Home Stretch

This is an ad they are using - I'm the one on the left. 

My board recertification exam is almost four weeks behind me and I'm getting a bit anxious for the score. I felt that I totally punted on about 50% of the questions, but I traditionally do better on exams than I think I did, so I hope that holds true now, too.

At work, we're headed into home stretch for the academic year.  Graduation week is always busy, but this year I am honored to "hood" four new physicians.  Our grads get to request a special hooder if they wish, and four students asked me to do this honor for them.  I know I will cry.  They are such wonderful women and I am so proud of them.

I'm also coordinating Clinical Skills Assessments, in which the students have to get through two or three encounters with standardized patients, people who are trained to use a script and "act" like real patients. We do this in a building that has rooms that look like real exam rooms, and the encounters are videotaped.  Faculty sit in a room watching these encounters real time, and we rate the students' performances.  Over the two weeks of testing, we'll rate about 1200 "patient" encounters for the first and second year students.

Finally, my mom is taking a small break from work and recovering at our house after a three day hospitalization.  She got shingles and, lucky for her, is one of the small percentage of people who have not just sensory and dermatologic symptoms but also motor symptoms from this nasty disease.  She fell three times, blackening her eyes and landing hard on her shoulder, which was pinned when she broke it five years ago.  During her evaluation in the ED, her blood pressure was wacky. so they put her in the hospital. There, they found that both of her carotids are blocked.  They can't do surgery while she is recovering from shingles, so she's hurting from the shingles in her leg and foot, super dizzy with these blocked arteries and wearing a nifty contraption on her foot that helps her stay upright.  Her attitude is amazing and we are all so happy with the care she is getting.

On the kid front, Son has a speaking line in the first grade musical, which they perform in a couple of weeks.  Daughter is very excited that her preschool is moving to a brand new site (and her mom is happy that it is closer to our house).  The kids are loving the warm weather.

The best news of all in this mini update?  After five and a half years of having 1-2 kids in our bed every night, we figured out how to get the kids in their own rooms.  Tonight is night 13 that Husband and I have not had to weather kicks from little feet all night.  To some, this might seem like a minor victory.  To us, it's a major triumph.

Church has been such a blessing to me.  When things get difficult, I am reminded that my church family and God himself are there for me and love me.  I'm happily singing in the choir and looking for more ways to share my gifts with this wonderful community.

Later, gators.