First day!

So I started up at Harborview today. You know how first days usually involve a lot of introductions, tours, and clockwatching? Well, my day was nothing at all like that. I arrived at the Burn Research office and presented myself whereupon I was immediately installed in front of a computer checking patient charts and filling in missing info. It took a little while to figure out what the hell I was doing, but it was pretty interesting, reading through all that material, seeing all the stories, accidents, suicide attempts, arson mishaps, etc., that brought people in to Harborview from all over the four-state area (Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana).

The first chart I started reading was a 2-year-old girl. Fortunately, just as my heart nearly leapt out of my chest thinking about a little Lucy getting admitted to the burn unit, that chart got taken away from me and I moved on to some grownups. Much easier to handle at first anyway.

I started to think about the compassion issue. It would be easy to detach oneself from the stories that make the patient a person, to just see them as the injury or illness, but that isn't who I am. Maintaining compassion and a sense of each person is just as important as treating the illness - just as important to that person's overall wellness. Anyway, I had some time while reading charts to pontificate to myself.

A couple hours of that and we went down to a talk - the chief resident at Charity hospital in New Orleans was giving a talk on disaster preparedness. He had amazing stories and accompanying slides from the Katrina disaster. Incredible.

Then back to charts - only this time with archived charts - old school thick paper charts - from 1989.

Then all of a sudden the day was over! I've never had a first day go so quickly. It was exhilarating! It's very cool to work in such a fast-paced environment and with such interesting people. I think I will actually like working in a hospital.

In other news: Lucy peed in the potty last night!

I have given up all hope of trying to do pilates - I'm not sure what I was thinking. I have absolutely no free time whatsoever between volunteering, studying for the MCAT and training in kung fu. I'm falling behind on MCAT studies and I think I will be hard pressed to get the scores I need, but I do have a lot of time so we'll see.

I'm looking at another daycare for Lucy. I'm crazy to change her situation, I know I am, now that she's finally enjoying her daycare, but there are enough things about her daycare that bug me to warrant it. It's dirty and unhygienic, in my opinion, for one thing. Also, there are no older kids there - she will outgrow it by next year anyway. I'm looking at a place in the U district that's bigger, but same ratio. It's supposed to be fantastic. We'll see. They currently have no room anyway, so we'll have to see what all happens with all that.

That's all for now. someone just yelled, "MAMA COME UP!!!"