Board preparation

This past fall my husband had several hospitalizations, culminating with the planned re-admission for surgery which we thought would pretty much clear up his recent problems. The day of surgery, we had no clue that his surgery would take over 7 hours, and end in him being placed in the ICU. But even then, I was positive that it was just overnight after a prolonged aesthetic. It wasn’t, it was the start of a two week nightmare that found me floundering. While I work a a very large Academic Medical center, Palliative Medicine is still in its infancy. So our Service consists of me and my NP( and of course SW and Pastoral Care). At the end of the first week, knowing my husband’s feeling about life prolonging care, I began to get concerned about who would I look to, if I needed advocacy as the patient’s wife? I called Pal 4 Med. I don’t recall the name of the doctor who spoke to me, listened to me cry, and provided both solace and suggestions, but she was great! And she called back several days later, too. I was able to think more clearly and make some plans. I even was able to suck up the courage to take my boards . Yes, he was still on the vent on Nov 16th, when the exam were administered, and my brain was Swiss cheese, but the testing center was only 2 miles from the hospital and my sons stayed with him, while, I played with the computer.