My 2004 Las Vegas Initiation into the Family of Physician Assistants

Not the Elks Club

It's exciting to return to Las Vegas, where I attended my first AAPA conference in 2004. I'd been a PA for four years, was new to an AAPA committee, and was selected to do a CME topic. And I was absolutely blown away. The size, the scope, all floored me. Speaking of the floor, it was also in Las Vegas where I saw my first HOD, and I'll never forget the impression it left. I thought it would be more like an Elks Club meeting, and instead it was like seeing the US Congress in action. All the crazy rules, ceremony, testimony. Wow!

My AAPA committee had a somewhat controversial resolution on the docket, and testifying on that was also surreal, standing at a microphone in my new suit purchased just to look good for HOD, and seeing my face projected in front of me at a gargantuan and frankly disturbing scale. As I spoke nervously, it was incredibly distracting to see my mug towering over me and my frail and reedy sounding voice.

Our resolution passed! It was convoluted and wild, but it passed. Then I got very very sick for the last day, and spent it face down in my room. Before I left, I squeezed in another CME talk, practically crawling to hear pain specialist DO William Vilensky, speaking in a room the size of a battleship, packed to the gills with PAs. Vilensky almost knocked me out of my chair, challenging every pre-conception I'd ever held about opioids and treating pain. My wife took it in too, and as we dragged my ill self to the airport to fly back to Seattle, we looked at each other, shook our heads, and said "unreal." So this, we thought, is what it means to be part of the PA family.