It's still probably pertussis

I wanted to give everybody an update on Felix. I didn't want to do it sooner in case he fell victim to the Buffalo Pharmer curse, but it really looks like he's going to be OK at this point. We've been out of the hospital for six days, and each day in which hospitalization is not necessary improves his chances. He's still sick, but now it looks like a baby normally would when sick, instead of the constant, heart-breaking coughing. We never got the pertussis culture back, so we don't know for sure if he has that.

Xander got the same thing Felix had, but RSV is a total monster in infants so in Xander it didn't really seem to slow him down. He slept a little more, coughed a lot, and had a runny nose. At this point, I'm thankful that not only did we stay out of the hospital, I didn't have to miss any work and only skipped one day of classes. Things could have been so much worse.

The outpouring of support from friends and family was incredible. Thank you to everyone who included us in your thoughts, prayers, pagan sacrifices, or whatever. It obviously made a difference; Felix stayed out of the hospital simply by the grace of God.

Unless one of the boys takes a turn for the worse, I should resume regular posts next week. Thanks for stopping by.

It's probably pertussis

Yesterday I mentioned Felix was sick. Today at the doctor's office they told us it's probably pertussis and RSV. The RSV part doesn't worry me too much; that's a common infection. I'm sure Xander had it at some point. Pertussis is a serious deal. At this point, we have an appointment every day for the rest of the week so they can monitor him, and they told us if he starts wheezing or has trouble breathing we need to go to the hospital. Honestly, I'm terrified of that.

There may be no greater feeling of helplessness than having a seriously ill child. Granted, we aren't talking about serious illness in the same sense as my friends whose baby was born with seizures, or the unluckiest percentage of the population who have to take a child for chemotherapy, but this is not just a common cold. At this point, we have to be prepared to hospitalize him to receive oxygen treatments. That's not something I want to think about, let alone do. A baby on oxygen is heartbreaking image. The thought of seeing my baby on oxygen is a nightmare.

Right now, Felix is still at home. I'm skipping class tomorrow to be with Xander while Jaime takes him to his daily appointment. Hopefully, his body fights off the infection and he recovers without complication, but there are a lot of scenarios that don't turn out that well. I'm scared.

I'm back

I was going to stop posting, but then a friend told me he had been checking for new posts and hadn't seen them. So a quick update:

I passed everything in the fall semester, even though I didn't go to class for two weeks after Felix was born. My grades weren't super, but I finished strong and now the spring semester is winding down. I'm totally exhausted most of the time, and I'm going to be very happy if I can pull a C in each of my classes. This semester, I participated in two electives, which was ill-advised. It's going to make next spring easier, because that's the time that electives are scheduled into the curriculum. The third year spring is dominated by the Comprehensive Patient Care course, which is a 9-credit-hour capstone course that combines everything we've learned throughout the curriculum. It's entirely different from everything up to that point, and many students struggle mightily with it. Having those electives out of the way will let me focus on that.

Both boys are healthy and adorable. Felix eats well, although we did have to put him on Prevacid to help with some GERD. It's been my experience that second-time parenting is about a hundred times easier. There are a lot fewer surprises. I also love learning more and more about his personality. It's amazing, but with the same parents our two boys are already obviously different from each other. Xander seems to be really kinetic. He likes to dance to music of any kind. Felix, on the other hand, likes to sing along. Jaime will sing to him, and he'll make little baby singing sounds back - in key! He's also amazingly even cuter than Xander was at that age.

That's a lot of update in just a few words. I'll be back within the week with some more content, but I wanted to get something out there while I had the chance. Thanks for stopping by.

I made this

Well, my wife did most of the work, but I helped.

This is my new son, Felix Christopher. He was born at 3:22 a.m. one week ago today. I think he's perfect. He doesn't cry or fuss, he burps himself, and he loves to eat. Xander had terrible GERD, so a milk hound is pretty refreshing. I hope he keeps that up.

My favorite thing about him is how alert he is. If you hold him, he will just stare at you. He gets this profound look on his face like he's contemplating the deeper mysteries of your soul. And his coordination is incredible. On his first day of life, he grabbed my hand and pulled it into his mouth. That's not something your average just-born baby does.

I've been blessed to be able to take two weeks off of work to be home with mom and baby. It's been incredible. Also, with the semester winding down, I skipped pretty much all of my classes last week and the remaining three for this week. Now it's juts five exams and I'm done. I think I can pull this off. Then four weeks to work and rest and be with my baby. I'm excited for that. I need some time off to recharge and gear up for the spring semester. I don't think it could be any more grueling than the fall was. From my conversations with upperclassmen, I get the impression the fall of the second and third years are the worst two semesters, so hopefully that holds true.

I don't know that I wrote too much about the Interdisciplinary Ethics Course, at least this time around. That class was a source of great frustration to me. Every school on the campus participates in this class, which meets in small groups (mine was 9 in the first semester and 8 this time around), so you get some exposure to other disciplines, which I liked. You spend five weeks of your semester basically discussing ethical scenarios. For instance, you have a minor patient (under 18) who comes in for a dental exam and you find signs that she might have bulimia. When you confront her about it, she breaks down and asks you not to tell her parents. What do you do? The course teaches you to think through ethical dilemmas completely, considering all points of views and all the values at stake. The idea is to equip you to (1) work with a team of health professionals and (2) make ethical decisions that you are able to defend later.

Well, I really liked this class. What I didn't like was the timing of it. Ethics is a discipline that interests me, and discussion is probably my favorite type of classroom activity. This semester we had a great facilitator, too. He was a graduate student in philosophy from CU-Boulder, and he was great at guiding our discussions. But because this P2 fall is so hectic, I didn't have time to really do the course justice. That frustrated me. I wish the course happened over the summer so I could really give it the time it deserves. Regardless, I got a superior grade. The class is pass/fail, but students who go above and beyond are recognized by the facilitator with a letter reflecting superior performance. I was really honored that he decided to award that grade to me.

I think that's all I have to say right now. I've got another "not in my pharmacy" brewing, but it's not ready for publication yet. Stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by.

Not in My Pharmacy: Smoking

This post is the first in a new sub-series for me. As I become more immersed, and more comfortable, in the profession of pharmacy I find myself developing opinions about the way things are and the way they ought to be. There are plenty of things wrong with the profession. Some of them are necessary evils (the complexity of insurance billing); others are absolute monstrosities (the inhuman profit motive driving retail pharmacy chains). What I'm going to do with the "Not in My Pharmacy" series is lay out things that I won't allow to happen in my pharmacy when I'm a pharmacist.

The first issue I'm tackling is tobacco sales. Now, I understand that the tobacco industry is a historical artifact built on centuries of tradition, and that it provides jobs to thousands of Americans and fuels our economy on a basic level. I'm not trying to go to war with the Big Tobacco (at least not yet). What I'm taking a stand on is the sale of cigarettes and other carcinogenic tobacco products in pharmacies. A pharmacy is a source of health care. It's where you go to get well. It's pure hypocrisy for such a place to sell a known carcinogen with little or no medical benefit. In many countries, it's now illegal for pharmacies to sell cigarettes. But if you go into your local Walgreen's (or Rite Aid, or a supermarket, or Wal-Mart - I'm not trying to fight a particular chain here; they're all bad on this), you'll find that while you have to walk all the way to the back to get your prescription medications you can buy cigarettes right up front. I don't understand this. Retail pharmacists have enough trouble being taken seriously as health care professionals. Why do we sell something that causes so many health problems?

My pledge today is this: No one will buy cigarettes in my pharmacy. To the extent that I have the ability to make that decision, cigarettes will be as inaccessible as possible. My preference is to work in one of the few retail pharmacies that don't sell tobacco, but that limits me to Target, independent pharmacies, and Kaiser. (PLEASE tell me of other options if you know of them.) I'm not going to limit my job search to this handful of companies. That isn't financially feasible at this time. What I will do is ensure that wherever I work, customers are not able to buy cigarettes at the dispensary counter. I'll use whatever power I have to make cigarettes harder to get in other areas of the drug store as well. Whenever and wherever I can set policy, I will make it as smoker-unfriendly as I can. And if you work in my pharmacy, you don't get a smoke break. Too many workplaces give special break schedules to smokers. Everybody gets the same breaks as mandated by law and company policy. You can smoke on those breaks, if you want to, but you have to be out of sight of the entrance, and you don't get extra time to do it.

Smokers, please don't misunderstand me. If you want to kill yourselves, please go ahead. I used to be a smoker; I understand that it's an addiction and it's really hard to quit. But I want you to buy your cigarettes at the gas station, or at a tobacco store, not at my pharmacy. And I want you to quit, too. I want to help you do that if I can. I don't think less of you because you smoke. The tobacco industry is very good at getting people to buy their product, despite the fact that it is lethal to their customers, and despite the overwhelming medical evidence against smoking. I'm going to do my part to make sure that my pharmacy is a place for health, not cancer. I'll sell you the patch, or the gum, or the lozenges, or prescriptions to help you quit. I just won't be the guy that helps you keep smoking.

People are still reading this?!?

So, I know I haven't posted in... a while... and that was pretty much apathy at work. I'd apologize, but I really don't care. I'm a busy dood. But today I looked at my "stats" tab, which tells you, among other things, how people came to your blog. That was pretty revealing to me. Most of them come from facebook or Twitter links, which makes sense. A couple of people Google searched for this URL, which is weird. And most interesting of all is this chart:

So, at least one person wanted to know why everyone hates Boulder, and hopefully I was able to help with that. And another person totally empathizes with me on the subject. A lot of people were clearly looking for the blog (bufflo pharmer, buffalopharmer, "buffalopharmer"). I'm really confused about the last one, though. Just for kicks, I did a Google search for zoosex, and I'm not in the top 50 pages. (DON'T do this search, by the way; the top 50 pages are all... well, what you would expect to find if searching for zoosex.) So somebody sifted through a LOT of pron and then decided they would check out this blog. Creepy?

Anyway, I had 11 pageviews today, which surprises me. So people still check out my posts. In that case, I'll continue. Oh, I must have a following in Brazil, too. I had over 50 views from Brazil, and lately Israel has really been digging me (30 in the last month). So hey, if I don't personally know you, would you do me a favor and leave a comment at the bottom of the page? Just let me know how you got to this page and where you're from. It'll be like having a penpal or something.

So maybe I can make another post this week, if you're lucky.

Transpacific pears

Last night at work I had a prepacked cup of pears for dessert. It was delicious, but as I ate it I noticed printed on the side the words "PEARS F/ARGENTINA PACKED IN THAILAND." I thought that was odd. There's something fundamentally flawed with the global economy if it's really cost effective to grow pears in Argentina, ship them across the Pacific Ocean to be packed in Thailand, then ship them back across the Pacific to the United States for consumption. I mean, it probably makes sense to grow in Argentina, at least during certain parts of the year. I get that. But really, it's cheaper to ship it halfway across the world so little kids can pack it instead of packing it either (1) where it's grown or (2) where it's sold? Staggering. Think about how bad that is for the Earth. Think about how oppressive that is to the people of Thailand and, for that matter, Argentina. It makes me angry. It makes me not want to buy fruit from Dole. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

So, sorry I haven't posted for some time. I have no excuse, other than being a full-time student who works 32 hours a week and has a family to take care of. I got through "hell week" fairly well, scoring an A on two exams and a... passing grade... on the third. Also, I passed the verbal telephone exam (it was pass/fail). I think the rest of the semester is going to be a continuous gauntlet of tests, assignments and activities. I'll trade to drop updates as I go, but I'm having a baby at the end of November, so don't be too upset if I don't have a ton of time for you, my readers.

I also want to go on the record (so I can brag about it later) on the baseball playoffs. Since TBS started airing playoff games, the team that plays its League Championship Series on FOX (and therefore starts their series one day later) has won the World Series every year. That means the winner of Phillies/Giants, whoever that is, is in line to win the title this year. Let's see if that happens.