Ice Day

Last night, the forecast called for temperatures in the upper 20s with rain. The key word there is "rain". The cold wasn't that bad if you bundled up, but the rain made going out dangerous. We didn't get any sort of instructions at work as far as what to do if the weather turned out as icy as the forecast said it would. I guess I always knew that no matter what the weather was like, I was going to try to go to work no matter what. The last time the weather was like this, I was only one of three anesthesiologists that made it into work.

I was worried enough that I woke up at about 4:30am, way before my alarm rang. I looked on the internet for school closures. I couldn't find the info on the school district website but instead on the local news website. Because Patrick was getting up to go to the bathroom anyway, I turned on the TV and got the definitive news--many of the area school districts, including ours, were closed. Unfortunately, I had to go in to work anyway.

Luckily, I had no trouble at all getting to work. I left around 5:10am, about 20 minutes earlier than usual. There were less cars than usual on the freeway. The roads were wet but not icy at all, except for maybe some of the overpasses. I didn't feel like I lost control of my car at all at any time. The only way I knew there might be ice was that the car in front of me at one point looked like it moved from side to side very briefly. There were some cars stopped on the side of the road, I guessed from last night, which made everyone go even slower than they were already going.

I got to the exit from 410 to I-35 South and that exit ramp was closed. Everything else was open. I had to figure out how to get back on track after that detour but again, I didn't have any trouble and I got to work after about a half hour trip (my usual time is about 20 minutes). Surprisingly, there was a "Cowboy Breakfast" to commemorate the beginning of the Rodeo in town, and there were a ton of people in the parking lot of the Cowboy Dance Hall where that was being held. Apparently, later on, many of the area freeways were closed, causing people a lot of trouble trying to get where they were going. So, it wasn't the weather so much as the roads being closed that caused the trouble.

After I got to work and parked in the parking garage, I noticed that the covered (but still outdoor) walkway was closed. I did not want to walk across the wet street instead and leave myself open to being hit by cars and getting rained on, so I went under the Caution tape and walked across anyway. I thought it was silly that the walkway was even closed. Apparently later, they had someone standing out there preventing people from crossing. Really? That is a great use of limited manpower--not.

This is a picture of the "Board" at 2pm. We had way more anesthesia personnel show up than OR staff, so we started with running 8 operating rooms plus two trauma rooms. The higher ups called and told us to hold two trauma rooms in case we got a bunch of trauma cases related to the weather. We actually only got one case for the whole day--except that one case came to the OR twice. We heard a few more trauma calls to the ER later in the day, though, when people started getting on the roads. I called Patrick in the morning and told him not to go out. He had contemplated a trip to the library. He held off on the library trip until the afternoon when the temperatures climbed to above freezing.

We started more operating rooms as more OR staff arrived. I was chosen to run "the Board" and I was so busy all day that I couldn't even go to the bathroom without receiving a couple of calls. The staff we had were pretty stretched, but everyone worked together as a team and that was wonderful. A few more anesthesia personnel showed up also, and by about lunch time, we were running all the rooms we were supposed to--I think it was 24 rooms plus two trauma rooms. All our staff that were designated to work late also arrived, which made me breathe a sigh of relief because that meant the rest of us could leave on time.

As you can see from the picture, everything was running later, but it looked like it would taper down to a manageable level by about 5pm, which is somewhat typical. Of course, just before I left, there were two emergency cases, one that was possibly related to the weather, but another that was not, so I'm not sure how things will turn out tonight. I was so happy to get home (and it was an easy drive too), even though I had a terrible headache. I lay down as soon as I got home and took a nice nap.

It's supposed to be a little warmer tonight and then even better tomorrow. I hope so--we're going to be spending most of the weekend in a heated tent for Natalie's swim meet--more on that later.