Give to ECWA Evangel Hospital!

Thanks to all of you who are helping Evangel hospital get equipment!!!!
If you look a couple of posts down, you can see the info on donating to ECWA Evangel. However, several people have let me know that they've either 1) Had technical problems with the online donation site, 2) Do not feel comfortable donating online or 3) Are "too old-fashioned" for online donation.
If any of those are the case, you can feel free to mail a check to me (make it out to me and I'll just write one big check to ECWA). If you need my address, please email me and I'll get it to you.

I have to get on the phone at 1 am.

Now, this is nothing abnormal for me, actually. In my line of work I end up spending a great deal of time on the phone in the wee hours of the morning. If you listened to my half of the conversation, you'd hear lines that are reassuring ("It's OK. I know his foot is blue"), entertaining ("Yes, it's OK for him to scratch his groin"), and occassionally containing intelligent information.

However, my midnight conversation tonight will not be with the ER, or with a nurse, but with the questionably helpful staff at Kenya Airways. I have had multiple issues getting my flight booked from Nigeria to Nairobi, where I will be flying after I leave Nigeria. Their satellite office in Los Angeles has had issues, so I have to deal with the Nairobi office, which involves a time difference-thus the early AM call. For those of you that are the praying type, will you please lift up my travel issues--I need this ticket. Thanks!

When I grow up I want to be....

The scrapbook that my mother kept through my elementary and high school years, titled "Shannon's School Days," has pre-printed blanks to fill in friends, teachers, hobbies, and a section each year titled "When I grow up I want to be."

This section in my first grade year has a check in the box marked "Nurse." By the next year, apparently God had convinced me of what He already knew, which is that I am not nearly patient enough to be a nurse, and the box is marked "Doctor."

This box stays marked throughout elementary school and junior high. At some point in high school I decided, for reasons that I can't remember, to abandon medicine in favor of a pure research career. By the time I was in college, the plan was to get a Ph.D in the biosciences and live happily ever after in the lab.

May of 1999 changed this plan. Suddenly and inexplicably I became interested again in medicine. Never one to be unambitious, I immediately enrolled in an MCAT course and attempted to fix my GPA. Even then, though, I don't think I had any idea that I'd ever be doing surgery. After all, there was no box in the scrapbook for "surgeon." There should have been one.

Happy 93rd birthday Mr. B!

My sister Jody has voiced her complaint that I am not updating this blog, especially given the copious amount of free time that I have. I apologize for not entertaining any readers of this blog with a new post. Since Jody may, at the present, be my one and only blog-follower, I feel obliged to post.

I am happy to be back on the general surgery service at the VA, though we have been quite busy. Next month I'll be doing general surgery as well, and then I'm off to Nigeria!

This weekend I will make an attempt to fill the picture links with something functional-so Jody, check back.

Finally, I'd like to wish a happy birthday to my patient Mr. B, who celebrated his 93rd today by being transferred out of the ICU to the floor--once he passes his swallowing study, we'll get him a cake.