Lung issues

Lately, I have opened my eyes to many lung disorders. My father passed away two weeks ago with severe health problems, including emphysema and double pneumonia. In February, he was diagnosed with both, but it had been residing since November of last year. I watched him struggle for every breath he took until he finally decided to give up the fight. I watched the nurses interact with my father while he was in the hospital and the nursing home. Some of them were very kind and understanding, and others were rude and did not take very good care of him. Some even made him wait for hours for his medications. I wish that I could have done more to help him, but because of what happened to him I have learned so much about what to do to take care of patients that come to the radiology department. I thought that I was very considerate before and I have always put patients first, but now I have been super careful about how I treat them. When I do lung CT scans, I look carefully at the images to make sure I do not have to do thinner cuts through the lungs. I actually just had a compliment from one of my patients last week that greatly appreciated the care that was given to him by me because I was so throughout.
A little about MRI. It is still very tough for me to learn all the physics involved, but the scanning is going well. I have been trying to work on the open sided magnet, because I feel like it is more of a challenge than the 1.5T. When you are scanning in the open, you only have one localizer to set your scans off of. I feel like I learn not only how to scan, but also why you scan a certain way and how to manipulate the image to decrease time or to get a better quality image. The open sided is very slow, but between setting my exams up and reviewing my images, I get a lot of studying done. On the contrast, I also like working on the 3T, because it is the complete opposite. That machine is a lot quicker, but you have to really watch your SAR values and also be extremely careful with who is scanned in the magnet.