Come here often?

Clearly, I don't. I really haven't had anything to say for a while, but the synchronicity of life has urged me back here so here I am. And you are, too. Thank you.

So, to catch you up on the factual news in my life; it's all good. The leukemia is still in remission; we bought a beautiful new house and the clinic has seen one patient so far.

The clinic patient seemed to be a success. Her care givers seemed happy with the intervention. We helped and have a plan to help more. There are potentially two patients to see next week and we are not even officially open yet. The computer tail seems to be wagging the dog here and we cannot open until the electronic medical record is ready for us to open. We don't have a department according to the electronic medical record so we can't actually see patients. The one we've seen, and now two more we hope to see, are seen as internal medicine patients officially and billed as internal medicine patients, get internal medicine notes, etc although they get the full palliative care treatment. Arg! it's a good thing we have computers to make our lives easier. The real news here, however, is that I think the clinic is going to be a success and that I am going to know what to do. I had my doubts at times on all fronts. I mean, I know how to do hospital palliative care consults and I know how to do internal medicine office consults, but I was worried that I wouldn't know how to take the knowledge base of palliative care and translate that to an office. I was also worried that I wouldn't have enough to offer patients and their families so we would not get referrals. Additionally I was worried that I would be an interpersonal clodhopper and it wouldn't matter how effective I was with patients, no doctor would want to deal with me so we wouldn't get referrals. I am starting to see that I can do OK with referring docs and am starting to see the value of what I do in the hospital even when I cannot get the desired result within twenty minutes of seeing the patient. These things make me feel more confident. Additionally, I am (slowly, o so slowly) catching on to the beauty of the fact that it's a team sport and even if I don't have something useful to offer, the nurse or social worker will and as part of the team I get credit for their work just as they get credit for mine. Ah! I can relax a bit now because I have a good team.

My friend, Barbara's dog team. The shadow in the left part of the picture is my dog, Maggie. Her protege is the fluffly little white dog next to her and Maggie learned everything she knows from the yellow dog in the middle of the picture.

I am suddenly feeling that I have a lot to say here and expect tomorrow to be tapping away again. I am grateful for this blog, for your patience and persistence in checking here even though I've been stewing silently for almost a month. I am hopeful that we will have many conversations.