It’s that time of year where I do my thoughts on the practice since I took ownership. I purchased the practice in February of 2019. It’s been a wild 2 years. Here is a recap for everyone new and old to us.
Going from just being a doctor to being a practice owner was a huge leap in responsibilities that I didn’t really understand until I dove in head first. It takes a while to get all the insurances contracted and really get up and running. I would say last January we finally hit our stride.
We ordered equipment for our second exam room in February. The original idea was to be able to see patients more efficiently but then….COVID came and now the room gives us extra time to clean between patients and air out the room.
As it was for everyone, business came to a screeching halt. We are considered an essential business and so were lucky enough to stay open.
We had ALOT of downtime and filled it with staff training. We saw the occasional patient.
The bright side of COVID was I was able to slow down and relieve some of the stress by coming in a little later and leaving a little early to give my very pregnant self a break.
For those that may or may not know. I carried my first beautiful boy to 41 weeks and went into labor naturally. We had a very peaceful 16 hours of labor at a birthing center. Then he had heart problems with contractions and I was sent to the hospital. He made his appearance into this world by emergency C-section at 12:10AM July 10, 2019. The first words I heard from doctors were “Code Blue”. I thought to myself that Code Blue had to mean something different than what I thought. The nurses and doctors in the OR worked desperately to bring back a heartbeat and they were able to…. but it was too late. He had been without a heartbeat for 21 min. They let us know he was brain dead and no medical intervention could possibly bring him back. I held him in my arms for 2 hours as he took his last labored breath. We said goodbye to him at 6:15AM that same day. We unfortunately never got a clear answer for why it happened.
On June 17th of this year my second son Kai was born and he lived. He is the best gift I have ever been given. He was a 6lb 13oz scrapper with a big personality. (That’s him in the photo)
I took time off to quarantine with him and we updated the website in the meantime. How do you like the new look?
In September we brought in a hot new frame line McLaren, like the car. I outfitted my husband in them and he loves them.
In October we hired another team member, Amy Harlan, who is an optician. To make space for 2 opticians, we moved in a second desk and re-arranged the optical.
We are ready to go for another year and thankful to everyone that is our patient. Despite all the difficulties of 2020, it was great year.
—Dr. Elizondo
