I packed quite a bit into my last week here in Far Far Away. I spent two sleepless days with my brother in Little City (we saw Rise of Planet of the Apes and got up to the usual shenanigans. It was pretty awesome.), and then spent as much time as I could with my cousins at FHB. And yeah, I don't really have much more to say on this.
This summer I think I went on twenty-nine ambulance runs, the longest being about over five hours round trip and the shortest being fifteen minutes. One ground transfer which took ten hours round trip. Three or four medevacs to Big City and like twelve medevacs to Little City. It might have been more, but they've all blended together now. Dead weight has taken on a much more literal meaning for me and I have come to greatly appreciate the rare few fully cooperative patients. That or the unconscious patents, but they bring up other issues.
Clinic side, I started off just shadowing the provider and moved to scribing (she dictates her notes, I write it), to helping with procedures to actually doing some of the procedures. I had a lot of hands on experience with patients with many common ailments in all age groups, some not so common issues, and I got to see things from all sides. At least, all sides present in the clinic. From picking the patient up, to rooming the patient (and other nurse's duties), to doctor's visit, to radiology, to labs, to patient care, to pharmacy and if need be to transferring. I saw firsthand just how bad the insurance companies can be/how bad they are doing and came to a good understanding of what would happen if we switched to socialized health care.
On the home front, I developed a slightly healthier lifestyle and became more active. I got to see a loquacious little girl go from barely comprehensible gibberish to mostly understandable polysyllabic words. I was able to spend more time with my brother than I have in a long time, I saw and stayed with family members who, unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to spend enough time with. Most importantly and above all else I had fun and believe this summer was well spent.
Now I'm sitting in the airport in Little City, waiting to board my flight to SeaTac. I'll get home sometime tomorrow. Once there I'll have about three days before I need to head off to school and get back into the college grind.
I'm not really sure to do with this blog now. As soon as I board the plane it will have served its purpose and I truly believe that blogs like this are what's wrong with the 'blogosphere'. It doesn't actually provide any content or anything useful. It's just a journalesque medium for someone to ramble on. I suppose I could keep rambling on throughout the school year, although I imagine that would be significantly less interesting.
Meh.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
The final week
I've been slacking. I actually had my final week at the clinic and with EMS over a week ago, but I'm only getting around to this now. /sigh Anyways, compared to my first week at the clinic, this was a very boring week. No exciting emergencies, more silly patients complaining about the wrong thing ("I've got these skin tags under my eye, should I be worried? Oh and since I'm here, I have pain in my left arm radiating to my chest, it feels like a ton of bricks are weighing down my chest, so I can't seem to catch my breath, and my left arm is like tingly/numb. But mainly I'm here for the skin tags." At which point I put the clipboard down and went to get the provider. That's like classic heart attack right there.), and more strep. Seriously, half the population of Home must have passed through the clinic with strep over the course of the summer.
I can't remember, but I don't think I mentioned this yet. When someone is having a stroke, time matters. I understand that praying makes you feel better and I understand that everyone wants a moment with the patient, but when you pray for fifteen minutes (I clocked them) and let even the two-year-olds have five minutes (each) with the (mostly) unconscious patient, then you really are helping to ensure that it will be the last five minutes they get to spend together.
Speaking of praying, I was part of a prayer circle! We were just finishing up with a patient whose smoking habit was literally shaving years off of her remaining life and complicating other issues that she had. She finally decided that she wanted to quit and in addition to prescribing Chantix, as we were all standing up to leave, the provider grabbed each of our hands and motioned me to take the patient's other hand. Then she started praying, asking the Lord to help this lady quit and stay off. I honestly can't say I was all that surprised. After all, the clinic is a faith based organization, and all the regular providers believe in creationism, but it still strikes me as odd when a doctor tells a patient to pray (in addition to taking whatever medication/lifestyle or diet change).
Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked. I said my farewells on Friday and returned all the equipment I had borrowed from EMS. They want me to come back next summer again, and honestly I think I'd like to. I had fun, I saw more than I expected and I learned so much.
Later that day, I packed up and left Home for FHB. I'm going to miss most of the time with the girls, but definitely NOT the screaming.
I can't remember, but I don't think I mentioned this yet. When someone is having a stroke, time matters. I understand that praying makes you feel better and I understand that everyone wants a moment with the patient, but when you pray for fifteen minutes (I clocked them) and let even the two-year-olds have five minutes (each) with the (mostly) unconscious patient, then you really are helping to ensure that it will be the last five minutes they get to spend together.
Speaking of praying, I was part of a prayer circle! We were just finishing up with a patient whose smoking habit was literally shaving years off of her remaining life and complicating other issues that she had. She finally decided that she wanted to quit and in addition to prescribing Chantix, as we were all standing up to leave, the provider grabbed each of our hands and motioned me to take the patient's other hand. Then she started praying, asking the Lord to help this lady quit and stay off. I honestly can't say I was all that surprised. After all, the clinic is a faith based organization, and all the regular providers believe in creationism, but it still strikes me as odd when a doctor tells a patient to pray (in addition to taking whatever medication/lifestyle or diet change).
Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked. I said my farewells on Friday and returned all the equipment I had borrowed from EMS. They want me to come back next summer again, and honestly I think I'd like to. I had fun, I saw more than I expected and I learned so much.
Later that day, I packed up and left Home for FHB. I'm going to miss most of the time with the girls, but definitely NOT the screaming.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
4-mile lake
A shorter, lighter post today. We had our monthly training, which was for off-road rescue. We took an 4-wheeler and two Polaris Rangers down to a local lake 'saved' a kid from the bible camp there as practice. All in all the actual rescue part was just more of the same, but getting in and out was a blast. Riding down a barely existent path, traveling through boggy marshland and dense forest is pretty cool. Of course, I was dressed completely inappropriately.
Button-down shirt, v-neck sweater, sneakers instead of boots... at least I was wearing jeans instead of dress slacks. XD I actually managed to stay completely pristine until we were just about out and done. I saw the puddle (mini-lake? a ford in the river? Truly it was too large and too deep to be considered a puddle.) coming and all I could think was 'nonononononoh snap.' And as the wave of muddy brown water came crashing towards me; "bother".
On a completely unrelated note, the girls have decided that it's fun to make me do sit-ups. Two of them run up when I'm sitting and leap on me, trying their best to pull me to the ground. Then I have about two seconds to do a sit-up before they start indiscriminately smacking me. Or crawling over me. They do that too. Getting kneed in the kidney by a two year old is still painful... but I'm so ticklish that I laugh uncontrollably. After about 75 sit-ups or so I physically couldn't do any more and my cousin had to rescue me as I just curled up into the fetal position, laughing.
Apparently this is becoming a daily occurrence, which is probably good for me. Sometimes I need the motivation.
Button-down shirt, v-neck sweater, sneakers instead of boots... at least I was wearing jeans instead of dress slacks. XD I actually managed to stay completely pristine until we were just about out and done. I saw the puddle (mini-lake? a ford in the river? Truly it was too large and too deep to be considered a puddle.) coming and all I could think was 'nonononononoh snap.' And as the wave of muddy brown water came crashing towards me; "bother".
On a completely unrelated note, the girls have decided that it's fun to make me do sit-ups. Two of them run up when I'm sitting and leap on me, trying their best to pull me to the ground. Then I have about two seconds to do a sit-up before they start indiscriminately smacking me. Or crawling over me. They do that too. Getting kneed in the kidney by a two year old is still painful... but I'm so ticklish that I laugh uncontrollably. After about 75 sit-ups or so I physically couldn't do any more and my cousin had to rescue me as I just curled up into the fetal position, laughing.
Apparently this is becoming a daily occurrence, which is probably good for me. Sometimes I need the motivation.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Late night shenanigans
One of us is lying
In his lonely bed
Staring at the ceiling
Wishing he was somewhere else instead
One of us is lonely
One of us is only
Waiting for a call*
And guess what? It came. At 2:15am dispatch reported that a juvenile had been found unconscious in ditch just outside of the main town area so we headed over. Turns out it was a 14 year old girl who drank herself unconscious and her "friends" left her on the side of the road. Now, piecing together more of the story through the night, apparently two of her friends stayed with her (both guys) and stripped her out of her clothes when she started vomiting on herself. Eventually they freaked and called one of their mothers, who called 911 and that's when we came in.
Of course, a mostly naked teenage girl who can't remember what happened gives us additional worries. Thankfully, nothing had happened on that end, and given enough time she slowly started sobering up (very slowly, she had a BAC of .172 on the breathalyzer about an hour after we picked her up). And sadly, that isn't the highest BAC we've had this week, but more on that later.
About an hour into pumping saline solution into the girl and trying to get the full story, we get a call from a concerned grandmother because her 2 year old granddaughter is having breathing difficulties. The poor kid has chronic issues with this and used the nebulizer better than most adults. There weren't really any major issues with her, but all in all it still kept us at the clinic until about 5am.
On the way home from all this, at 5:15am I get a phone call, "Hello, Crystal?" from a 727 number. Curse my Floridian cell number. /sigh
Anyways, I've been sitting on a post for well over a month now about alcoholism and I'm still hemming an hawing about posting it. On the one hand, I don't want to get too preachy on this blog, and I've been steering clear of really serious issues, but on the other hand, it really is incredible some of the alcohol related problems I've seen up here. One example would be a lady in a MVA (motor vehicle accident) from the other day. BAC of 0.53. ZERO POINT FIVE THREE. By the US scale, you're dead at anything above 0.5. Death is a very real possibility at anything above 0.3, and blacking out and unconsciousness can start at 0.2 or earlier. And yes, the girl from last night was only 14 and already drinking herself stupid. That wasn't a typo. And these two weren't even native.
Nothing against natives, but a common oxymoron and joke up here is a 'dry native village'. They start young and develop a dependence, they kill each other (even family members) over booze, and only a lucky few can escape the vicious cycle. The worst are those who sober up, suffer through the withdrawal (usually with our help. It's never pleasant for anyone involved), and then once they are finally completely dry... they just go back and start drinking all over again. bak;sndinadxf The natives have too many issues to cover here. I really shouldn't have even started on it.
*Clearly I have heard too much ABBA. Also, going without sleep for over 24 hours makes me weird. I really was just staring at the ceiling though, part of me hoping that I could fall asleep, the other part hoping something interesting would happen so I wouldn't have to just lay there patiently anymore.
In his lonely bed
Staring at the ceiling
Wishing he was somewhere else instead
One of us is lonely
One of us is only
Waiting for a call*
And guess what? It came. At 2:15am dispatch reported that a juvenile had been found unconscious in ditch just outside of the main town area so we headed over. Turns out it was a 14 year old girl who drank herself unconscious and her "friends" left her on the side of the road. Now, piecing together more of the story through the night, apparently two of her friends stayed with her (both guys) and stripped her out of her clothes when she started vomiting on herself. Eventually they freaked and called one of their mothers, who called 911 and that's when we came in.
Of course, a mostly naked teenage girl who can't remember what happened gives us additional worries. Thankfully, nothing had happened on that end, and given enough time she slowly started sobering up (very slowly, she had a BAC of .172 on the breathalyzer about an hour after we picked her up). And sadly, that isn't the highest BAC we've had this week, but more on that later.
About an hour into pumping saline solution into the girl and trying to get the full story, we get a call from a concerned grandmother because her 2 year old granddaughter is having breathing difficulties. The poor kid has chronic issues with this and used the nebulizer better than most adults. There weren't really any major issues with her, but all in all it still kept us at the clinic until about 5am.
On the way home from all this, at 5:15am I get a phone call, "Hello, Crystal?" from a 727 number. Curse my Floridian cell number. /sigh
Anyways, I've been sitting on a post for well over a month now about alcoholism and I'm still hemming an hawing about posting it. On the one hand, I don't want to get too preachy on this blog, and I've been steering clear of really serious issues, but on the other hand, it really is incredible some of the alcohol related problems I've seen up here. One example would be a lady in a MVA (motor vehicle accident) from the other day. BAC of 0.53. ZERO POINT FIVE THREE. By the US scale, you're dead at anything above 0.5. Death is a very real possibility at anything above 0.3, and blacking out and unconsciousness can start at 0.2 or earlier. And yes, the girl from last night was only 14 and already drinking herself stupid. That wasn't a typo. And these two weren't even native.
Nothing against natives, but a common oxymoron and joke up here is a 'dry native village'. They start young and develop a dependence, they kill each other (even family members) over booze, and only a lucky few can escape the vicious cycle. The worst are those who sober up, suffer through the withdrawal (usually with our help. It's never pleasant for anyone involved), and then once they are finally completely dry... they just go back and start drinking all over again. bak;sndinadxf The natives have too many issues to cover here. I really shouldn't have even started on it.
*Clearly I have heard too much ABBA. Also, going without sleep for over 24 hours makes me weird. I really was just staring at the ceiling though, part of me hoping that I could fall asleep, the other part hoping something interesting would happen so I wouldn't have to just lay there patiently anymore.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Procedure day!
I gave my first shot today*! Which was quickly followed by my second. In addition to that I had to remove some stitches, we dealt with an ingrown toenail, drained an infection, and several other things which I can't remember right now because it's 6am and I haven't slept yet. More on that later though.
*Technically not today, but yeah. I don't post any of these the day they actually happen, and usually not even the day that I write them.
*Technically not today, but yeah. I don't post any of these the day they actually happen, and usually not even the day that I write them.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
A week with family.
Last week I decided to take a break from the clinic and EMS and just spend a week up at Familial Home Base. Originally I was just going up for the weekend on my way to Little City to visit my brother, but one thing lead to another and I ended up spending the whole week and following weekend away from Home.
The visit with my brother went quite well. We saw l'elisir d'amore which was very entertaining and remarkably well done. Much better than I was expecting considering where we are. My only regret is that I could only partially make out faces. My brother still hasn't replaced his glasses, so I lent him mine so he could read the prompter and actually understand what was being said. (My vision is still good enough that I could read it, just the fine details got lost.)
After the opera, we went to my brother's friends' place and played League of Legends. I was pushing to see Harry Potter 7.5, but since my brother had work in the morning we didn't get around to it. Speaking of morning, at some point around 2am, my dear brother said "okay, I'm going to bed, if you're still up at 6am give me a call." and promptly walked out the door. Now, I was tired and in the middle of a game, so I wasn't paying much attention and it didn't dawn on me until a few minutes later that he had left. I don't know where he lives, and since his old place burned down, neither do his friends. So I was like 'well, who's up for another game?' *twitch* In the end, I stayed up with one of his friends playing LoL and watching It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia until 5:45am at which point I decided "screw this, I'm waking my brother up and going home." Yes, I am a spiteful person.
The drive from Little City back to FHB was uneventful, thankfully, but my mind decided to play club music nonstop in order to keep me awake (I also ate 11 riesens >.>). Seriously, I don't even know where I heard some of those songs, but I never want to hear them again. My pulse was providing the annoying base rhythm and I could feel the throbbing in my head. :S When I got back to FHB, of course everyone (being sane) was still asleep and the front door was locked. I've been told where the spare key is kept, but honestly, I couldn't remember for the life of me. So I just sat in the back of my car and read until my Tante came out. I ended up crashing around 9am and only slept until noon.
Because of that, I decided that driving all the way to Home would probably be a bad idea and since my family was planning on going back to Little City on Monday I decided to tag along so I could see my brother again. That visit went much smoother, but lasted the entire day so once again I decided to postpone the drive back to Home.
On Tuesday, I was just having too much fun with my cousins to bother driving, and since my Opa's birthday was the following weekend I figured I might as well just stay for the rest of the week and save myself all that driving... not to mention the fuel. The rest of the week passed by in a bit of a blur, and Friday saw the arrival of pretty much my entire extended family. Almost all of them ended up staying under the same roof, so it was a little cramped Friday night... well, morning. We were up playing video games until 5am. Zzz...
Anyways, once I got back on Monday I learned how much I had missed. 26 ambulance runs in under 48 hours, a double medevac to an Air Force Base just outside of Big City (this was the first time in YEARS that we've even had to send one patient to that AFB, so sending two there on the same flight was unheard of). One ambulance ended up returning with three patients. Called out for one, ended up having two on scene, and on the way back picked up another who had been in a moose related accident. And a plane crash! I missed out on a plane crash! T_T /sigh But what can one do? It figures that the one week I decide not to be in Home, they would have an incredibly busy and exciting week. Spending time with my extended family and brother was worth it though, especially considering I usually only get to see the latter about once a year and the former never. What with them being on the other side of the continent and all.
The visit with my brother went quite well. We saw l'elisir d'amore which was very entertaining and remarkably well done. Much better than I was expecting considering where we are. My only regret is that I could only partially make out faces. My brother still hasn't replaced his glasses, so I lent him mine so he could read the prompter and actually understand what was being said. (My vision is still good enough that I could read it, just the fine details got lost.)
After the opera, we went to my brother's friends' place and played League of Legends. I was pushing to see Harry Potter 7.5, but since my brother had work in the morning we didn't get around to it. Speaking of morning, at some point around 2am, my dear brother said "okay, I'm going to bed, if you're still up at 6am give me a call." and promptly walked out the door. Now, I was tired and in the middle of a game, so I wasn't paying much attention and it didn't dawn on me until a few minutes later that he had left. I don't know where he lives, and since his old place burned down, neither do his friends. So I was like 'well, who's up for another game?' *twitch* In the end, I stayed up with one of his friends playing LoL and watching It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia until 5:45am at which point I decided "screw this, I'm waking my brother up and going home." Yes, I am a spiteful person.
The drive from Little City back to FHB was uneventful, thankfully, but my mind decided to play club music nonstop in order to keep me awake (I also ate 11 riesens >.>). Seriously, I don't even know where I heard some of those songs, but I never want to hear them again. My pulse was providing the annoying base rhythm and I could feel the throbbing in my head. :S When I got back to FHB, of course everyone (being sane) was still asleep and the front door was locked. I've been told where the spare key is kept, but honestly, I couldn't remember for the life of me. So I just sat in the back of my car and read until my Tante came out. I ended up crashing around 9am and only slept until noon.
Because of that, I decided that driving all the way to Home would probably be a bad idea and since my family was planning on going back to Little City on Monday I decided to tag along so I could see my brother again. That visit went much smoother, but lasted the entire day so once again I decided to postpone the drive back to Home.
On Tuesday, I was just having too much fun with my cousins to bother driving, and since my Opa's birthday was the following weekend I figured I might as well just stay for the rest of the week and save myself all that driving... not to mention the fuel. The rest of the week passed by in a bit of a blur, and Friday saw the arrival of pretty much my entire extended family. Almost all of them ended up staying under the same roof, so it was a little cramped Friday night... well, morning. We were up playing video games until 5am. Zzz...
Anyways, once I got back on Monday I learned how much I had missed. 26 ambulance runs in under 48 hours, a double medevac to an Air Force Base just outside of Big City (this was the first time in YEARS that we've even had to send one patient to that AFB, so sending two there on the same flight was unheard of). One ambulance ended up returning with three patients. Called out for one, ended up having two on scene, and on the way back picked up another who had been in a moose related accident. And a plane crash! I missed out on a plane crash! T_T /sigh But what can one do? It figures that the one week I decide not to be in Home, they would have an incredibly busy and exciting week. Spending time with my extended family and brother was worth it though, especially considering I usually only get to see the latter about once a year and the former never. What with them being on the other side of the continent and all.
Friday, July 15, 2011
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