...and then I'm a REAL Pharmacist!
My last week at Black Mountain was pretty uneventful. The week started off with cart fill as usual, switching out new medication carts for the empty ones. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings were Care Plans for the Alzheimers Units. There were several family members that came this week which meant they ran a little long (it didn't help that Dr. Kelly wanted to play airplanes with one little boy that came).
One interesting thing that I learned more about last week was ECT or electroconvulsive therapy for treatment resistant depression. Basically, in an anesthetized and controlled environment, doctors send electrical current through the brain until a small seizure occurs. The seizures act as "reset" buttons to hopefully restore the chemical imbalance that causes depression. Sadly, most people think of One Flew of the Cuckoo's Nest or the very terrible ways this procedure was done 40 or more years ago and they don't want to participate, but there really is data showing success when nothing else has worked.
We had our first seminar this week as well. Kelly and Savanna gave case presentations of patients they met on their rotation and their primary disease. They both did a good job, but boy am I nervous about doing mine. Dr. Michelets, one of our seminar coordinators is going to be a TOUGH grader, and she'll stop you in the middle of your presentation to ask questions (yay fun). A bunch of us went out to dinner to celebrate Kelly and Savanna's work.
I spent the weekend in Charlotte (mostly out on the boat :) ) before heading back to the Triangle for my next rotation. Saturday night dad grilled some chicken in his barbeque sauce and some in Antony's Caribbean sauce and we headed to the parking lot to tailgate for the Panther's game. We had a good time, but it would be nice if we could start pulling out some wins. We'll see what happens Thursday.
Now I'm in Durham, staying in a friend's house for the month. She and her husband are out in Asheville this year like I am and are nice enough to let me stay in their house for the month. Its a cute 3 bedroom/2.5 bath townhouse only a little ways away from the mall and a short drive to a park and ride lot for the bus. This month my rotation is nuclear medicine at UNC Hospitals. I will spend the month mostly with nuclear medicine technologists that are responsible for administering radiopharmaceuticals (the stuff I made this summer at Cardinal) and scanning patients for diagnostic tests. I've heard its a great way to tie together all the theory we learned in class with the practical application I learned at Cardinal this summer. The technetium shortage is still ongoing though, so who knows how much activity we will really have.
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