Week of September 17, 2001
Monday
Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday
Saturday Sunday
Most Recent Update
Back to a more normal day today. Today felt more like a normal day, everyone was a little more upbeat and the terrorist attacks last week did not dominate conversation as much. I had a pretty typical Monday for me other than the two meetings. I chaired one of the meetings which meant I was gulping lunch quickly in order to make it to the meeting on time at 12:30. One of the members of the committee ended up eating lunch at the meeting but I did not want to do that.
My mother did not get to go on her cruise that was scheduled to leave this past weekend. It was supposed to leave from New York City but did not get cancelled until Friday. They were supposed to fly into New York Saturday and leave on the ship that afternoon. I thought it was pretty late to cancel the trip but I doubted it would go on anyway after the attack Tuesday. She is coming to visit us two weeks from tomorrow and will stay here for a week.
It was a strange weekend without football. I don't usually get to watch entire games, except when Arkansas is playing, but I do try to watch parts of some college and NFL
games. I guess it was just as well that I had to work this weekend. I looked today and only have one call day left this month and only one next month. I do not know why I am so caught up on my call days but I am not complaining.
Tomorrow I have not meetings but there is a reception for a new orthopedist in town after office hours. Their office is conveniently located across the hall from ours so I can just walk over to it. Then, there is an education program at one of our local restaurants afterward. Delanae and I will be going to it partly to enjoy the good food there. There is another one Thursday night at a restaurant that has just opened so we will have to go to check that restaurant out.
No patients to see in the hospital again. That is a little unusual since I usually have at least one patient in the hospital. From looking at our group's census however it is obvious this is one of those times that nobody has very many patients in the hospital. Anyway, it allowed me to get a headstart on the day which I needed as it was busy. We saw a lot of patients today but got through them within our regularly scheduled hours. A lot of them had behavioral health problems which our full time counselor/social worker is really helping to get them pointed to the correct agency for help. She also greases the skids to get these patients in as soon as possible, at times faster than I could.
Getting through on time means that I was able to get out on time. Delanae is under the weather right now so I was left to go to the reception and dinner/lecture alone. The food was excellent and the lecture was good and very informal which is a nice way to do a lecture. We all had enough of the very didactic lecture style in medical school so that is the last thing we want to attend. Everyone felt free to interrupt with questions at any time.
During the lecture tonight I was thinking how much technology had changed even small group talks. The speaker was using a Sony laptop with his Power Point presentation being projected using an InFocus video projector controlled by a wireless remote control with a laser pointer built in. I remember the "old days" when every speaker carried slides with a slide projector. Our speaker tonight was from Oregon Health Sciences University and he said that they don't even allow their residents to make slides anymore because they are so expensive to make. They all use Power Point for their slides and use a laptop/video projector to give their presentations. Their department buys laptops for that express purpose. Someday it will be handhelds being routinely for that purpose.
Tomorrow is my day off. I have several things to do in the morning including seeing my nursing home patients and seeing one patient in the hospice care center. Then, I need to go look at file cabinets, one for my office and one for my home office. Also, I need to look at getting another pair of reading glasses so I have one set at home and one pair at the office. Today I had trouble seeing some really small sutures well enough to take them out. I guess I really am getting older!
I slept late this morning since it was my day off and I had no patients to see in the hospital. I did go to the hospital this morning to check the medical records department there to be sure I had my signatures up to date. I only had one to sign which, of course, did not take very long. I also went by my office to check on the e-mail there and any messages that might be there. There were very few of either.
Then, I ran some errands and got my hair cut. It was only noon by this time so I came home and Delanae and I did some dirt moving in our back yard, she did more than I did. We are getting it ready to plant grass seed when we know rain will be coming within 48 hours so we can be sure it will grow. That might sound funny, to be saying we will wait for rain as we live in the Pacific Northwest. But, this is still the time of the year when we are dry. It should rain next week and soon it will be gray and cloudy for nine months but right now we are waiting for the rain to arrive.
Tomorrow I do not have any meetings during the day but Delanae and I are attending a dinner/lecture tomorrow night. It is being held at a new restaurant in town that we have not tried so we are looking forward to it. Hopefully I can give it good reviews tomorrow night.
Busy day today in the office. I have no one in the hospital at the present time but made up for it in the office today. I had a lot of patients with psychosocial problems that require a lot of extra time to deal with. Our new clinic social worker/counselor helped a lot and at times I thought she was seeing every patient with me. I hate to think what it would be like to go back to not having her there to help. She can get people plugged into the mental health system when I could just beat my head against a wall in frustration from trying. For some reason there are lots of times more barriers to trying to get these people who need more help than there are to others who need less help.
Both my medical assistant and I were in confrontational moods today. I think mine started this morning before I even left the house. Stephen got up before I left and put some clothes in the dryer with Stacey's volleyball jersey which was drying for her to wear to her match today. She went back to get her jersey out of the dryer and found that it had black stains on it. Now, black on white is not good. It turns out that he had left a pen in a pocket and it had melted spilling ink all over the dryer. That is bad enough but the real problem is that he just sticks his clothes in with whatever is there not caring about mixing colors with whites. His mother then started yelling at him (mornings are her worst time in case I haven't told you before) and that seemed to have carried over with me all day. I think Kathy and I actually scared some of the other staffers when we told them we were not in a mood to be messed with. Some of the patients found that out today which was probably good for them. I know we did not get manipulated today. We were careful to be sure that no patient was refused something they really needed.
Both the dinner and the program tonight were excellent. The new restaurant is good and we had a nice, relaxed educational program with lots of discussion. Unfortunately, Delanae is coming down with a cold and did not feel like coming. I told her all about the good food when I got home and, hopefully, she and I can go back soon. Hopefully she will be recovered before Sunday as she has a solo to do with the choir at church Sunday.
Need proof that the British enjoy football? Witness the following exchange with Mat Lemmings:
"It was a strange weekend without football"
As a fellow daynoter, am I allowed to ask if that's the silly game you folks play with padding and a rugby ball, then? ;-)
Seriously, I was amazed that we here in Europe continued with such a full sporting programme in light of last week's events. Two soccer games I saw didn't even have a minute's silence before kick-off - disgusting.
I hope you were personally unaffected by last week's tragedy - regards to you and yours
Mat Thanks for the sentiment. My mother is the only one affected; she was unable to fly into New York City so her cruise was cancelled the day before she was supposed to leave. I don't think it was wrong to continue with sporting events nor do I think it was wrong to cancel them. I am a little disappointed that there was no moment of silence in memory of the victims.
Arkansas vs Alabama!"
Mat
Jim
I am now able to come up for air. Very hectic day at work today starting with four patients to see in the hospital this morning, then many, many more to see in the office. Every time I looked up there were more to see. Most were fairly complicated too. I finally finished just in time to go to the high school football game tonight with Stephen. I was doing sideline duty tonight for his high school. No major injuries and no minor ones that should keep any of the players out of practice for any time this week. A few bruises, one jammed finger, and one hard hit leaving one of our players with a "stinger". For those of you who have not heard of that term, a "stinger" is a hit that causes momentary numbness and tingling down one arm. It is not due to a neck injury but is thought to be due to a stretch injury to the nerves that exit the spinal cord and run down to the shoulder. It is a temporary feeling only and the player was good as new a few minutes after it happened. Stephen's school ending up losing the game to one of their cross town rivals. It was the first time they had played in eight years as the other school is larger and has been in a higher classification. They have now dropped down a classification into our league again. They will probably be the favorite to win the league based on what I saw tonight.
On the virus front, our servers at work have been affected by the nimda worm. The report is that ten of them were infected and internet connectivity was shut down for 24 hours to clean them up. I got no infected e-mails, or have gotten none up to now, either at work or here at home. I guess the servers at work got infected by people checking their email from places like Hotmail rather than using their corporation e-mail addresses. I have ranted about this practice before in this journal and do not understand why the corporation continues to allow their employees to go around the firewall and virus checking software by allowing them to log onto these e-mail services. It is a back door into our company's intranet. Remember, I am just a physician not an IT person so what do I know?
Tomorrow morning I am going in to see a couple of patients then it is home to watch college football. Tomorrow night I am on call so there may not be any update tomorrow. Watch Arkansas play Alabama tomorrow on CBS if you are looking for something to do and be sure and cheer for Arkansas. Go HOGS!
Arkansas vs Alabama!
Not a good two days for me. First, the high school that my son attends and my daughter will attend loses to their crosstown rival Friday night. Then, Arkansas loses to Alabama or more accurately gives the game away. Too many turnovers allowed Alabama to score their touchdowns because of great field position plus the Alabama defense scored two touchdowns, one off a fumble and one off an interception. The Hogs did show offensive improvement however and will be a force to be reckoned with later in the year and for sure next year. They are playing so many sophmores and freshmen that this is to be expected. It is just hard to sit there and watch the mistakes happen. Same thing with the high school team; I can see improvement even in Friday night's loss. Plus, I know they are getting some upperclassmen back over the next two weeks which will help. Hopefully, they will be in the playoffs again by the end of the year.
Call wasn't too bad last night although I stayed up very late answering phone calls. I also don't sleep as well when I am on call so I decided to stay up and straighten up my office. I got a lot accomplished but there is still some more to do. I will have time for that later this week as I am only working two days this week. I do have some trash to get taken out of here now.
We will be driving to the coast for the retreat this coming weekend, leaving Friday around noon. That should get us to our destination before 6 PM so we can watch the sun go down over the Pacific if it is not too cloudy. It was clear and gorgeous here today prompting me to remark to Delanae that I hope it will be like this next weekend while we are at the coast. We shall see.
I do only work two days this week but they will be crammed full I am sure. Wish me luck getting it all done. I know I will have to go in Wednesday and do a few things like make some more nursing home rounds before the end of the month. I do have an early morning meeting Thursday morning but that is all the work related activity I plan to do after that until the following Monday.
From: Mat Lemmings
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 1:24 PM
To: jim@docjim.com
Subject: OK...
Devon, UK.
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Mat Lemmings
email : mail@matlemmings.com
web: http://www.matlemmings.co.uk
daynotes: http://www.matlemmings.co.uk/scribblesI am well aware that you Brits think of soccer as football but us Yanks enjoy watching overgrown men run into each other with pads and helmets on. We are indocrinated in it from birth on. I am learning to enjoy the original game of football but still don't understand all the rules. I need to watch some games in person I think to really enjoy it.
jim@docjim.com
http://www.docjim.com-----Original Message-----
Well, I know nothing about "football", but I'll take Alabama.
From: Mat Lemmings
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 1:28 PM
To: jim@docjim.com
Subject: A bet?
Lynyrd Skynyrd Vs. Bill Clinton - no contest!
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Mat Lemmings
email : mail@matlemmings.com
web : http://www.matlemmings.co.uk
daynotes : http://www.matlemmings.co.uk/scribbles
A Brit who likes southern rock. Will wonders never cease!? Actually that is a sucker bet as we would say.
jim@docjim.com
http://www.docjim.com
