loud as the phone was ringing. One of my better clients (Cheery) calling--she's at the hospital because one of her relatives had been in a wreck a couple hours earlier. The State Patrol Officer had just found a puppy at the scene, which turns out to belong to Cheery's relative, and had been in the truck with him (he thought that the pup was probably dead--it was a bad wreck).
So I meet her at the clinic, and examine the puppy. Can't find any major anything--sore and bruised on the right side, but no movable ribs, no major bone fractures, pup is alert and when set on the floor he followed me around the clinic with only a slight limp. Only concerning thing is that he is breathing rapidly and occassionally coughs. Just in case, we decide to take some x-rays of his chest. So I turn on the developer, expose the films and wait patiently for the developer to flip on the "ready to run" indicator light. The warm-up usually takes about 15-20 minutes. After 35 minutes, with no light and my tummy still rumbly, I run the films anyway. Gonna have to talk to my boss tomorrow about that, because it developed them fine; probably waiting on a burnt-out bulb or something. Annoying when you're hungry, and even more so for Cheery, who I'm sure really wanted to get back to the hospital to check on her relative, and let him know that his puppy's still alive!
Anyway, rads show some fluid in the right lung field, consistent with bruising and some leakage, but diaphragm appears intact, all important bits are in the appropriate places, and puppy is now trotting around annoying Cheery's poodle. So I send them on their way with some pain meds, and instructions to come back if the coughing doesn't resolve or gets worse.
Finally, an hour and a half later, I get to go get dinner!
Shortly after I get home from dinner, the phone rings again, a lady I don't know asking about the pup. At first, I think she's the injured man's mother calling with questions or to tell me the pup is getting worse (yes, I tend to jump to bad conclusions). Turns out it's a friend of the family who gave him the puppy in the first place, calling to find out how the pup is and to offer to take care of him until the owner can be released from hospital if necessary.
And cases like that are why I can deal with people like Ditz and Dingbat and dogs like Beast and still enjoy my job.