Blogging in the Clouds: Week of November 16, 2018

Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,

Greetings from the air as I head up to Boston to join our speech-language pathology and audiology colleagues at their annual American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) conference. Isn’t technology great?! I’m excited to see their posters and interact with many of our students, faculty and alumni! Dr. Aravamudhan represented OCA at the convention attending her CAA board meeting and making a presentation on her research project with mild Traumatic Brain Injury patients.

I hope everyone survived our first taste of winter weather yesterday. It was quite a surprise! Even with our pre-winter surprise, things remained busy at Salus.

On Tuesday evening our staff from The Eye Institute was honored with the Montgomery County School Nurse Association’s (MCSNA) School Health Partnership Award in recognition for the School Vision Programs. Tanis and I had the honor of attending, along with Dr. Brandy Scombordi, Dr. Luis Trujillo and Cathie Muhr.

Last week I mentioned that Dr. Bisant Labib became the 15th diplomate in the Comprehensive Eye Care section of the AAO. What I didn’t’ know at the time was that Dr. Labib made history by being the youngest female to ever attain this historical achievement - many congratulations to her!

Given the almost total devastation of the town of Paradise, California from the terrible fires out there, I felt compelled to mention that in this week’s update. Here are some staggering stats as of yesterday:

California officials said they've identified most of the 59 people known to have died in wildfires that started a week ago. Searchers recovered eight more victims of the "Camp Fire" north of Sacramento on Wednesday along with a third victim of the "Woolsey Fire" near Los Angeles. In the "Camp Fire," 130 other people are still unaccounted for. The blaze has destroyed nearly 9,000 homes and forced at least 52,000 people to evacuate.

If you are interested in assisting those affected by devastating California fires, the Red Cross has a separate pull down item "California Wildfires" for this purpose on their "Donate Now" page.

As we approach this weekend, please keep the folks in California in your thoughts and prayers. Have a safe and restful weekend!

Mike