...you're excited to purchase your very first pair of ice cleats! Which, it turns out, I didn't really need because we're in the middle of a blizzard and snow drifts are blowing everywhere. I was completely blinded by the flurries furiously pounding my face and couldn't find the trail leading from the boardwalk to the hospital this morning; consequently, I found myself frequently stepping into knee-deep snow (2 thumbs up for my excellent ski pants, by the way, which marvelously kept snow out of my insulated boots!). All flights were canceled today--yes, even the 737 planes that fly between Bethel and Anchorage! Fortunately, the medevac is still running, and when I left the hospital tonight, they were duking it out over which kid in respiratory distress to pick up first (Emmonak vs Mekoryuk: discuss).
I was hoping to sample some elk stew or a reindeer burger during this week on the wards, but, alas the cafeteria has been serving mainly fried chicken, pork tenderloin, and tacos. My favorite patients are two frail elderly ladies (one who wears her hair in pigtails), both with hyponatremia and sharing the same hospital room. I finally got their serum sodium levels back to normal (one with a slow infusion of normal saline, the other with free water restriction) but now the one in pigtails is persistently dizzy, so I started her on a baby dose of meclizine. In other news, the hospital is still using paper charts, but there are intriguing rumors of an EMR launch scheduled for January 2013...
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