Chasmo’s Place
Just a biomed, ma’am, just a biomed.Archive for March, 2008
Back on the horse…camel…
Well I don’t have a picture of my horseback, but I do have camelback, so there it is. Anyway, after a couple of days of being under the weather, I am back at work. Still not feeling great but I am here. Was watching CNN talk about how the Clinton’s have a tendency of making up facts. Today’s story was because Hillary decided to recall a story about her landing in Bosnia, during Bill’s time in office, and how she had to run off the plane ducking bullets. It seems that the video of her slowly walking off the plane strolling down to meet and greet her hosts came to light. Hmm, kind of fishy. She likes to change stories, as Bill “I did not have sex with that woman” Clinton did, to help her in the polls. Its really her last ditch effort to over take Obama, which if you look at the numbers is impossible, again. She should just step down while she can still hold her head up, right now its just causing a big rift in the Democratic party. From what a year ago looked like a given of them taking back the White House, this whole Obama/Clinton is only ripping that down. McCains numbers rise, and theirs lower. More reason to get rid of Primaries.
On another note, who are all of these people following me on Twitter suddenly. Do the numbers of followers really matter? I guess its the same with Facebook and MySpace, sad. What makes one popular? Is popularity real?
I Hate Titles
So we had our quarterly Jeff Biomed staff meeting this AM. What we learned…we already really knew but is now confirmed. Thats the problem today. News travels faster and faster than management deploys. That is more of a function of todays technology than of really anything else. Its almost too easy to spread word. Its the main reason I think we should get rid of this whole primary system we have here in the US. National elections should be done in 6 months, period, not 4 years. The primaries were designed to get the word out, now, word is out near instantly. So its simply not needed. As a benefit, more people would be involved. More people votes really count, say I wanted to vote for Edwards, if it were six months and no primaries I would have a chance too vote for him. We, the citizens would be less sick and tired of hearing the canned sound bites that we hear every day and issues may acutally be the focus, not who is going on the 6pm news first. And finally it would lessen the power of the party system, since the party wouldn’t know who was going to go forward and the differences in the candidates would matter, making the peoples voice actually heard.
Tramatic Monday
So yesterday I had a consultation with Barix about getting gastric bypass. After talking to Martine for a week in Haiti, I am kind of excited about giving it a shot. I say that know that there is no turning back after doing so. I really want to start my new life with wife and baby on an upswing, really can’t get any lower on a down swing, so no choice there either. Anyway, we will see what the insurance company says, I have to get an psych eval, and also want to talk to Dr. Kautzky, knowing in advance she is not gung ho about the possibility. But diets don’t seem to work well with me, and something has got to give. Anyway, afterwords, Squish and I walked around the mall and sat in the massage chairs for our dollar’s time (3 minutes). Now I am not a huge massage fan, and infact quite wimpy to them. I hate deep massages, they are just painful and I don’t seem to get anything from them. I like the bumpy stuff on my back and the neck and legs. Now here is the tramatic stuff, the seats seem to give you a deep butt massage. Yuck, Scary prison movie stuff. Was that needed? I need my blankey!
Another lazy Sunday, Squish is nausiated. She confided that she has thrown up everyday for the last three weeks. Yuck. So I am letting her take it easy today. Yesterday we roamed around Independence Mall and had a bite to eat at El Azteca. Its not as good as it used to be, and they have this weird mix of Mexican and Indian(from India) art. But Bandito is a better cook then he was Chip Guy.
New Day, New Post
Well I really don’t have anything of great value to say today. But I keep reading that in order to improve your writing skills, one should sit and write every day. I guess that is what I am doing today. I have posted a few posts to my tumblr blog, http://thechasmo.com funny stuff. Other than that. Woke up in the middle of the night and watched a lot of TV because I couldn’t get back to sleep. I signed up for a consultation at Barix Clinics for gastric bypass, thats Monday. Tuesday we have our first apt with Shannon’s new OB. And I hope to get some more photos taken this weekend. Can’t really think of much else, so I guess I will stop writting…who knows maybe some more later.
Well back to the grind
Sitting at work, trying to catch up with life. You can’t imagine how far behind you fall in your daily stuff, just by dropping out and doing a mission.
Of course during the mission you are very busy, so its not just dropping out doing the slack thing, its dropping out of one life and popping up in another. So it really can be quite confusing and tiring to do it, but I think in the end its well worth it.
Yesterday we ran
up to KOP (King of Prussia, for those not of the Philly area) to buy a Snowball for Shannon to do some voice over work. Had a quick bite at California Pizza Kitchen, and spent a little time in Borders, where they do not have Objective C for Dummies, and in fact no Objective C or Cocoa books at all. After we got home we spent the next 3 ho
urs trying to get the Snowball to work with Vista. It turns out Blue Mic has yet to make a Vista driver for the Snowball, luckily I found a site that has a hack (http://macrogeek.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-get-your-blue-snowball-mic.html). So I did not get to sleep to after midnight. I really can’t do that anymore, but with B/C on the way I guess I will have to get used to no sleep. Anyway thats all for now.
Home Again
Well the mission is over and I am home. Didn’t get a real chance to go online the last two days so here is my latest entry and a couple bonus pictures. Enjoy!
We ended up doing about 65 cases, which is great for a mission that we went in thinking about 40 would be done. The OR clean up was rather fast as we only really had 2 tables and the PACU to pack. The final afternoon was spent touring the town of Hinche, although about half of the team went to the Partners In Health’s hospital in Conch. Two days on the bumpy roads wasn’t in my plan so I did the town tour.
The ride back to PAP only took 3 hours, they seemed to have paved about 5 more miles of the road while we were in Hinche. Amazing! and a real time saver. The flight was delayed almost 2 hours because they loaded some pets in the unpressurized cargo hold, luckily for the pets they realized before take off, bad for us. Had to fly thru Miami international, as we ended up only having about 1.5 hours to go thru customs and recheck our luggage, and then thru security again. Finally got home around midnight, oh and they lost my luggage. Martines was the first on the carosel and mine never showed.
UPDATE: The luggage guy from US Air called and demanded I call him back immediately. I did, so my luggage should be at my house in about an hour.
Day 4…Almost Done
Well almost got a good nights sleep last night. Tory talked to the Father whom runs the camp to see if we could have power all night, instead of it going off at 11:00 and back on at 4AM. When the power goes off both Ken and I are woken because our CPAPs go off also, creating apnea instead of stopping it. LOL. Anyway, Tory asked the team for lights off and fans off at 11PM, the team graciously agreed, I felt so bad, because it is so hot, no fans runnn is a terrible thing to ask team members to endure. But they agreed. Power stayed on until 11:30PM and went back on at 3:30Am, so we added an hour, but not worth the heat.
Randy Sherman MD, OpSmile CMO flew in the AM, He will be helping today. Tomorrow we have our last day and there are only 2 cases per table, and they are all local. So a quick morning, and then we can pack. I think we should be out of the hospital by 2pm, if all goes well. Then we may go to Conch to see the Partners In Health hospital.
Was going to buy B/C a beautiful dress this AM, then realized that B/C may be C and not B and thus wouldn’t like the dress. Oh well. Not much else to buy here, where the market comes to us.
Day 3…Scream
Ok, sometimes you have kids that go thru the PACU with barely a whimper, today is not that day its a screaming tigers day in Haiti. No one is going thru quietly, and the first 2 days not a one cried for more than a moment. Its crazy, must be something in Kool-Aide that Arash is giving the kids, luckily Trudy is there to calm them down.
