This will be a short post, because I’ve been staring at a computer all day and my eyeballs might explode if I stare at it much longer.
Got up at the butt-crack of dawn (that’s for you, Daddy :D) to go to morning report today. Apparently Monday report is usually pretty long, because we go over all the admissions from the weekend – Friday evening through Monday morning. Two kids in the regular ward died, and another three babies in the NNU passed away. Great way to start off the week, eh?
Talked with Dr. Kung about my new assignment, which is basically going through the paper charts from the A&E (the ER, here), picking out the pediatric patients, and entering their names, medical record numbers, demographics, diagnosis, and disposition into an Excel sheet, for May – July 2009. SO stimulating. Seriously though, when she showed me how the charts are stored, I instantaneously developed an infinitely greater appreciation for US health systems and their endless red tape – there are literally old boxes piled on older boxes filled with carbon copies, organized in no particular order other than that all the patients from one day are bound together with a string. I repeat, A STRING. I’ll take a picture tomorrow, so you can all empathize with the horror that echoed through my impeccably methodical and well-organized brain when I realized that I was up against (OK, dramatic, but whatever, hyperbole gets the point across).
Worked on the charts till lunch, then back to Pie City (tried the Chicken Curry this time, YUM). Finally went into the infamous SPAR store – since I may not have blogged on this before, let me explain. The first few days we were here, literally every time we went to a store at Riverwalk and we couldn’t find something, they told us SPAR would have it. But we could never find SPAR. And then once we figured out where it was, we never had a chance to go in. But today, I DID.
Yeah, it wasn’t that great. It’s basically just a grocery store.
BUT. I did manage to find crayons for my little friend in the pedes ward, which I promptly delivered when I got back from lunch. I had been worrying about finding crayons all weekend, as well as how I was going to give them to him without all of the other kids begging me for something (which was Dr. Kung’s response when I told her I had promised to get him crayons). It ended up working out perfectly – he had gone for a bath, according to his grandmother, so I gave his present to her. She said, “I’ll tell him Aunty left him something very important.” I didn’t realize that they called non-family members Aunty here, but it made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy. And VERY RELIEVED that I had actually kept my promise.
Spent the rest of the afternoon going through the same charts that I had done in the morning, because Dr. Kung wanted me to record information for all of the pediatric patients that came through the A&E, not just the respiratory ones. I have a sneaking suspicion that she told me to do that in the first place, and I just misinterpreted her instructions. Doh!
Still, I managed to get through 539 charts today, according to my tally. That’s right, cause I’m a champ ;) Also, Kat and I made an important discovery: the reason doctors write so that you can’t read their notes, is because you can’t accuse them of doing something wrong if you can’t tell what the hell they did. Pretty solid theory, huh?
Came home and went for a run with Julia and Olivia. It was really nice, until a BUG FLEW RIGHT INTO MY EYE. I’ve swallowed bugs before while running, but this was particularly startling. It resumed being a nice run once I got it out though!
Dinner, watched The Hangover. My life is complete.
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