JUN-A-2
JUNE
BEGINS SUMMER TIME,
ENDING
THE MONSOON OF MAY IN MARYLAND:
TOUR
THE NEW GWUMC OR’S AND EDUCATION FLOOR
WITH
ITS SIMULATED PATIENTS AND SKILLS LABS
May 30—June 1, 2003
Incredibly, this is June 1, 2003, and I am sitting here in a jacket, watching two phenomena in the Derwood woods, now fully leafed out in a topsail canopy. This new leaf cover has a large sail area, and one of the phenomena is scattered around me covering the drive and pathways. After 26 days of rain in the last 29 with record amounts of rain bursting reservoirs, it was a rare moment at dawn when it was not raining this morning, when I rolled up in front of Joe’s house for a scheduled run—the first of a long time since just before my Bull Run Run and Boston Marathon six weeks ago, with my absences in Malawi and Talbot County over the soggy Memorial Day weekend. But what did happen as the low-scudding clouds were whipping right over tree level forcing the wind-tossed geese out of formation just beneath this low-hanging ceiling, is that the branches have been whipped and pruned out of the canopy by this indiscriminate “late March wind.” I have made several walking rounds to pick up downed branches and clearing the drive several times. On each of these excursions in the howling wind, I have encountered the second phenomenon of this June 1 calendar day which seems to be pre-ordained whatever the weather right around this date.
DEER BEDDING FOR SPRING FAWNING TIME
AS THE CANOPY BRANCHES COME TUMBLING DOWN
IN THE HIGH WINDS
I am watching about a dozen deer, in scattered groups of three and four, hunkered down in the hollows of the woods, spotting me more by movement than by scent or sound, since there are two reasons for them to be lying low in my woods. One reason is that they “loose their ears” in this high wind and they cannot distinguish the breaking branches over head from the snapping of twigs under predatory feet. The whirling winds also stir up the scents of spring and confuse the direction from which any threat smell might be coming, like that of a branch clearing primate prowling his drive way. The second reason is that they are looking for a soft spot in the leaves for bedding down and dropping fawns, almost exactly on cue for this date—a month after the waterfowl hatch, which typically happens here on May 1. After looking for this phenomenon each year of the quarter century I have lived here, only in the last couple of years have I spotted the fawns immediately after birth—and, at least last year---while being born. Despite their delicate beauty and gangling gracelessness, these fawns are nearly impossible to find, even when one is standing next to where you know they must be. But, you have already seen this phenomenon in photographic evidence in the last few years.
Joe wanted to go for a very early run today, so that he could go to an early mass at 8:00 AM in order to go to his mother’s house for a graduation celebration later today, so I was up and out at 4:00 AM and we were running just after the dawn arrived in this the month of the longest day of the year. I had tried to get a few domestic chores completed this weekend, including trying to unpack the living room floor which was an medical supply warehouse, for all the stuff I had not been able to hand-carry to Malawi this year, and stocked for the next trips to Haiti and multiple India excursions. I am reluctant to start the packing process all by myself, without a plan for the storage and the sequence of where some things must be accessible for such as the trips forthcoming, including the Moose Hunt in September and the mission trips and the Amazon float trip in the spring—all of which cannot be buried in the twelve month mothballing, like some of the surgical supplies can be for the later shipping to Malawi.
PRE-PACKING FOR SEPTEMBER MOOSE HUNTING
I have been told to look at the map before the plan Craig and I had to drive either his Sierra BMC pickup truck or the newly acquired Ram 2500 Turbo Diesel to Alaska to be able to pick up some loose pieces we still need (like my rifle in Colorado) and make a few visits and stops along the way. But travel to Western Alaska would be a round trip approachign15,000 miles, and would take all of Craig’s two weeks’ vacation just in the drive without any of the ten days of the hunt in between. We needed the capacity to carry home two moose worth of meat, which is about exactly like four sides of beef. But, now, we realize that we will have to fly, and fly again to Nunyiak from Anchorage commercially before we get airlifted by bush plane (Helio) into our base camp on Sep 3 to be ready to go for the opening day on the fifth after fishing for rainbows and salmon and checking out the scouting. This means I am working on a very complex process to get my Weatherby 340 rifle which had been left in Vail Colorado for the further return to go elk hunting this fall, with Reg Franciose. But shipping a firearm involves having a gun dealer with a registered Firearms License shipping it to another of same, so I am attempting to get that done to Chester Jones (rather than sending it to some dealer in Anchorage which we would then have to retrieve. If I can get Reg to take it to some gun dealer like Garth Brothers in Colorado after we mail him the license of Chester Jones and his address, we will try to rendezvous at Chester and Carol Jones (around the time of their “crop damage permit” so that we might be able to “sight in the big rifles with its refitting “quick release scopes” by looking at Eastern Shore crop damaging deer rather than paper targets, before we encase these rifles in the baggage gun safe that Craig had carried the same rifles in to Kamchatka on our Spring bear hunt in 2000.
I GET THE ROYAL TOUR OF THE OR’S AND LEARNING CENTER
OF THE NEW GWUH WITH STILL A FEW OF THE OLD GUARD
I had referred a surgical patient for thyroidectomy to Stan Knoll, so we had lunch at La Perla to discuss the surgical experience I had shared with the students in both Mindanao and Malawi. He had suggested I come on over to get the royal tour of the OR and clinical facilities of the new GWUH, and I suggested that might be possible the following day---Friday—when he had several cases. So, I was shown the OR’s and Recovery Rooms and intensive care units and the design flaws of the big new hospital---like the million dollar view of Washington Circle enjoyed by ---the back staircase! Or, the ICU commodes, against the windows of 23rd Street! Or, the long hallways between even bigger OR’s (reduced in number, however) that gives the nurses foaming at the mouth from running back and forth the length of the block.
But, the most amazing thing I saw and got a personal high level tour of the sixth floor—the university’s own “learning center” filled with patient manikins and simulators and programmed patient interview rooms in which the students can examine their first videotaped patients and be scored on their clinical skills. A full OR is there in which they can learn sterile technique as well as endoscopic mock-ups and many other state of the art innovations in teaching and learning. A forty carrel computer center and a lot of the kinds of things I had done with videotape and now is being done on digital imaging is stored here, along with six classrooms and meeting centers with all the power point projectors, etc. It is a good thing I may be using in some of my own teaching and immediately emailed the NIFA group (National Institute of First Assisting) who had wanted me to be in Las Vegas last month to teach the surgical skills of first assisting, and told them that this facility was available. It is already under contract to teach both University of Maryland and Georgetown medical students.
CAN
YOU BELIEVE?
I HAVE FILLED OUT THE APPLICATION FOR---
YET ANOTHER GRADUATE PROGRAM FOR A DOCTORATE
DEGREE:
THE “ELDP” OF THE “GSEHD”
I had written to the Director of the Executive Leadership Doctoral Program, Dr. David Schwandt, about two years ago. Both Skip Williams, now the Provost of the University, and Huda Ayas, who is currently the administrator of the International Medical Programs, are graduate and current student in this EdD program and had suggested I speak with Schwandt. I wrote an email on this interests I had in International Medical Education about six months ago, and when the long-term student and now an administrator of the ELDP program had called and emailed me back, she, Margaret Gorman, had suggested I come out on Thursday of this next week and see the Ashburn Campus of GWU first-hand and talk with her and with David Schwandt about my goals and the disappointments I had experienced in the Human Sciences Program. At the same time, she had sent me an application for the ELDP, so I filled it out in advance, so that if I like what I see, and I get some advance credit for my participation in the FOUR Masters programs I have completed and the whole of the “ABD” of the Human Sciences Doctorate Program which I have just been awarded the consolation prize of the MPhil after the committee had declined to approve any of the theses proposed. I will see what this turns up in my visit there on Thursday.
A PROMISED
ONE-DAY REPRIEVE
IN THE UNUSUAL LATE SPRING WEATHER,
A PLEASANT MONDAY, TO BE FOLLOWED BY MORE
RAIN
I will try again to be active daily in the running program which has been shelved too long by travel and then interdicted by the soggy spring as thoroughly as it was by the endless February of snowed-in Derwood winter. So, I will go about my business tomorrow, but then try to put a ten mile run on the new Reeboks DMX for which I am a test pilot.