School Elections

We have had a flux of lunchtime informative lectures held by clinical pharmacists, all organized by CSHP. Pharmacists specializing in infectious disease even gave a lunchtime lecture this week. Since it is also AIDS action week, sessions were also held by pharmacists working in an AIDS clinics, sexologists holding discussion panels about HIV prevention, or other experts in HIV awareness.





Also, we held elections for CSHP and APhA for new cabinet members since all the second years will not be able to continue their positions. It was a pretty tight race between all the candidates since many of them have been involved in all the health fairs, attended the conferences, and are actively participating in the Medicare Part D, internship accredidation, and legislative day projects.

This is the last of my collection of visits to Laguna Honda Hospital.

I wandered all over Claredon Hall looking for Robert. Not in the day room, the lunch room, the lobby, nor in his bed. Just as I was about to give up, I spotted a 6 foot old Irish man with stooped shoulders and wearing a tan jacket and a SF giants beanie pulled over his head. It was easy to find a man with his gait walking slowly with his feet turned out. He was among a few friends all standing outside the ramp leading to the hospital entrance. I approached him not knowing whether this time he would remember me or not.

“Hi Robert.”

“Robert. Dobert Schlobert. Mobert,” he mumbled back at me in a half sarcastic, half comedically indifferent tone.

I took it with a smile. I inquired how he was doing, but he seemed more interested in finding a cigarette than chatting with me. There was a strange mix of warm air flowing out of the hospital pushing back to winter chill. The residents must have deemed this their smoking spot since they could smoke outside and still manage to stay warm.

He clenched his fists as if the motion would suppress the gnawing itch of his mind for nicotine. Attempting to divert his attention, I tried to see if remembered my name. Even though he could not recall it at the moment, after I repeated it to him, he did at least remember my face from the previous week when I visited. Progress at the very least.

He continued to talk to me about his “hot shit” 1000 cubic centimeter piston bike. Gas with at the left handle, brake the front wheel with the right hand, and brake the back wheel by stepping on the right pedal.

That made me remember how my friend recently lost his bike after just parking it in the lot one day in San Diego. Then I asked him what happened to his bike in the end. Apparently, he sold it after he broke up with his ex-wife. He recalled how they broke up in New Orleans and he fled the city to go back to Chicago after that.

There’s not a city like Chicago. There was not supposed to be a large metropolitan in the midst of all that wind.

This was in contradiction to the story that he told me previously about breaking up with his ex-wife in Colorado. Even after the fourth or fifth time around, I still find myself having trouble piecing his life together.

He needed to head to the dining room for lunch, so I escorted him down the hall. Like every visit before, he commented about how much he liked the hospital and all the nurses whom served him. No pharmacists mentioned by him. At least not yet.