Thursday, November 19, 2009

Why I am glad I am a medical professional

Today, I had the MUGA test to test the strength of my heart. No results yet, but it was interesting none-the-less. With all of the time that I have been spending at Kaiser, I have found that it is in my best interest to talk about my work at Rady Children's whenever possible. So today in the Kaiser's Nuclear Medicine Department, I talked about Heparin. Not because I know a heck of a lot about it, but because I know just enough about it to be dangerous, thanks to the Cardinal Health Patient Safety Grant that I worked on last year. (Special credit to my colleague and Rady Children's Patient Safety Officer, Rich Richards for writing the grant.)

The funny thing is when you can "talk shop" or Heparin, in this case, clinicians automatically explain procedures to you on a different level. They relax and they remember you.

Turns out, I am going to have to have more than one MUGA test throughout the course of my chemotherapy - to be sure that the strength of my heart is not decreasing due to the toxicity of the chemotherapy drugs. It gives me great comfort to know I am making friends in all of the right places.

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