November

To the handful of people who still occasionally check this Blog, my apologies for being late with this “November” installment. I prefer to wait until I get my lab results before updating, and this month, to save money, I had the blood drawn in Sandpoint, shipped to Bethesda, MD, and run at NIH. I just got the results a couple of days ago – everything continues to look good.

As planned, November was primarily a “work month” – a two week Locums in Twin Falls, ID Nov 6-17th, then home for Thanksgiving, and now I’m half way through a two week stint working in Chinle AZ again. We had a nice sized Thanksgiving gathering. Natty and Sarah were home. Sarah brought her partner Ethan and a Milton classmate, Lydia. We also had our good friends the Kohut’s with Daisy, and Ethan’s uncle Hal. All the food was delicious. There must be some transcendant lesson in the facts that it takes days to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner, but it is gone in minutes, and you want to eat more, but you just can’t.

The Locums work is good. I was very busy at the Twin Falls hospital, many 11-13 hour days. After that, I felt like my Anesthesia skills were back 95%. I’m still planning to work in the capacity of a “resident” at the University of Washington Hospital in Seattle for1-2 months to complete my “re-entry” training and update my skills and knowledge. I’ve mentioned before that the “compartmentalization” of doing Locums is nice – being either away and totally focused on Anesthesia, or home relaxing and enjoying Sandpoint. The down side is that when I’m away I miss Mary Catherine, Sandpoint, and my friends, and when I’m home I miss the work. But I think eventually I’ll find the right balance and mix. Maybe Mary Catherine will be able to join me on an occasional assignment. I’m really just very grateful to be able to work again, and have frequent 1-2 week blocks of time off. I’m trying to not plan too far into the future. There are no guarantees…for any of us. I just lost a new friend here at Chinle. The doctor who hired me, also a pilot, crashed his aircraft on approach into Flagstaff AZ two weeks ago. He left a wife and two teenage sons. Doubly tragic as it was completely preventable – he’d run out of fuel!
I will be off the rest of the month after I return home on the 8th of December. I hope to do some skiing and focus on the parts of the Holiday Season that have the most meaning to me: friends, family, snow, the smell of evergreens, the food, the music…and my annual Holiday Letter. As a “gift challenged” non shopper, I hope to find alternative ways to convey my love and appreciation to my family and friends.
At the end of this month I have a convoluted plan to fly (Airlines) to Boston and attend my parents’ 65th wedding Anniversary, and then drive my dad’s ‘90 Pontiac (it has only 30,000 miles) back to the Northwest to use while I’m in Seattle, after which I’ll sell it for him. Anyone up for a winter cross country driving adventure?