Recap before bedtime...

Today we got a bit of sunshine, though it was cloudy in the afternoon. I spent about 3 hours studying in the library, which was good.

My run yesterday was good and I stuck to my 3 miles, almost exactly, which was also good. Then I went to the Y and did upper & lower body weights. Nice and sore today--not too much, just enough to know I did some good. I like that.

Mostly, I studied this weekend. Hubby is starting a new job this week, but hopefully will be coming to Spokane later in the week. I sure hope so! I have a big exam next Monday so all week and all weekend will be about studying for it. I can't really go to Portland until that's over, so hopefully he can come here this week. I sure miss him a lot.

I've been reading the boards at nurse-anesthesia.org this weekend. It's a great site, full of CRNAs, SRNAs, and wanna-be's...but it's also depressing hearing what things are like at other anesthesia programs. CRNAs who "pimp" the students in their charge (ask them hard, often esoteric questions designed to make the CRNA look good), MDAs who belittle or sabotage CRNAs and students, the political environment of anesthesia in general...it can be overwhelming. But we have a pretty good thing going at Gonzaga. Our program directors are supportive and so are the clinical staff. The environment is friendly and warm, not militant. The US News rankings came out for 2007 and our program came in 23rd place, which is a pretty good showing for a tiny program on the West Coast. 8 students a year is nothing compared to a lot of these programs. And we came ahead of programs like Duke, Vandy, all the East Coast schools that my friends are at... These rankings are subjective and don't really mean a whole lot, in truth, but still it's nice that at least our reputation gets us ranked fairly highly among all the programs in the country today. Sometimes I read about the political issues within anesthesia and I wonder if there is going to be a career waiting for me at all when I am out of school. Anesthesiologists wish to have CRNAs work, but only if we accept their "medical direction" and they can bill for our work. I could expound on all of the issues here, but I'm not going to...because this blog isn't about that, and because I'm tired. But this is going to be a major health care issue in the near future so watch and support your local CRNA!

Weight loss...not happening right now. The rhubarb pie surely didn't help, even if it was made with 1/2 Splenda. I'm still stuck in Plateau Land. This week, hopefully I can make some progress.