Bureaucrats running wild...

So today I had my final exam after dislocating my shoulder. Everything looks mostly positive except the one thing. the movements I can do with my shoulder are still very limited. As a matter of fact the movments are much more limited than they should be. From the physical exam you can't make any determination what exactly is wrong. There is a possibility that I've a torn rotator cuff on top of the dislocated shoulder. But you can only clearly see that in an MRT.
I thought no big deal. They do have MRT machines in Vienna's general hospital. But it doesn't work that way. Since this was an outpatient procedure things are different. The doctor at Vienna's General Hospital write theier report to my gneral physician with suggesting that I have an MRT taken of my left shoulder. I have to take the report to my doctor and he will write the actual request to have the MRT taken. With my docotrs request I have to have the MRT taken at certain places, otherwise my health insurance won't be covering the costs. Once I have the paperwork from the MRT in hand I can set up an appointment with the outpaient department for sport injuries at Vienna's General hospital and than head back there with the paperwork and find the best treatment plan for my shoulder. As far as I'm concerned that is bureaucracy running amok. And to top things off I will have to waited over 2 weeks to have my MRT examination taken.
Until then I will continue to be in slight to moderate pain.

A Non-Accountant doing an Accountants work...

A non-accoutant doing an accoutants work during the sick leave of the accountant...what could possible go wrong :)
Well after 3 day of working in a disaster area, war zone, site of an bomb explosion...aka my desk at work I've made quite a huge dent into the disaster. With that being said, my desk still looks like a disaster area and that doesn't make me particular happy.
I named the worst pile of work, besides the inbox of my work email, the msic. pile or pile that someone didn't know what to do about the stuff or pile that they just didn't want to have to deal with. I'm not mad at that, after all those 2 guys who tried their work on that particular pile are non-accountants and of those 2 guys doesn't want to have much to do with accounting in the first place.
After having dealt with the the piles I named "most urgently" it was time to takle that particular pile today.
When I went trough that pile to get "the lay of the land" so to speak...I was just amazed. I've been working as an accountant for over 25 years, but in that time I've rarely ever encountered a pile like that. For me as an accountant it was a journey of the special kind. You might even say a fusion of Accounting meets Twilight Zone :)
I foundinvoices that had been paid, although they hadn't even reacht their due date yet, but they hadn't even been marked as having been paid. Inbetween bank statements I found invoices past their due date that hadn't been paid, but nobody did anything about that particular fact. As I dug deeper into the pile I found a couple of payment reminders that nobody had done anything about. Turns out that tha bank statements hadn't been recorded for about 3 weeks, and that's really something bad, especially considering that I should be doing the montly balance for April. Not entirely sure how that's going to work. And mixed within those files were accounting related papers and payment confirmations.
I sorted the whole, stuff according to it's urgency and maturity date an started working it off. My current estimate is that it will take me about 3 or 4 days to work through that entire pile. I'm not even talking about reconsiliation work or doing the montly balance work for the bank.
Those are the times I really would love to have all documents electronically. That way I could have connected from home to my work computer, sorted all those documents according to their urgency and rcorded those that would have been most urgently myself or at least told those guys what documents needed to processed and how to do that, espceially with the more difficult ones. So I'm going to file the under the genere "Fun, Fun Fun..." ;)

First Day at work after my sick leave...

Today was my first day at work, after having been on sick leave due to my recent shoulder injury. I couldn't get to work at my usual time, since I had to see my general physican first since I had to get some more meds for my shoulder first. This meant that I wasn't going to be at work till at least 9.30. On the one hand not a bad thing, since it made the first workday a little bit shorter than usual. On the other hand considering all the workload I was expecting not exactly helpful. But there's really nothing I could do about it.
My superior was happy to see me, although I had emailed him the previous day, that I would be returning to work the next day. When I took a glance at my desk, it looked exactly the way I was expecting it. It looked like a bombe had recently exploded there. There was a mixture of things that had been already properly processed, but not put into the archive. Mixed within the processed stuff was stuff that had not yet been processed. There was no apparent logic to the way the stuff had been put there. A mix of invoices...some of them on top of the pile although they won't be due for quite some time and mixed within that pile invoices that had already surpased their majurity date. Needless to say it took me a couplemof hours to get on top of things and get some order into that chaos.
Once that had been accomplished I started recording the invoices and prcessing the paperwork accordingly. I know it was going to take me about 2 days to process the majority of the overdue paperwork. And having to work with only the right arm certainly didn't increase the working speed. But by the end of the day I had made quite some visible progress. Maybe not to the untrained eye, but I could see that the pile had gotten smaller.
So far working was actually not too bad for my shoulder. Abeout 2/3's of the workday I didn't feel any pain at all. But towards the end of the workday I realized that it was getting more and more exhausting for my shoulder. And by the time I got home, I felt my shoulder aching a little. So I spent the next hour chilling with Gina on the couch and taking a 20 minute power nap helped as well.

Control Appointment...

Today I had my control appointment at the ER of Vienna's AKH. Got there around 8.30 am and there were already a ton of people there. So I know that would be taking quite some time. But I knew there's pretty much nothing I can do about it. On the other hand my should still was hurting quite a lot. Actually it was hurting much more than I would have imagined that it would hurt 1 week after the injury.
With all the people waiting to by seen by one of the ER physicans. So it came quite as a surprise that I only had to wait about 1 hour to be seen by a doctor. So far everything looked OK. The did adjust the the bandage slightly. And so far it looks like as if I have not done any damage to the nerves in my arm. And I didn't damage one of the large blood vessels in my arm either. That's definitely great news, since either of those 2 injuries could have meant a deminished use of my arm or even loosing the arm entirely if not treated in the time.
But of course I won't know if there is additinional damage to the shoulder cuff once the bandage comes of. Than they will we taking an x-ray of the shoulder in order to determine if everything with the shoulder is correct and the way it's supposed to be. And hopefully by then the pain in the shoulder will have subsided.
But with the current restrictings in movement to my left arm and the pain I do have in my shoulder I will have to stay 1 week longer on sick leave. And they ER physican told me already that I will have at least to wear the bandage till May 3rd. At that point they will be deciding if the bandage can come off or if I will have to wear it longer.

Something is missing here...

My recent seizure attack and the dislocation of the shoulder brought something to the surface, that had been going on below the surface for quite some time. I’ve known for quite some time that something in my life was missing. First I thought the thing that was missing was an intimate relationship. But as it turns out this was not the case, at least not tot he extent than I thought it would be.

My next idea was maybe I’m really missing going hiking each and every weekend so much. So I did that on a regular basis. But as much as I love to go hiking with Gina it still that not feel the void, at least not in to that extent than I would have hoped.

The thing the seizure and the subsequent sick days brought on, was a time to just have to time to lay back and think about yourself and reflect on my own life. And that what became apparent to me that samething important is missing. A certain depth is missing in my life. A depth that career, success  at the job and continued job related education just isn’t really able to fully fill.

One thing is quite ertain, that something definitely has to change.  But I’m not quite certain what exactly the correct way will be.

A Trip to the ER...

Since my shoulder didn’t get much better with the Meds, I was going to see my doctor again. By the time I got there, I was pretty much certain that I had dislocated my shoulder. The left shoulder looked just odd and oft he muscles was completely overstreched. And I did have no pain as long as I didn’t move my arm. But as soon as I moved it I was in serious pain. And that are all indications of a dislocated shoulder. My doctor just looked at my shoulder and told me that it was most likely dislocated. And he sent mit right away to the ER.

So I went to the ER. I was prepared that it was going to take a long time. Was surprised that I was called in fairly quickly. After the initial examination they made me get some X-Rays of my left shoulder. And of course the shoulder was dislocated. Usually to reset a dislocated shoulder is done in a matter of minutes. But not so with my shoulder. This shoulder was so unluckily dislocated that they weren’t able to reset it by conventional means without the use of anesthesia.

So they had to draw blood and made me wait in front of the shockroom for the next 4 ½ hours. With a dislocated shoulder you’re not an emergency and all the emergency cases are going in first.

Finaly it was my time. They gave me my anesthesia and the muscle relaxing agent and I didn’t even realize that they were working on my shoulder. And the entire procedure was finished in no time and without any pain. But they did make me wait for another 45 minutes until the anesthesia drugs had warn off. After that I had to stop by at the Neurologists for a last check up before being released from the ER. By the time I got back home I was back home it was about 6.30 pm. But having that bandage on me fort he next 3 weeks will take getting used to it.

But I’m happy that for most part the pain is gone. Yes of course the muscles and the should joint still hurts a little, but that is going to pass.

Monday Morning and a Seizure...

There’s an old saying in German. Loosely translated it means: „Bad luck seldom comes alone“.

When getting up this morning I wasn’t feeling particularly well. But didn’t think too much about it. After all I had gotten about 1 hour of sleep at the most and was not looking forward tot he upcoming workday. Suddenly an with no prior warning there comes on a seizure after not having had any seizures for over 25 years. But I knew what to do. So I laid down on the couch and let the seizure take it’s course. But instead of laying my head flat on the couch I did rest it on the armrest of the couch. Well this should turn out tob e a major mistake.

After the worst part oft he seizure was over I felt an intense pain in my left shoulder. First I thought I must have pulled something during the seizure. So because of the seizure and the intensity oft he pain I called in sick and saw my doctor later that day. He gave me something antiinflamatory for my shoulder and if it shouldn’t be better till Wednesday we will have to figure out what the problem is.