Bye Bye Amby Baby

The amby baby has been re-sold on e-bay. We recovered most of the money it cost to buy. Pink eye has been the illness of the week around here. You can't just get an antibiotic for it anymore either. You have to wait to see how it plays out. Does your child wake with his eyes glued shut? For 2 days? Do you have to wipe green goo from his eyes every 20 minutes? For 2 days? If you answered yes to ALL these questions then a trip to the doctor may be necessary. It is very unpleasant to have to deal with these symptoms occuring in a baby. We finally got the antibiotic ointment for his eyes friday, and by saturday his eyes were back to normal. As the Dr. put it 'his eyes look really gnarly'. That they did.

Tomorrow I will be sending out the dossier, I think. Not that it's a rush to get it in because the fingerprints must be approved before the dossier really does us any good. We have a fingerprint appointment on Dec. 14. We have to drive about 2 hours to get fingerprinted and it's been snowing like mad around here, so I am hoping that snow doesn't delay the process any further.

The big guy, who just recently finished his master's degree, is working as a nurse practitioner. This is equivalent to a physician assistant. He took a cut in pay going from a staff nurse to a nurse practitioner. Here is what the man is responsible for on a daily basis: doing rounds on patients in the morning to find out if there has been any change since the previous day, ordering tests on patients, prescribing medication for patients, diagnosing what is wrong with the patient, discharging patients with further medical instruction. Does any of this sound familiar? Sound like the job of a doctor perhaps? He gets paid 1/3 of what his colleagues as doctors get paid, and that just happens to be even less than a regular registered nurse. SAD, SAD, SAD. Fortunately, the hospital for which he works does not own the physician group that he works with AND they are going to 'buy' the group. That means that he is able to do some salary negotiating, and hopefully they will see the value in what he does. Don't get me wrong, I think nurses are paid pretty good. It's just that when you pay $30,000 to 'upgrade' your degree, and you are responsible for the same things a physician is you would think that would be worth some extra income.

I am almost finished with my A&PI class that I took an incomplete in last semester, then it's on to A&PII. Thankfully these classes are held at night, so I can attend while the big guy is home. I'll be able to start nursing classes in 1 year. Hopefully, we'll be able to work something out with the school when we get our referral.

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