Week of October 22, 2001
Monday
Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday Friday
Saturday Sunday
Most Recent Update
The rain held off tonight. It had been raining all day today, as well as yesterday, but it stopped before I left the office to get to Stephen's junior varsity game tonight. It stayed dry for the game which also made Delanae happy as she wanted to come to it but not get wet. It was brisk but not wet. Stephen's team won again. Next year they should have a better varsity team as well as the junior varsity team is doing. This is a rebuilding year for the varsity with only eight seniors on the team. Sophmores are having to man a lot of positions and learning under fire. Next year they will be a year older, stronger, and more experienced.
The office today was busy but not overly so for a Monday. I was busy steadily throughout the day but got out on time to make it to Stephen's game which was supposed to start at 6. None of the clinicians is on vacation at the present time which helps with the workload. Actually, the hospital census for our group is down some which is probably only a temporary condition.
I did see a couple of cases today that look like influenza. I had not heard of the influenza virus being around the area as yet but these sure look like it. I know that anthrax can also look like influenza but so can a lot of other viruses. This is not anthrax, it is either influenza or a virus acting like the influenza virus.
I saw one of our IT people as a patient today and she is promising to get me a laptop with Windows 2000 installed on it. It seems that she has an extra laptop now that no one needs so she is planning on erasing her data on the hard drive, installing Windows 2000 on it as well as my desktop machine, and then send it to me. I will believe it when I see it. With it I would be able to check my e-mail when I have to travel to our corporate headquarters for a meeting. One of those meetings is coming up on November 1. All the laptops are from Dell and will only have a Pentium II in it most likely as well as 64 MB of memory but I can make it work. I have really come to like Windows 2000 after installing it on my home system, it is stable and fast although finding drivers can be frustrating. I still don't have the modem problem solved but will some day, hopefully before we get cable modem service here.
Speaking of cable modem service, I saw a special on the Linksys Cable/DSL router today which I am going to order so we are prepared for cable modem service here. It has four 10/100 switched ports which will be enough for my home network. We keep seeing fiberoptic cable being laid so we are hoping we will have it here early next year. It would be nice if DSL and cable came at the same time so there would be some competition for broadband to keep the price down. We plan to be fully prepared for it when it arrives.
Tomorrow promises to be rainy again. I must go and get ready for tomorrow and get my rainy weather running gear packed to take with me to the office. Stacey has an appointment with the ophthalmologist tomorrow to be fitted for contacts so she is excited about the prospect of not having to wear glasses, especially while playing sports. We will see how she will adjust to having to put them in and take them out.
Short post again tonight. I am trying to get everything done before 10 tonight as I have to be up at 5 tomorrow morning to drive to Vancouver for a committee meeting at 7. I have some material I need to read tonight to prepare for that meeting tomorrow as well. So, I have to be finished with this update by 9 in order to give myself plenty of time to read the material.
I was very busy in the office today. I saw almost thirty patients which is a very busy day for me in this practice. Here I see more chronically ill folks than I did in my previous practice so it takes me longer to see the average patient than it did before. I did get finished actually seeing my patients on time and actually got out of the office at the usual time this evening. A lot of of what I saw today was due to the virus that is going around the area right now. It is causing a lot of bronchitis, especially in the smokers. I haven't started seeing it in the people with emphysema yet but that is probably next.
Stacey has to go back Friday to be fitted for her contacts. Since she has never had them before they want to do more fitting at a second appointment. She is still about getting them. Her basketball tryouts start tomorrow and they will find out who made the team on Friday. She is already convinced that she will not make the team even though she started on the seventh grade team last year.
Tomorrow I have a dental appointment as well as the meeting I mentioned before. Stephen also has an appointment at the orthodontist to discuss braces for him. It seems his dentist feels that his bite is too good and that his front teeth will wear down if he doesn't have a little bit of an underbite so it is off to see the orthodontist tomorrow. Wish us luck.
Most of this morning was spent at a dentist's office. First it was me for my quarterly cleaning which always leaves me with a sore mouth for the rest of the day but I suppose is worth it. Then it was on to the orthodontist with Stephen. He will get braces put on within the next week or so and all for the cost of a small car. Actually, almost as much as his pickup cost. Luckily, we have no more children to need braces after him. He will only have to wear them 14-16 months so he will have them off when he graduates. He is already worried about how he will look for his senior picture. I told him I had braces for my senior picture but that did not impress him. I also told him that I had braces for most of my college years. Even that did not impress him. I guess it's the age!!!!!!
This afternoon I worked on benefits for next year. One of the great things about being in a group supported by a large corporation is the benefit package and choices we have. I just have to make my choices before the end of this month and can do it tomorrow online. I was waiting until now to see how much the braces would cost. I can put aside the money pretax in a medical spending account to pay for the braces and other various medical expenses not covered by our medical insurance. We do have dental insurance that will cover part of the cost of the braces so I just have to set aside enough to pay for our part. I will go in early tomorrow morning to take care of this online before I have to start seeing patients.
Windows XP shipped today. At least the copy I preordered from CompUSA was shipped today according to an e-mail I got from them today. I will be upgrading Delanae's computer from Windows ME which locks up on her frequently and has been very frustrating. I will not install it as soon as I get it as I want to be sure that her hardware has XP drivers. I'm not sure about the CD burner so I will have to check online to be certain. Downloading the upgrade advisor from the Microsoft website is a joke for those of us without broadband connection, it is 50 MB in size. Why do all the websites assume that all of us have broadband connections to the Internet? Well, most of them seem to anymore. Our dialup connections don't even come close to 31Kb/s. Cable modem service cannot get here fast enough!
For those of you who have missed her, there is a chance that Delanae will be back online with her journal. She is looking at options that would not involve her having to learn a new program or do any coding but allow her more room to write and be faster loading. More on this in the near future I hope.
No time to finish today at the office. I had to leave a couple of charts undictated from today in order to make it to my daughter's orchestra concert tonight on time. Then, I was too beat afterward to go back and finish them. I will just get up earlier tomorrow morning and dictate them then. I also need to go by medical records and sign a couple of charts tomorrow. That should not take too long.
The concert tonight was short, lasting only about 30 minutes. Three groups performed but they had only been practicing about seven weeks. One group that performed were first year students who had literally picked up their instruments for the first time when school started about seven weeks ago. I was surprised by how well they did. Stacey played with the advanced group which is made up of seventh and eighth graders.
Tomorrow will be busy again. Besides having to finish up dictating the charts from today I have a meeting at 7 AM tomorrow morning and a full day in the office. Tomorrow night is a high school football game so hopefully it will not be raining for that although the weather forecast is for rain. After tomorrow night there is only one more football game for Stephen this year. The season has gone by very quickly from my perspective.
I got two e-mails today from people wanting things. One wanted me to prescribe him an opioid medication and the other wanted me to define some medical terms. I do neither from this site so be forewarned. I did not answer either e-mail.
Tough night tonight for the local high school football team. Stephen's team came out flat and uninspired against a team that had not won a league game in two years. Predictably, Stephen's team lost by two touchdowns at home against this team. It was a long night in the stands and on the sideline. I usually am on the sidelines as one of the team physicians but tonight I sat in the stands with Delanae. From what Stephen says I am glad that I did not have to hear the coaches on the sidelines or in the locker room. Next week is their last week of the season then Stephen will be heading toward his final season to play high school football. I don't think he realizes that yet and when he does I hope he decides to put in the offseason work to make it the best season he has ever had.
It was very busy at the office today. I did manage to get all my charts dictated today, including those from last night and get everybody's calls answered. We are getting hammered by viral illnesses right now. I did not admit anyone to the hospital today but saw a lot of people who were ill. I had one patient admitted to me last night and he should be ready to go home tomorrow.
Stephen and I are going to a college fair tomorrow morning in Portland at the Oregon Convention Center. I guess it will have Oregon colleges there. He wants to see what all the colleges have to offer. There will be one later in the year for Washington colleges. While we are in Portland we will probably stop in at CompUSA to look around as it is almost impossible for me to go by there and not stop. We also need to return an item to a store in the same shopping center that it is in. Delanae will probably not go with us as Stacey has something here locally that she needs to go to.
Stacey has contacts now. She is pretty excited about it. Word is that she also made the eighth grade girls basketball team although she has not officially told me that yet. She wants to tell me herself when she gets home from her church related activity here in a few minutes. Now she will have to learn to take out her contacts, clean them, and put them back in every morning.
No update.
It gets dark early now. Of course it will continue getting dark earlier and earlier now through Dec. 21. I will now be going to work while it is dark and coming home from work while it is still dark. I think I like daylight savings time a little better but no one asked me. I do get tired of always running in the dark during the winter.
Stephen and I did go to Portland yesterday. We went to a lot of booths with colleges from across the country and a couple from overseas. There was one there from Japan and St. Andrews College in Scotland was also there. Stephen picked up a lot of information and a lot of postcards to send for information. Once he had seen all the booths once and picked up what he wanted he was ready to go.
We then went to CompUSA where I picked up an APC Back-UPS Office 500 to use on my new system. I set it up today which was a piece of cake after I got everything unplugged from my previous surge protector. I need to get one of these for Delanae's computer too. I also bought a book on Windows 2000 as I had no reference material for that operating system.
After we stopped to eat at a Red Robin, where Stephen and I both pigged out on burgers and milkshakes, we headed home. The rain had stopped here by the time we got home so I was able to do my run yesterday afternoon without getting wet. I was pretty excited for the run as I had seen that Arkansas had beaten Auburn 42-17. Auburn came into the game ranked in the top twenty and undefeated in the SEC. Arkansas has turned their season around by beating two ranked teams two weeks in a row. I didn't get to see yesterday's game here on the West Coast but next Saturday's game with Ole Miss will be televised on ESPN2. I will be in clinic Saturday afternoon while it is on but you can be sure I will be taping it.
