CPE Week One

It has been a busy three days since I started CPE. Most of the time has been spent in lectures, plus a couple of tours. Next week we'll begin clinical visitations. I've been assigned the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, the Emergency Room, and the Short Stay Unit. I can only assume that I appear to be a "non-anxious presence."

At Children's, their philosophy is to have family members be able to watch what's going on when a child is being treated in the ER - there are observation rooms with a glass wall alongside the treatment bays. I was a little surprised by this, but the logic of having people see how hard the staff is working on their child does make sense. I asked if they triage these cases, but they don't. It's the family's choice whether they want to observe treatment.

I'm looking forward to actually doing the work, getting out of the classroom.

The days are long - with the bus, the Metro (changing from the Yellow line to the Red line) and the shuttle from the Metro to the Hospital, it's between and hour and an hour and a half in each direction for the commute. Makes for a long day. All part of the learning.

The good news is that I'm slowly continuing to lose weight and I'm exercising each evening. The bad news is that it's hard to stay awake long enough to spend time with PH in the evening when he comes home from work. Oh, well, we'll figure it out.

Speaking of PH, he's down in Historic Rockefeller Town, having finished the first day of the two-day MS 150 bicycle race. He and his buddy rode the long route (100 miles instead of 75) from The Capitol of the Confederacy today and felt quite good about it, and were headed into the massage tent when he called to check in. He'll do another 75 miles tomorrow, then drive two hours back here. Remarkably, that's his idea of a fun weekend.

It's always strange when he's not here in the house with me.

On the other hand, I rented "Memoirs of a Geisha" from Blockbuster, so I think I'll mosey on downstairs and stretch out and watch it, and try to stay conscious...