Welcome Week: November 21st, 2011

First day as a Nuclear Pharmacist.

Definitely appreciate the nice surprise in the break room:) 

Here is my work address:

Cardinal Health Nuclear Pharmacy

1933 County Road C2 W

Roseville, MN 55113

With all my family and friends' support, first week of work passed by fairly quickly.  I am just so glad that I did not have to drive through snow for work this week.  Apparently, this time last year, snow was up to your knees.  


For the first few days of work, I felt somewhat unproductive.  I am still waiting to take my radioactive safety course through the corporate HR website in order to start handling the radioactive drugs.  We had a staff meeting where the staff welcomed me to the team and also gave me a welcome gift! I will definitely be calling AAA or trying to shovel my car out of thick snow. 

Special thanks to my co-workers for my new toys!

There was a funny moment when one of the staff members asked, "So, how long have you been a pharmacist?" He was shocked when I said, "Three days..." It's somewhat crazy to be able to say that I am a working pharmacist instead of an intern pharmacist--it's a great feeling!:D  So, let me credit my friend, Jammy for helping me come up with such a cool blog name!  What is coincidental is that my field of work consist of "farm" terms. 

This is a generator aka "cow"

We "milk" the cow to elude the generators to get Tc99m.

Syringe shield made of Tungsten (aka "W" on periodic table)

This shield will protect us from radiation exposure to our hands. We use this to draw our doses from the drug vials.

Lead shield for drug vials

Drug vials are placed inside this shield.  Simply put, it's like making a chemotherapy dose at the hospital where you just use plain syringe and a drug bag.  However, in the nuclear medicine setting, syringe and drug vials both have to be shielded when we draw doses, making our hand muscles stronger.

Opened and unopened pigs

Finally, we dispense many of our doses in syringes.  Final products are radioactive aka "hot", so we place the hot syringes in the pigs to protect handlers from exposure.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!! Since I started work on November 21st, I did not plan to go back to California to visit, so I actually worked through Thursday and Friday.  I had my first holiday work-day!  I started work at 2A.M. on Thanksgiving Day.  It was another good learning experience.  I must say, though, it was difficult to focus while your body wants to sleep.  Well, that's the life of a nuclear pharmacist-- we rotate all different shifts of the day and on-call nights and weekends.  Our hours of operation at this pharmacy location is 11P.M. to 6P.M..


Today, I assembled my ottoman (really not an assembly--screwed in the legs).  My room is finally completely furnished and feels super cozy and ready for the nice long winter!  I will post some pictures of the completed project on my next entry:)

I wanted an ottoman--particularly for extra storage:)

Tata for now,
Sarah