One Month to Go

One month to go! In all the anticipation of departure, we had some concern about leaving our house unattended all that time. Our daughter, son-in-law, and family (grandson and cat) have agreed to stay in the house and watch over it and all its systems. Whew.
Holiday gifts have taken a back seat to purchases for the trip. However, one gift I couldn't resist was in the golf pro-shop, a Greg Norman tie-died looking short-sleeved shirt for Barbara that had South Africa written all over it!
We have been doing some reading...Culture-Smart Botswana by Mike Main and #1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith for me, and books by Unity Dow (a local novellist), Laurens Van Der Post's The Lost World of the Kalahari, memoirs of Quett Ketumile Joni Masire, the second Botswana president, Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana, The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites (these were Barbara's choices). I think we'll both enjoy the Bradt Safari Guide of Botswana, which should come in handy on weekends.
Right now I'm preparing Power Point talks to give on the weekly conference schedule. I'll plan to emphasize Heart Failure, Acute and Chronic CAD, Clinical Utility of Echo (using ACC/AHA Guidelines), along with the basics of taking ECGs, performing a cardiac examination, and probably management of patients with valvular heart disease. I'm still teaching at the hospital, doing echo scanning and attending conferences and committee meetings. I don't know how I could have gotten all this done while continuing to practice!