Now HIPAA compliant!

2003-01-15 - 5:40 a.m.

This morning I arrived at the hospital on time. I checked the computer to make sure the guy at the beginning of the SGI list from yesterday is still alive, but he transferred to the 15th floor last night. Not having access to the SGI list myself, I had no idea where the new beginning of rounds might be. All I knew was that yesterday our second patient was on Tower 7. Since it is relatively nearby, I first went to SI-1 just to make sure my team wasn't hanging out there. They weren't, so I grabbed an elevator up to Tower 7, but they weren't there either. Then I remembered that yesterday one of our Tower 7 patients had transferred to East 6 and we had to go back to pick him up. So I went down to East 6, but my team wasn't there. So, now the clock had rolled on by 5:30, the round-starting time, so in desperation I decided to head up to East 8, in case they decided to start from the top again. Luckily, I ran into one of the residents from the team in the stairwell. I asked her, "Do you know where rounds are starting from?" While I was mentally berating myself for my bad grammar she said, "Oh, they're starting at 6:30 on SI-2 today." So here I am in the hospital an hour early. It's nice to be kept in the loop about these things.

But anyway, on Monday I got myself to the gym again. Surprisingly enough, I set a new Eucalia record for the 5k. I did it in 30:40. I ran the first 20 minutes at 6.5mph but slowed down quite a bit after that. In 40 minutes I only went 3.87 miles. After the gym, though, I went to the new (to me) volleyball open gym to which Kevin had invited me. It was at the local Presbyterian church. They had two courts set up and thirty-something people were there. We had five teams going. It was really fun. I'm so glad I went. There was this one team comprised of mainly young people who thought they were all that. My team, comprised of people mainly in their thirties and above except me and another kid, got to show them that they were not, in fact, all that. We beat them three times. There was this one really tall guy on their team who basically scared people because of his heighth and really thought he was cool. Plus he was showing off for the tight-pantsed girls on his team. It was so fun roofing him. And he couldn't pass to save his life. If I served the ball a few feet to either side of him he'd shank it. I mean, I messed up my fair share of plays too, but I didn't exude the I'm-hot-shit attitude, I don't think. I left my team a little after 7:30, undefeated.

For the past few days I've been getting up at 3:30. I know I've said this before, but I'm really impressed with my paper boy. At quarter to four the paper was already on my front porch. Yesterday was my first residents' meeting as chief. It's the chief's job to make up the agenda and to run the meeting. We were behind schedule at first because we celebrated Slick's birthday, but we ended up finishing early. The Mole will ramble endlessly about random things if allowed to do so. I seemed to be able to keep him on track. We were done by quarter after four.

Unfortunately, yesterday I got sick. Last time I thought I might be sick it ended up being allergies, but this time it is definitely a cold. I didn't get sick once during 2002. Not once during my entire 23rd year. I should qualify that; I didn't get a single URI. Now here I am only two weeks into 2003 and I'm already sick. Hopefully this will be the only time this year.