Week of February 12, 2001
Monday
Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday
Saturday Sunday
Most Recent Update
Short update tonight since most of my update time tonight was spent helping Delanae fill out some paperwork for her car. It was important and more important than this website. I am trying to establish myself a time to be in bed sleeping each night that I am not on call. I know that I have not been getting enough sleep for many weeks and cannot get adequately caught up on the weekend. I have established myself a time of 10:30 PM to be in bed trying to sleep except when I am on call or something comes up that is unavoidable. That means tonight that I have only about fifteen minutes to do this update. It will, therefore, be short.
I did not have a Leadership Council meeting this morning as it turned out. I was there in time but no one else came so I must have had the wrong week on my schedule. Tomorrow is our monthly group meeting which was confirmed today by e-mail. It begins at 7:30 AM so I will have plenty of time before it to see my one remaining patient in the hospital.
This morning began with a real whimper as my first two patients were no shows. I managed to make up for it the rest of the day however as I was completely full and the no shows were replaced by later patients which meant I was behind most of the day. I did manage to get through in time to get to the car dealer to cosign the paperwork for Delanae's car by 6 PM. But, I had to go back to the office and finish my dictation and make a few phone calls. I also managed to get my desk cleaned off this morning while I was waiting for patients who did not show. Now, I guess I am ready for tomorrow morning.
I received two copies of the latest virus at home today. Norton Anti-Virus did not pick up either but I knew not to open any attachment without verifying that the person named as the sender had actually sent it. These came from a sender that I did not recoginize so they were quickly deleted before they could be opened. I have also warned Delanae not to open any attachments on her e-mail that she is not certain were sent with the knowledge of the sender. Tomorrow I will probably hear more about this virus. Hopefully I will have more time to update this tomorrow night.
I did not get to bed on time last night. So, what else is new? After I finished updating this site I helped Delanae set up her Outlook Express a little different way. Other issues came up also and it took a lot longer than expected. End of the story is that I did not get to bed until my usual time which is 11:30. Tonight will be different as I have to drive to Vancouver, WA in the morning for a meeting that starts at 7 AM. It takes about an hour to get there from here so I will be getting up even earlier than normal.
Today's early morning meeting was interesting. One of my partners, who is the medical director for the Diabetes Center in the hospital, presented an update on insulin pumps and new glucose monitoring devices. I had not dealt with insulin pumps since I moved here but had overseen the first patient in Harrison, AR to get one as an outpatient. The company had helped me set it up and get her trained on how to use it. No one seemed interested when I moved here but now the Center has a nurse specially trained to help with starting a patient on the insulin pump. That is a great thing for local diabetics as they can get much better control of their diabetes with less complications using the pump. Of course, this is only for Type I or insulin dependent diabetics or Type II diabetics after they fail oral therapy and have to go on insulin. I have a couple of patients here now who may be candidates for the pump and expect to find more as my office mate retires and leaves me some of his long time patients.
Tomorrow night I have agreed to accompany my sweetheart to her weekly Locality.com meeting/briefing in Portland. They are doing something special for Valentine's Day but I do not know what. That means I very well may not have an update tomorrow night but hopefully will have time tomorrow on my "day off" to write something. Check back tomorrow and see.
Almost forgot, the e-mails with the virus infected attachments that came yesterday originated at the local credit union that we use. It appears that the server that held the e-mail addresses of their online banking customers was infected and the virus mailed itself to everyone on the list. I do not know how many unsuspecting people opened their attachments and helped the virus reproduce itself. A message from the credit union was sent to all of us this morning apologizing for this. It just shows how ineffective the antivirus software was for this virus. One of our IT people at work and I had a conversation today about this fact. She thought the antivirus software the corporation uses would detect it but it appears that some of the computers in the corporation have been infected which leads me to think that the software did not protect us like it is supposed to. Anyway, none of my computers are infected.
No update.
No update.
No update.
Where did those three days go? Swallowed up by the black hole that is my schedule sometimes. Let's see, what did happen over the last three days? Wednesday morning's early meeting in Vancouver turned out to be interesting except for the drive. Leaving at 6 AM to go down there is not fun but it is an organized meeting and I get paid to attend. That lessens the pain somewhat but hopefully at least half of them can be done by conference call rather than me having to drive down to Vancouver for a 7 AM meeting twice a month on my day off. My check from them came today which makes them a very prompt payor.
Wednesday night was spent in the Portland area, actually Tigard, attending a business meeting with Delanae. By the time we got home it was time for me to get some rest for Thursday since I was on call Thursday night and did not know how much sleep I would be getting Thursday night. It turns out that was a good idea.
Thursday was busy in the office. As I have told you before, Thursday is my busiest day in the office and this Thursday was no exception. I did get finished in time to meet Delanae at a local restaurant for dinner and a continuing medical education program which was very interesting to me. Near the end of the program I began getting pages and had to go back to the hospital to see a patient. I was able to send him home and I finally made it home around 11. About 1:30 AM Friday I got a call from our newborn nursery that one of the babies there who one of my partners had delivered that afternoon had suddenly began having breathing problems and turning blue. Luckily, a pediatrician happened to be in the nursery at that time and so he took over care of this eight hour old baby who ended up being transferred to a higher level newborn intensive care unit in Portland Friday morning where she is on a respirator. I had calls off and on the rest of the night about her. I was so glad that the pediatrician was in the hospital since that is one of my worst nightmares, trying to stabilize a new baby like that by myself. I have done it before but that was much earlier in my career. I do not do enough of it now to stay confident in my ability and that is one part of medicine that I am happy to turn over to a specialist.
Office hours came too early Friday morning after not getting much sleep Thursday night. I don't remember much about the day Friday other than my schedule was packed and I was hustling to get out so I could make a church meeting at 6 PM. I made it and was only fifteen minutes late. We got home a little after nine but we had to have a talk with Stephen about his behavior that afternoon and night, actually Delanae did the talking and I just listened. After that, I just went to bed since I was so sleepy and tired.
That brings you up to today. I went to a continuing medical education meeting this morning at one of the local hotels. It was good although too sparsely attended by the local physicians. They missed some excellent material. After I got home, I ran then Delanae and I put up new curtains in our bedroom. The rod turns out to be defective so the curtains don't open correctly and we will need a replacement rod but the supports are already in the wall which will make putting up the new rod a little easier. After that, we had dinner then watched "Frequency" on DVD. I thought it was a very interesting movie, definitely had plot twists and turns. Recommended if you like movies that you cannot predict exactly how they will end. Now, I am going to finish this then go to bed and try to catch up on some more sleep before Monday. See you tomorrow.
After church, the day was spent on taxes. Actually, getting my information together to send to the accountant who does our taxes. He lives on a mountain near Harrison, AR having moved there from the Bay Area several years ago. He owned a large accounting firm there but got tired of the rat race and decided to move across the country. He is an excellent tax adviser and has literally saved us thousands of dollars in taxes over the years. He has clients across the country who simply ship him their information. I should have ours ready to go out by the middle of the week.
The coming week looks busy. It begins with a Leadership Council meeting at 7 in the morning and ends with me on call next weekend. In between I am sure the days will be very busy. I know that at the present time I only have one patient to see in the hospital tomorrow morning. I am sure that the office schedule will be completely filled up after that. I can't think of interesting any more interesting to say at this time so I will FTP this up to the website and go get ready for tomorrow.
