You knew my name

2006-06-05 - 4:50 p.m.

I think I'm starting to be respected more at work for my knowledge and expertise. It's the weirdest thing. Minnie, one of my fellow CCU/tele pharmacists, actually tracked me down in the CCU today while she was working tele to ask me a question regarding argatroban dosing. The girl is BCPS certified and she came to me. Wow. And the other day Twinkie (also a CCU/tele pharmacist) was working CCU and she came and asked me several clinical questions while I was working triage. I almost fell out of my chair. I'm not used to this. And on CCU rounds doctors actually ask for my opinion and listen to what I have to say and include me in their circle. It's so cool. And the best part is that occasionally I even know the answers to their questions. Although quite frequently I still don't. For example, the team asked me today why we use calcium chloride emergently and calcium gluconate non-emergently and I knew the answer to that, but I had no idea when asked whether calcium is primarily an intra- or extracellular ion. I would've assumed intracellular just because serum calcium levels are usually in the single digits similar to potassium which is an intracellular ion and dissimilar to sodium which is an extracellular ion and has serum levels in the triple digits, but the attending thought it was extracellular. Hmm...I should go look that up so I can tell the team the right answer tomorrow. I also recommended renally dosing a patient's cefotaxime today. The attending asked me why, what would be the effects of too much cefotaxime? I have no idea. That one I should know.

Hmph. I just looked it up. I was wrong. Calcium is primarily an extracellular ion.

I was checking out the weather report and it looks as though it might be nice this weekend. I hope we have a chance to get out and do something. I'm afraid my boyfriend may be a bit of a stick in the mud. I hate to say it, but it may be true. So far we've done almost zero hiking together this year. I had a camping trip planned for us a few weeks ago and he backed out of that. I wanted to go bike riding last weekend and he wouldn't. Admittedly, the weather wasn't the best for either of these activities, but still, it's Seattle, you can't really expect fantastic weather all the time. The amazing thing about Lolo is that the things he does that I recognize might really piss me off if they were done by somebody else, barely even annoy me. There really are very few of these things that he does, and this is the main one--being a stick in the mud. If he doesn't take me out and run me around this weekend I think I'm going to be very frustrated.

Saturday after work we went out and saw "An Inconvenient Truth." It's very interesting and scary, really. It's a documentary about global warming. I learned quite a few things a didn't know before. It debunked a few myths I had believed. It presented data suggesting that global warming will affect us greatly and soon. I'd recommend watching this, although I don't see any reason why you need to spend your $10 each to see it in the theater. Rent it when it comes out. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't really tell you what you can do about it. I left thinking "Gee, that sucks, the poor polar bears are drowning and the fishing's not so good on Lake Chad, but what can I do about it?"