I’m totally sore from my 2 days of 21 Day Fix. Oh well. I’ve also had an open cut on my left (dominant) hand, because I fell running about a week ago. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that there is obviously a LOT of handwashing going on right now. It is annoying and needs to heal.
(Though I just searched and there ARE waterproof bandaids! Why didn’t I think of that before?)
Anyway. Yesterday was mostly okay. Work has been very busy from a GME perspective — mostly just trying to figure out best how to handle all the changes without completely obliterating my residents’ educational experience. We are transitioning our didactics to online. The clinical part is trickier. A lot of electives aren’t really happening as they normally would. Their development training site just closed. I need to come up with alternatives. For the most part, the residents themselves seem to be handling things in stride so far.
The situation is pediatrics is interesting. There isn’t a lot of testing because there isn’t a lot of severe illness going on, but at the same time . . . when ISN’T there a plentiful stream of children with cough / fever / URI symptoms? The hospital and gen peds offices are trying very hard to keep these ‘routine URI’ kids out with telemedicine and screening. I don’t know; every day we are getting different instructions. I guess that’s just the nature of it all. And there will still be things like asthma flares that need in-person evaluation and treatment.
My coughing/postnasal drip feels nearly resolved this morning, so I may go into the office in person tomorrow, though I am loathe to add my microbial contributions to an enclosed public space (especially a health care one!) if there is no legitimate reason to. So maybe not. Now just does not seem like the time for “face time.” At the same time, I have not been instructed to do my non-face-time-requiring work from home. (And to be honest, I’m a little afraid to ask).
Everything is different now and so many uncertainties.
The kids are okay. Annabel wrote letters to her grandparents, which was sweet! They are generally following the schedule. There was one meltdown (kid will remain anonymous) and a 30-minute docking of today’s screen time. I have ordered:
- 2 lego sets
- play doh for G
- sidewalk chalk
- cross stitch starter kit for A (she is particularly excited about this)
- Perler beads (those little plastic beads that you iron)
- shrinky dink plastic to color & shrink
- a new pack of colored pencils
I have not ordered:
- any educational materials
This is mostly because FL would have had a short week anyway this week and spring break next week, and I am anticipating they may have instructions for what they want the kids to do online soon. I’m having the kids continue the online programs they were already using at school, write a journal entry (sentence w/ a picture for C), and read 2 chapters (A) or 2 picture books (C, who either reads easy things with help or is read to). That’s it for now.
I had one terrible moment when I looked up from an email haze to find the dining room floor AND Genevieve adorned in Sharpie. Luckily, it came out.
Okay. Hopefully I have time for 21DF Day 3 before everyone wakes up!
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Ooh, I think R would love cross stitching. Maybe I should order something. And we definitely need to do some serious Lego projects. I am thinking of digging out one of our 1000 piece puzzles…
Sarah, did you read The Topeka school yet? I just read 10:04 and LOVED it.
Dermabond is the best for open hand cuts — very resistant to hand washing! If you can’t find any, crazy glue is made of the same compound and can also be used to protect your cut, just don’t get stuck to anything as it’s drying.
I’m wondering whether my peds hospital will open its ORs to care for spillover critical patients from the hospital next door.
What’s so strange is just how little our day-to-day has changed. I’m an adult hospitalist and we aren’t surging here yet. I go in every morning like I would normally do, do my rounds notes etc. We’ve been prepping some things like an isolation unit, I’ve been reviewing ventilators, reviewing CDC updates, but other than that there’s really nothing for me to do that I wouldn’t normally do.
Are you sure you need to ask permission to telework when doing the non-face time parts of your job? If you aren’t being told to come in, you might just get away with discretely teleworking.
My daughter has two appointments this week. A 3-hours EEG this afternoon (so far they’re only cancelling EEGs for elderly patients), and her 12-month well baby visit tomorrow morning (they’re keeping well-baby visits going through 15 months in order to vaccinate). Even though these appointments aren’t in hospitals, just going into a medical facility feels like walking into the belly of the beast. She also has an appointment at Johns Hopkins in about a month to start a keto diet, which is a traditional hospital setting, and I don’t know whether I should be apprehensive about that. I suspect that Johns Hopkins will be swarmed in a months time, and there’s a very good chance the appointment will be canceled anyways. Maybe I should see if I can schedule a second appointment further down the road in case the first one gets cancelled so that her care doesn’t wind up super delayed.
I wonder if the keto visit could be Telehealth! It’s mostly education right ?
Starting keto is usually a multi-day inpatient hospital stay. Apparently when you’re doing it for epilepsy, it’s a little more complicated than your average diet blog suggests….lol. But this first visit is probably going to be more discussion based/evaluative, and probably could be a video visit.
Also, my brother in law is a 3rd year internal med resident up in Boston and his residency has changed drastically in light of coronavirus. They’ve cancelled all subspecialty clinics (residents in his program spend one week a month spent at a subspecialty clinic), primary care clinics have gone to telemedicine (which they’re letting him do from home, starting today), all away rotations have been cancelled (he was going to spend a month at an IHS hospital in New Mexico), and all educational lunches, panels, etc have been cancelled. Residents are basically either triaging (suspected) covid patients with hospitalists or doing telemedicine visits. Apparently one concern is not knowing if they’ll be able to bill for the telemedicine visits.
Oh yeah I’m remembering that now! They measure betahydroxybutyrate, monitor blood glucose, etc. our hospital doesn’t yet have a program (though they were talking about it!) so I have not seen the process!!!
I have also picked up the 21 Day Fix and expect to be pretty sore. I’ve been training for a triathlon and kinda dropped the strength in the last couple of months to fit the regular training in. But with swimming cancelled for the foreseeable future i guess i have no reason not to do these home workouts. Maybe it will help me?? I haven’t done lower fix yet but i am dreading all.the.squats.
Thankfully both my husband and I can work from home (i already did 2-3 days a week prior to this) but with our childcare options closed we have to work ‘shifts’ – it’s not ideal but it’s what we can do while we wrangle our nearly 3 year old. (my older daughter when to grandma’s house since this is March break here – we’ll see how the two weeks after go)
Those waterproof bandaids are the best. I limit the kids to only using them in summer/swim season though. I hope you can do as much working from home as possible!
Joining you in a return to beach body workouts during all of this! Today is Day 3. I’m doing the prenatal workouts for now. It is definitely helping with the stress! Yesterday, my OB strongly recommended that I cancel our sitter coming to our home to watch my 4 yo and 2 yo and now I’m trying to figure out working from home, while being pregnant with two littles and no child care …lol…meaning that I am especially enjoying beach body time!! Any great schedule/time management hacks out there – please share.
2 things- thank you for shrinky dink reminder! Blast from the past… I think my guys will enjoy those too and #2 are you totally regretting reading Station 11 right now? That book has been haunting me this week.