Friday, January 18, 2013

Day 216 - the scale is in order today

Ah, that felt better. Today was a very good day at work. I talked with Cheryl who will be the manager of the palliative care clinic to do a little planning and am quite excited about the clinic. I visited some of my old friends at CMC and that is always fun. Then to Merrimack for the tiniest bit of work and I was called back to CMC where I was able to do my first hospital consult of being back. It went really well. I was worried after yesterday's mistake of thinking stage 5 kidney disease was endstage that it was perhaps time to hang up my stethoscope. The consult went really well from a palliative care point of view and I was able to figure out a puzzling physical exam finding that was previously unexplained (and unrelated to the reason I was consulted). I feel better; I am not quite fully on my game, but it seems that slightly off my game is good enough while I continue recovering. I had gone for a quick walk through the ICU a week or two before, but didn't see anyone I really knew. This time I got to work with a bunch of nurse and other staff I knew so it was nice. The ICU nurses were mostly up to date on the scoop, but some of the docs that I don't know super well hadn't even noticed that I'd been gone for six months! One said, "I haven't talked with you in a while." I responded, "I've been out ill." He said, "Me, too. I had a virus for about six weeks and it just wouldn't go away." I wasn't sure what the best response might be so I was just sympathetic.
Dinner at Bai Cha with Terry and Tommie rounded the day out. They told us it was the same cook as always, but Terry and I felt it was the best Thai food we'd had outside of Berkeley. I am not sure what magic was going on in the kitchen tonight, but I'm sure glad I got a tiny share of it.
Today was really a most satisfying day. I had been truly just a little worried that reversing the scale yesterday meant that my brain was still recovering from chemo (or would never recover from chemo) rather than that I had made a mistake that anyone can make with a little piece of arcania that they do not pull out of their brain and manipulate daily. Yeah! I do still have some good doctor skills up my sleeve, in my back pocket, wherever I store those things.
For me, for tomorrow, I am going to wish for a happy, relaxing day. For you, for tomorrow, I will wish for the same.
By the way, this is what happens when people with short hair go to bed with wet hair:

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