Last morning before

2002-12-05 - 7:11 a.m.

Last night at more or less the usual time I got online to do my usual evening online thing. I checked my e-mail, saw that Somnambulist hadn't updated his journal yet and then boom, my internet stopped working. The little icon on the corner of the screen was telling me that my connection was still sound, but I couldn't do a darn thing. I restarted my computer, the best computer fix-it trick I know, but that didn't make any difference. "Oh well," I thought to myself, "Somnambulist's studying for his final anyway," and I closed my computer and pulled out a book. Yeah, really, a book. I've been reading this book for several weeks now. It's called "Summer Sisters" and it's by Judy Blume. Mostly I wanted to read it because I didn't know that Judy Blume wrote adult books and I loved her kid books when I was a kid. So it was curiousity. Turns out it was an ok book, but I don't feel compelled to read anymore of her stuff. I liked the ending. It almost justified the rest of the book's existence. Anyway I read up the last 200 or so pages of the book and then went to bed. I wanted to finish it so I would be free to start a new book on my way to Atlanta. I'm planning on reading "Dragonfly in Amber" by Diana Gabaldon. I've been saving it up, but now the time is right.

Anyway, it's Thursday which is my clinic day, but yesterday after the gym (four miles in forty minutes!) I foolishly parked behind my dad's car. My dad leaves for work around 6:30, and since I had parked behind him I had to leave before him. Or else just get up and move my car. I got up at my usual time, took a little longer getting out of the house than usual, and got to the parking lot at about 6:50. Clinic doesn't open until 8:00, but the library opens at 7:00. So I sat in the car for a bit and then was the first person to the library this morning where I am now happily punching away on one of the library's clickety-clack keyboards. The sun is just coming up outside, I can see it through the library window. By the way, the weatherman is predicting another partly cloudy day in the 60's for today ;)

Yesterday was actually a pretty cool day as far as learning stuff goes. It started out rather lamely, though. My MICU team got a new attending who decided to start out with table rounds for the new patients and then move on to bed rounds for the ones that had been there a while. It ended up taking about an hour and a half longer than the previous attending's rounds. I guess I was getting too spoiled getting done with rounds by 9:30. Anyway, this new attending didn't yet realize that I don't actually know very much, at least not when put on the spot about it in front of the whole team. I have this tendency to blank out when everyone turns to look at me. I guess if I knew my stuff completely cold then I could pull it out even under pressure, but I don't yet. She was asking me all sorts of stuff about heart failure and dobutamine and digoxin and nesiritide and I was only able to answer about one of her questions. By that time I was so flustered and feeling like a complete idiot that I couldn't have answered anything to save my life. Jeff, one of the medical residents, asked me for a loading dose of digoxin and I had to look it up, for crying out loud. I felt like they should just sew a big scarlet loser "L" on my labcoat and be done with it. But at the end of rounds I was still alive so I continued on with my day. My current preceptor is Ron and he's actually really good. We had a discussion today about inotropes and I learned a ton. That was so cool. I never could figure out the difference between dopamine and dobutamine or between norepinephrine and epinephrine and phenylephrine. And now I know. Or at least now I know a whole lot more than I did before. If only I could remember this stuff for more than just a couple days. We talked a bit about antibiotics. Although basically we discussed stuff I already knew, I had pretty much forgotten that I knew it so it was helpful for me to go over it again.

Tonight I'm going to actually have to pack for Atlanta. All week I've been telling myself that tonight I will pack. And every morning as I'm standing shivering in my closet trying to decide what to wear I berate myself for not having picked out what I will wear next week so I can avoid wearing it this week. I hope Atlanta is cool. I've been so looking forward to it recently. Sometimes I can't believe I'm doing what I'm doing. You know, meeting someone in real life who I met online. I used to think I would never ever do that. And there are rules you are supposed to follow. Like meet him with someone or at least in a crowded public place. Meet him for lunch only, or maybe even just for coffee, in case you really can't stand him and a short meeting is more than enough. Tell people where you are going in case something happens they will at least know where to find the body. But I'm not following any of these rules. I'm meeting him at his hotel and then we're going hiking alone up into the mountains. I haven't told anybody about him or my plans. Hmm...Eucalia, is this wise? But the thing is, I feel completely safe. I don't really feel like I'm taking any risks, beyond the emotional risk of course. I think I can take care of myself. I think it won't be an issue. I think all will be well. I really do. And I can't wait.

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Here I am at clinic going out of my mind with boredom, as usual. And I still have nearly thee hours left before I can go home. This morning there were actually two patients scheduled for "pharmacy clinic." The first one was a Russian speaking woman. As I was reviewing her chart and waiting for the Mole to show up, a nurse talked to her and discovered she was having chest pain. So at that point it basically turned into a doctor's appointment. Our interpreter, though, was pretty cool. Apparently here we have a bank of interpreters and they stay in one central room. Then in the clinics they have a flat screen video monitor with built in camera attached to an IV pole. When they need an interpreter they just wheel in the monitor. It seems to work really well.