I survived it, so I can tell you about my weekend
On Friday, I had a clinical, it was boring. Seriously, nothing exciting happened.
On Saturday it snowed, finally. We all went out to dinner and I volunteered to drive, as I’ve been waiting for a chance to test my 4x4. Have I mentioned lately that I love my truck? Let me say now that 4-wheel drive is the greatest advancement in winter travel since the ski. I’m blown away by the fact that I can accelerate and brake in snow, and brake! Awesome.
The testing of the 4-wheel drive of also consisted of ahem uh, doing donuts in the school parking lots. cough! You haven’t lived until you’ve driven sideways, on purpose.
On Sunday we did all kinds of snowy activities. Ewing, CJ, and I went hiking in a nearby state park, down to a broken dam on one of my favorite rivers. The snow was pretty deep in places, and made for an absolutely beautiful trek through the trees. Between the light snow and the flowing, yet tumultuous waters, I found my Zen spot; but was knocked out of it abruptly by a snowball.
When we got home, we dried off and had requisite cups of cocoa with scores of marshmallows.
Then I tried out a sport that I’m sorry to say I didn’t invent, but happily endorse: snowyaking, as I like to call it, or sledaking, or kayedding. I’m not sure of its official name as of yet, but it’s of no consequence. It is the greatest advancement in winter travel since 4x4. The speed, steering with the paddle, and absolutely no fear of drowning (until I hopped over that little creek). I’m calling the winter Olympic committee, asap. You haven’t lived until you’ve caught air in a kayak, on land.
On Monday I had work. I could say it was almost too entertaining. The best thing about the day is that we didn’t do any BLS calls. The worst part of the day was a patient on 3 drip medications, had an intra-aortic balloon pump, needed arterial-line BP monitoring, EKG monitoring, difficult pulse oximetry, and to top it all off was on bi-pap requiring a vent. The call would have been fine, except no one told us he needed a vent, and we quickly discovered that he needed the type of vent that wasn’t on our unit. So we had to wait almost an hour for another unit to bring the right vent. In this time, we got the patient all packaged and ready; on our monitor, the drips switched over and all that good stuff. When the vent finally got there, our nurse couldn’t figure out how to make it do what we needed it to do. A respiratory therapist came in to help, and he couldn’t figure it out. In the mean time, the vent was sucking our oxygen tanks faster than we could replace them, the patient was getting really tired of lying flat (which is an absolute requirement for bilateral femoral artery lines), and the low battery signal started blinking on our monitor. Long story short, we delivered the patient safely to the cath lab, and then got another call about 30 seconds later. Ahh!
Other than that I posted pics of my new favorite hang out, the kids in the snow, and got the giggles.
So, as always, staying out of trouble and studying hard on my time off.
On Saturday it snowed, finally. We all went out to dinner and I volunteered to drive, as I’ve been waiting for a chance to test my 4x4. Have I mentioned lately that I love my truck? Let me say now that 4-wheel drive is the greatest advancement in winter travel since the ski. I’m blown away by the fact that I can accelerate and brake in snow, and brake! Awesome.
The testing of the 4-wheel drive of also consisted of ahem uh, doing donuts in the school parking lots. cough! You haven’t lived until you’ve driven sideways, on purpose.
On Sunday we did all kinds of snowy activities. Ewing, CJ, and I went hiking in a nearby state park, down to a broken dam on one of my favorite rivers. The snow was pretty deep in places, and made for an absolutely beautiful trek through the trees. Between the light snow and the flowing, yet tumultuous waters, I found my Zen spot; but was knocked out of it abruptly by a snowball.
When we got home, we dried off and had requisite cups of cocoa with scores of marshmallows.
Then I tried out a sport that I’m sorry to say I didn’t invent, but happily endorse: snowyaking, as I like to call it, or sledaking, or kayedding. I’m not sure of its official name as of yet, but it’s of no consequence. It is the greatest advancement in winter travel since 4x4. The speed, steering with the paddle, and absolutely no fear of drowning (until I hopped over that little creek). I’m calling the winter Olympic committee, asap. You haven’t lived until you’ve caught air in a kayak, on land.
On Monday I had work. I could say it was almost too entertaining. The best thing about the day is that we didn’t do any BLS calls. The worst part of the day was a patient on 3 drip medications, had an intra-aortic balloon pump, needed arterial-line BP monitoring, EKG monitoring, difficult pulse oximetry, and to top it all off was on bi-pap requiring a vent. The call would have been fine, except no one told us he needed a vent, and we quickly discovered that he needed the type of vent that wasn’t on our unit. So we had to wait almost an hour for another unit to bring the right vent. In this time, we got the patient all packaged and ready; on our monitor, the drips switched over and all that good stuff. When the vent finally got there, our nurse couldn’t figure out how to make it do what we needed it to do. A respiratory therapist came in to help, and he couldn’t figure it out. In the mean time, the vent was sucking our oxygen tanks faster than we could replace them, the patient was getting really tired of lying flat (which is an absolute requirement for bilateral femoral artery lines), and the low battery signal started blinking on our monitor. Long story short, we delivered the patient safely to the cath lab, and then got another call about 30 seconds later. Ahh!
Other than that I posted pics of my new favorite hang out, the kids in the snow, and got the giggles.
So, as always, staying out of trouble and studying hard on my time off.
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