"...it's a helluva job, there's a lot of crap to do, and tag, you're it"

9am:
Yesterday I was officially "commissioned" as the Chief Pharmacy Officer (CPO). It was a very somber ceremony in the NICU/PICU satellite pharmacy- I wore a fuzzy headband with tiger-fur ears and my headlamp, and Seth (CMO) tapped each shoulder and dubbed me "CPO - it's a helluva job, there's a lot of crap to do, and tag, you're it".

There's a lot to do - lots to organize, accomplish, and the daunting task of trying to figure out where everything's been moved to. But I'm impressed with how many things are not that different from a month ago. I was in bed by midnight, and actually slept until the morning meeting at 7:30.

Noon:
The hair stood up on the back of my neck when the surgeon sent for me - she'd heard there was a compounding pharmacist, and needed me to make some antibiotics to shoot into a badly infected eyeball, to keep it from abscessing into the brain. As Mike put it, "if anyone here can make it, it's you".

I'm praying my aseptic technique is good enough for the intra-occular vanco and ancef I'm about to make in my "hood" (plywood table, covered in a ripped apart surgical gown). I wish Keri (total rockstar sterile room pharmacy tech) was here - she could do this in her sleep...

We called a specialist back home to talk about a recipe - not exactly PCCA, but hey, this is a third world MASH unit. We can't really touch too much in the OR, so Dave and I did the "chest bump hand off" as I delivered "the goods"...

~PJ