The 1st week of Early.

Last week began the time where I get the pleasure of opening the pharmacy 3 out of the next 4 weeks! One of the other pharmacists will be there with me, and this past week I played the role of our technician that was out on vacay. We would arrive and turn the lights on and the alarm off (which is a bit strange to have the power to do p.s.), then start heating water for making kits, get the messages off the machine, and start eluting the generators. The goal is to have all this finished within the first 30-60 minutes so that we are getting down to business around 0200 (yeah, that's two A.M.!)

I spent the week starting off the morning doing a little quality control on all the dose calibrators to make sure they are consistently reading the amount of radioactivity we're throwing down the hole and then I would draw doses for about 2 hours. Moving on to quality control for all the kits we made (to make sure they'll give nice pretty pictures for everyone) and then snack time! Around 0600 we'd do it all again, repeat, repeat, repeat.

As for sleeping, I did really well (almost, I'll get to that)! I stayed up all day and night Sunday and then slept all day after work. Surprisingly, I managed to get about 6-ish hours of sleep everyday, during the day, without even making the bedroom a cave. Then I'd get up in the afternoon/evening, go workout, and stay up all night. They only I really had trouble with is food -- still need to figure out when to eat, and what -- oh, and Thursday. So the big boss man (read owner of the company) called the beginning of the week and told us one pharmacist from CLT would need to go to Asheville Friday to cover. Since there are only three of us, and a minimum of two are needed to work a day, I got bumped to the day shift for Friday. T had Thursday off so I thought we could spend a day together doing whatever we wanted. Note to self, a 3 hour nap in one 24 hour period ≠ fun, happy Zan. Needless to say I was sent to my room multiple times to take more naps and will be planning a "sleep day" at the end of my early weeks.

Now to work the weekend and then the early shift again next week! Still loving it, still need LOTS of improvement, still grateful for a very understanding Thomas!

Put your lead-lined big girl panties on!

-my mother

A little over two weeks ago, on a Friday, there was a big change in my life. I turned my employee badge in to my supervisor and left the hospital for the last time as an employee. I'd worked there for almost 7 years; it was strange. I took the weekend to relax by myself while Thomas worked his first weekend in over 2 years. The next Monday, I got up an hour earlier than usual, and drove to my new job as a nuclear pharmacist!

I've wanted to be a nuclear pharmacist since high school, since I was 16, and there I was, walking in to the place that was my new home. Ten minutes later, the boss wanted me to get in the hood and draw doses. It had been about 18 months since I had drawn a dose and I just bumbled around with the syringe shield and tongs trying to get things straight. He could tell I was nervous and said, "Here's some saline, you can play with it later."

The first day I hit generators (washing off the radioactivity so we could use it), reviewed how to make kits and ship out packages. We talked about the schedule and being on-call and learning to judge how much time you'll need to send out a dose. And we talked about some of the new responsibilities I'll have in this job. I'll be in charge (really, really in charge, not like at the hospital where there were a couple levels of management and 15 other pharmacists that had been there longer than me to be in charge), and I'll get the opportunity (have to) precept some of the students we have (p.s. we have 11 coming between now and next April, not including the one here already! and the summer intern), and I'll also have the opportunity to conduct radiation safety audits at a series of heart clinics in town (they pay us to be their radiation safety officers). Wow.

The second day, we all learned how to set up and run the emergency power generator! There had been a bad storm (though not as bad as the one this weekend resulting in tornados) and it knocked out the power at the lab. I walked in and everything was dark in the front offices. The lab in the back was running, so we got all of our doses out on time, but it was a bit of a mess. Presby had definitely taught me to roll with the punches and find the gap where help is needed and fill it. I helped package a few doses to be sent out, but mostly stayed out of the way until things were caught up. Yay adventures in your first week!

Two weeks have gone by and I'm starting to feel more comfortable. I'm not dropping things (everyday) anymore and I'm learning to multi-task in a whole new way. I'm sleeping (so far) and I'm still pumped about this! It feels really good to be excited about my job again.