Suze’s Summer Vacation

I want to thank all my patients and friends for encouraging me to take a much needed vacation. I’m going. Your job is stay in the best of health for the week of September 12 while I am in the sunny South.

Yes, I have my sun block, my broad brimmed hat, $50,000 of CareFirst money in medications and supplies and am traveling with the Governor’s WellMobiles. Destination – someplace where I am promised there will be at least one palm tree. We still do not know which of the huge refugee camps we will be going to. Best guess is Baton Rouge, La. or Montgomery, AL. Some of the best food I have ever eaten has been in Baton Rouge. Somehow I don’t thing we’ll be doing much dining out.

I am going on vacation with my best friend Mary Dunlavey who is a nurse practitioner professor at the U of M., and runs the WellMobile in Prince Georges County. Mary understands how to party – we will be rocking and rolling 16 hour per day, looking in ears, listening to hearts, palpating pulses, and trying to stabilize people who have lost everything in one swoosh of Katrina. We will try and get people medications to lower their blood pressure, keep their diabetes under control, fight infections, and keep them from falling apart.

One luxury I have insisted on this trip – I am not sleeping on the ground in a tent in 90+ degree temp, with humidity numbers to match. I got my sister-in-law to contribute her motor home. So we party girls of a certain age will have a bed and some AC to catch a few naps between seeing people who need me a little more next week than you do. Sorry. Yes, you can call the office and we’ll take care of you too.

This is what we need = vitamins, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, pill containers, hand sanitizer, cash (AFTER ALL THIS IS A VACATION !!)

Susan Delean-Botkin, CRNP

FamilyCare, Easton, Md.