A Work in Progress

At work we had a ‘big old disaster drill’ at a local nursing home. It was actually a lot of fun (which was surprising to me). They had planned for an unreasonable amount of things to be going on at once, including but not limited to: a chlorine spill, an apartment fire, a terrorist threat, a tornado, an overturned canoe in a lake that no one is allowed to boat in, another fire, people lost in the woods, an earthquake, a bus accident full of children and elderly people, a hurricane, and a collapsed building. We were summoned to the 4th floor of an assisted living facility to assess some fake patients. Firemen were all around, running patients up and down the stairs. The event coordinators had actually convinced a large number of jolly elderly people to participate in the drill as victims. Everyone I encountered seemed generally bemused about what was going on and were all fun to talk to. All of the victims had cards around their necks stating their demographics and injuries. One...

Last week I was thrown up on, stung by a bee, and chased by a dog, but other than that, I had a very relaxing visit with some old friends. My college roommate had a baby last month, so two my girlfriends and I went down to her house for a week, basically so we could all stand around and adore her baby. It was just like college, only with a baby. We watched movies, played video games, cooked together, and made a lot of junk food; brownies, rice krispy treats, ice cream, cake, and topped it all off with deep fried pickles. My friends’ husband had been promising me these for two years, and they were very strange, but worth the wait. The mars bar is still the best deep fried thing I’ve ever had to eat, but the pickles are a strong second. My first day there we were enjoying the southern weather when a bee randomly stung me, unprovoked. I mean, I wasn’t even making fun of it or anything; it just landed on my leg and stung me. I did get a little panicked as I’m not sure if I’d ever been...

My partner today was telling me a recent conversation she overheard at the hospital. A patient had a broken arm and they were going to "consciously sedate" her to set it. Conscious sedation involves giving one lovely drugs that make the fact that there is an extra joint in your arm a completely forgettable or hilarious situation. The nurse prepared to give the patient propofol, which is a brilliant drug for such things. (as an aside, the drug itself is white, so it is commonly referred to as "Milk of amnesia" Good stuff) So the conversation was as follows: Pt: (justifiably full of trepidation) "So, what are you going to give me?" Nurse: "The same stuff they gave to Michael Jackson." Pt: (not wanting to die of a broken arm) "Oh, my God, what?!" Now she's nice and relaxed for the procedure.

In recent days I have found myself standing in my apartment staring at various items, quietely considering them. Do I need this item now, will I need it next year, will I need it in the future? These battles with myself can last for up to half an hour as I slowly fade into insanity while I consider whether or not to pack a shirt that I haven't worn in the last year and a half. The pile of stuff for goodwill grows by the minute. Don't worry, it's not filled with anything of monitary or sentimental value. Mostly it's things that I question why I've held onto them for this long. Things like a hat from the job that I hated that still has the tags on it. I wonder if it's necessary to keep CDs of pictures that I already have one physical copy and two seperate sets of digital copies of. So I will muse: Well, the CDs are a form of back up. A form of back up that I don't even get for any of my newer pictures. They take up space, but I did pay for them. Probably two d...

Yesterday I traded in the last of my way too many Nalgene bottles for BPA free versions. Months ago, Nalgene stated that there was no evidence to believe that BPA was dangerous for humans, and then the next day announced that they were changing all of their bottles to BPA free. Guilty. Doing that is like denying that you committed a crime and skipping town the next day. Just admit it! So after a few months of forgetting them every time I went to the store, I finally traded in the last three for some fancy new ones. I was holding out for a better color than the basic blue and yellow, and I'm really happy with these. Yeah, remember what I said about being a nerd in the last post. Now I just have to break them in, and by break them in, I mean throw them down the driveway into oncoming traffic.

We were called for a diabetic problem. We fixed him right up but my partner became concerned when his initial heart rate was 38. That could be a problem. We printed out about a mile of EKG strip to figure out that he was in a second degree atrioventricular heart block type 1, aka Mobitz 1, aka a Wenckebach. (my parents love when I throw down the big words) Turned out that this was completely normal for him, but I explained that we didn't see this everyday which might explain our excitement and fascination. In fact when I did a 12 lead I think I said it was only to satisfy my own curiosity, as his was after all, a diabetic problem. He didn't mind and he was happily asymptomatic, as are most of these patients, but it looks cool anyway. Well, to nerds. Unsurprisingly, the LP 12 interpretation was wrong.

My submission (thanks to my friend paul) was selected for a post on Cake Wrecks, one of the funniest blogs in blog world. ( cakewrecks.blogspot.com ) Paul had the three mile island cake made. Why? I really don't know. Either way, it's a proud moment for me. Linky!

“Your patient died.” my partner announced as I entered the room. “What?!” “Yeah, she died.” it was strangely casual. It made me more sad. As I looked back I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was. When we arrived an EMT was crammed into the back of the twisted car, the front of it barely recognizable. He was making his best efforts to protect the patients’ spine from further injury. But the patient was so altered that she was not even able to rationalize her actions, pulling off the collar and oxygen, and kicking her free leg. One look at the pale, sweaty, tachypnic patient and I said “This one goes first.” The fire department continued to carefully cut the mangled car away from the patient. I didn’t even get a blood pressure before the receiving helicopter crew arrived. We intubated her on the street while the helicopter blades droned, waiting in the background. I watched as they took off, satisfied at the speed of the call, barely ten minutes had past since I arrived. Th...

This past week I went on my first proper backpacking trip. We went to the Dolly Sods wilderness in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. This area is called Dolly sods after a German guy named "Dahle" who used the open meadows or "sods" for livestock grazing in the 20's (after it was logged quite a bit). In the 30's the CCC worked to reforest the area and prevent erosion. In the 40's the area was used for army artillery practice. Because of this, there are warnings at the trail heads to be on the look out for remaining unexploded rounds. Slightly disappointingly, we did not happen upon any of those. I am not sure where the attraction is in hiking miles into the wilderness, carrying a heavy load on your back, sleeping in the woods, and then hiking back out, but I like it. I gathered a lot of satisfaction in carrying everything we needed on our backs and "surviving" in the wilderness for a couple of days. It was a fantastic in...

Readers, it appears that it is time for my semi-annual summer blogging slump to come to an end. I have had a busy last few weeks, between work, sleep, and playing outside I haven't had much time to blog. I have been on a few "good" calls recently, somehow having a black cloud over my head for about two weeks. The calls were equal parts interesting and depressing, which is probably what has kept me from writing about them. A lot of ideas have been floating around for the last few weeks, so hopefully one or two will come to fruition sooner than later. I feel like I need to do them justice. I had another few days at camp which were actually a lot of fun. I didn't do anything more exciting than give out tylenol and I mostly had repeat customers. The girl whom I gave unnecessary bandaids to came back with a mysterious pain in her thumb. I poked and prodded and examined it thoroughly and unsurprisingly found nothing wrong with her. On the verge of just giving in and...

Now that the WAP is going to happen, every day when I hear the date, I say “Holy crap is it really July 19th? All-freaking ready?” I’ll look at my own calendar to confirm it as a small burst of nervous adrenaline seizes me for a moment or two. I’m afraid that this is going to happen every day until I leave, only the doses of adrenaline will become larger and larger until I am walking around in a bug-eyed completely panic stricken state. After two days of panic, today I knew it was time to make a list. I have a few minutes to gather my thoughts at work today and tomorrow, before setting off for a full week of work and playing camp nurse. Oh, the comforts that a list can bring. The feeling of having a complete list (not to mention one with things crossed off of it) is always stress relieving to me. Items one and two are buying a plane ticket and applying for housing, two things that require me to be at home for longer than five minutes.

Last week and next I am acting as camp “nurse” at my local summer camp. I went to the same camp as a kid, and was even a counselor once. I walked in on Monday for day camp last week and proclaimed, “Ah, smells like camp!” It’s not a bad smell, just a mix of sun tan lotion, bug spray, campfire smoke, and camp food. A few more memories came back to me of my time at camp, but mostly it’s all pretty vague, a different era of my life where I’m pretty sure I was an idiot. We have to keep track of the campers’ prescription meds, dole them out, and make sure nobody dies. I have been official band-aid giver-outer which is a pretty sweet job. One girl came to me after falling off of a swing. She was giggling like a mad person and had a tiny cut on her knee. Once she calmed herself she was able to give me the hilarious (to an eight year old) story, as I cleaned off the dirt and gave her a band-aid. “I need one there too!” she proclaimed, pointing to a blank spot of skin. “Where?” I aske...

There are many people in this world who have had or will have a huge impact on my life. But actually, I will never meet many of these people. From politicians and celebrities, to the people who invented the equipment I use everyday at work, right down to the people who assembled my car to keep me safe. Last week a group of people helped me set out on a new adventure. Someone who I will never meet or know approved my entrance into the UK. Someone else scanned my photo into a computer program. Someone else affixed the visa to my passport and sealed it with a fancy consulate stamp. I don't know them, but I'm so happy that they do their jobs. Like so many times, it's the people you don't meet that matter. I came home from work and saw the overstuffed, battered envelope that I had meticulously filled with a ridiculous number of official documents waiting for me. I had received no word from the expediting service, only found that they had charged my credit card their f...

When the BLS crew turned him over onto a backboard, they noticed his left leg flopped languidly, bending at a joint that hadn't been there ten minutes ago. When I got there he was relatively settled onto the litter, although he couldn't lay flat due to a shoulder injury. He also had crepitus in his upper chest; but for a big guy with no helmet and a high speed motorcycle crash, he appeared to be very lucky. One thing that was strange was when he told me that he couldn't be sedated because his throat would swell shut. I asked him what kind of drugs he was allergic to, and he insisted it wasn't an allergic reaction. That puzzled me, but I moved on as it didn't appear that I would be sedating him anyway. The helicopter crew got there, and I had him describe this throat swelling issue to them. He said, when he was sedated, his throat went closed, and they also asked him about allergies. pt.: I don't have an allergy, but I can't be sedated because my throat ...

Today we saw a bald eagle while kayaking. Well, basically, awesome.

We went to a trouble breathing call and the patient felt a lot better with oxygen and then did not wish to be transported. I suggested that it was not exactly normal to suddenly feel short of breath and he should probably be checked out further at the hospital. Even after we gave him a few minutes to think about it, he was still pretty hesitant. Usually people would have made a decision by then. When his wife appeared at the doorway, I asked her opinion. Me: "I don't think that he wants to go to the hospital; maybe you can convince him?" Wife: "Well, I think you should go." Patient: "Okay." Me: "Well, that was easy."

This is probably illegal to post, but I live dangerously and it's pretty funny. The visa application is all online for US citizens. It's pretty handy and the only quick and straight forward part of the whole process. You can save it half way through and finish it later. This section asks "Do you have any children?" Underneath it states "Don't have the information on hand? Click here to save your application." This just struck me as funny as it implied that you might have to go check somewhere to see if you have any children or not. Well, I was amused. And it was a lot of effort to get the picture of the question on here; totally worth it.

I am now the proud owner of the greatest sleeping pad known to camping kind. Well, that's just my opinion. The inflatable, insulated 2.5" thick, 22 oz, partially recycled Big Agnes insulated air core sleeping pad. An early birthday present from C in honor of our pending backpacking trip. It rocks. It's only about a million times greater than the one I had before. I am even tempted to sleep on it tonight even thought I'll be at home.

Well, the visa application is again out of my hands and currently on its way to the expediting service in Chicago. To keep the visa gods happy, I'll say no more. For now I'm off to work for the next million hours. This is also my 500th post.

Last week I spotted this amusing warning painted along my bike route. Strangely, I had never thought of being sabotaged by a groundhog before. So, be warned, bikers!