Status-post

Well so much for 3am posts all week from the land of night float on the family medicine service: Swedish blocks blog access on it's servers. Booooo. I could have worked around it by writing a Google document and posting it, but I didn't. How did I spend my time? Well, there was plenty of patient care to be done, and once I switched from day-alert to night-manic, I was able to focus pretty well. But all work and no play...you know?

I took advantage of the hospital network's streaming video access and checked in nightly on both the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Last night I jumped from Comedy Central to ABC and watch the last two episodes of Lost, which look pretty good online, the non-skippable ads notwithstanding.

Every space needs ambiance, right? I dig the new lighting in the Gumby Lounge and each night killed the overhead fluorescents in favor of mellow area lights. Greg Parker clued me in to Soma FM a few nights ago, and the selections there became the background of the space for the duration of the week. Not so much an office but a working lounge. Many thanks to Anneliese and Sarah for the improvements!

The theme of the week at SFM was viral syndrome. Especially among the interns. Seems like most of us were hit with fever, malaise, myalgias, diarrhea, URI symptoms--am I missing anything? I got lucky, or maybe it was a combination of luck, hygiene, and voodoo. I made sure to disinfect the lounge nightly (especially the phones and keyboards), wash and gel my hands, and took liberal doses of echinacea with zinc and vitamin C. Seems to have helped thus far: I figure I'm in the window for a couple more days before I can call my evasive maneuvers a success.

I did spend one night on my own due to Maria's illness. Far from being a burden, it was actually quite fun. I took advantage of my solo-status to (a) feel confident in my medical decision making and (b) look up everything. Many thanks to UpToDate and my trial of ePocrates expanded version for helping with differentials and treatment options.

Thanks to my colleagues on the service and around the hospital for making the week fun, too!

Now for the return to daytimes. This is the worst part--several days of sleepy, surly confusion. Fortunately, it's a long weekend, and being alert at night can actually help Brooke get some sleep--I'll cover some of the nighttime attention Elliott needs.