Week of May 7, 2001
Monday
Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday
Saturday Sunday
Most Recent Update
No update.
This week is beginning a lot like last week. As you can see, no update last night since I did not get home from the hospital until 9 PM then had too much to do here to post an update. It was a full moon day at the hospital yesterday! I am the inpatient physician Monday through Thursday of this week and spent all day yesterday admitting patients through the emergency department. Most of them were for suicide attempts or drug detox or both.
Intermixed with this collection was a man who wanted to get off alcohol and some patients with other medical problems. Unfortunately, a good number came in at the same time yesterday afternoon meaning I needed to stay and get them admitted which is why I did not get home until 9 last night. Yes, it was a full moon type of day.
Today, by contrast, was a little slower. That is until five o'clock this afternoon when, once again, the patients poured in. I ended up getting home about 8 tonight by the time I finished with them. No drug detox today but chest pain and passing out (syncope) probably from a cardiac cause. Anyway, that is my story and I am sticking to it. Hopefully, I will see you tomorrow but do not expect anything but short posts, if any, the rest of this week.
Another long day. I usually go to the Wednesday evening service and run the sound board for that service. Tonight I did not make it out of the hospital until the service was almost half over so I did not try and go. I had two admits after 5 PM which meant I was at the hospital until almost 7:30.
That's it for tonight. Tomorrow is my last day as inpatient physician for about three months. Hopefully by that time it will have changed some but this has been a very busy three days for me. The hospital is very busy which is unusual for this time of year, especially since the weather has been very nice for this time of the year.
Today was a little more relaxed. I did not have to admit anyone to the hospital today and got a couple out but the total number of patients our group has hospitalized has not changed much this week. I have only one hospital patient to see tomorrow as I resume my normal office practice.
I did get caught up on my paperwork at the office this afternoon. Otherwise I would have a couple of mountains to work through tomorrow when I resumed my office practice. There will be a lot tomorrow as I will be the only physician in the office in our three physician, one nurse practitioner, one physician assistant team. That means that I will have to do the majority of the medication refills for the absent physicians which will keep me hopping. But, I have most of the weekend off. I do have to meet with the family of one of my patients to discuss their wishes for their elderly mother as she continues to deteriorate. They went through watching their father die the first year I was here.
I received an email today at the office with the new virus in the attachment. Actually, it had been disabled by the antiviral software used on our network so it would not have worked if I had clicked on the attachment. It was obviously sent from a computer on the network as it was sent to everyone in their Outlook address book which would be every employee of the corporation that owns our group. So how did it get into the network without being detected you might ask. I am sure it came in through a free e-mail account like hotmail that this particular person had checked from her work computer. That is a back door into the network where it would not have been automatically virus checked. The IT people have known about this back door for some time and, contrary to what I have said they should do, have not absolutely forbidden any employee from accessing any free e-mail account from their work computer. Now, it has come back to bite them. Luckily the e-mail server was not brought to its knees.
Now it is time for me to go do a little exercise on the Nordic Track. I have not gotten to do any exercise so far this week and I am missing it. Hopefully, I will see you again tomorrow night.
Today was much saner that I was afraid it would be. Although busy it was not insanely busy and I actually got home by 6:30 tonight which is the first night in a long time that that has happened. Chalk it up to the weather, I guess. It was sunny here and in the upper 70's. Tomorrow it goes back to cloudy again with showers for Sunday and rain for Monday.
Tomorrow morning I have a telephone appointment with our accountant. He always likes to meet that way to discuss our tax return before he files it. We have met in person when we lived in Arkansas but it would be impossible to do that now that we are in Washington. After that I have a meeting with the family of an elderly patient of mine to discuss her condition and what they can expect in the immediate future. I'm afraid she will not live another year and they need to be prepared. It is a large family and they lost their father the first year I was here in town. After that, we will be power washing around the outside of our house as it will be a nice day but not as warm as today. Have a great weekend!
It wasn't as cloudy today as I thought it was going to be. It was sunny most of the day with the temperature in the high 60's. We got some pressure washing done around the house and cleared some brush and weeds. Delanae and I are now very tired and stiff and are moving like old people. Stephen helped and he is still moving around normally.
Also today I took back a battery that was dead. The battery in our Jeep Grand Cherokee stopped holding a charge this week. I took it out of the vehicle and took it back to Sears where we had bought it thirteen months ago. I told them it was bad, they said we have to test it. So, 45 minutes later they agreed it was bad and gave me a new one. The other battery had a 36 month full replacement warranty but this one, which is just like it, only has the 23 months left on the original battery. I think they should restart the clock at 36 months again since it is a new battery and if I had bought it the warranty period would be 36 months. I didn't win the argument. It works fine and is brand new and, hopefully, will not go bad in thirteen months.
Happy Mother's Day!
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