Zappity Oioi

Far Far Away, in closing

2011-08-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

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.

The final week

2011-08-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

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.

4-mile lake

2011-07-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Late night shenanigans

2011-07-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

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.

Procedure day!

2011-07-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

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.

A week with family.

2011-07-28T06:24:00.000-07:00

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.

Alarms

2011-07-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

6:59am: *wake up*
7:00am: Alarm clock: "BEEP BEEP BEEP"
Me: "sigh"

Late Nights

2011-07-13T05:29:00.001-07:00

To me, there just seems something unwholesome about slinking in after 4am, trying not to wake anyone up on the way to your own bed. The reason for being out so late just doesn't seem to matter all that much. This probably has to do with the way I grew up, but I'm not going into that here.

Anyways. 1:20am, there's an ambulance call for a patient with respiratory distress. By this time, I'm already comfortably in bed, so when I here the radio I'm thinking "do I really want to go? Three other people have already responded..." Then I realize that it's after 1am. I'm been staring at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep for over an hour and I'm no closer than when I started. Like hell I'm not going on this run.

The patient lived in town, so I was kind of expecting it to be a very short run; I was thinking I'd be getting back by 2:30, 3 at the latest. Maybe by then I'd be more tired and ready to sleep. Oh no. Treating the patient took forever and then we had to transport him back to his house.

Of course, during the course of this I passed by the tired stage and right into the 'untired' phase. Which leaves me here, typing this at almost 5am and eating corn chips. Not tired, but knowing that at some point today I'm going to crash. Hard.

Nerve-wracking ambulance runs

2011-07-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

Today... Got a call around 11:30 for respiratory trouble. Not that much of an issue, right? Well, it took seven people to load the gurney onto the ambulance. We got him back to the clinic, couldn't establish an IV, found his heart enzymes were all positive and decided to send him to Little City (we did everything in the back of the ambulance because moving him into the clinic and then possibly back to the ambulance was out of the question. The gurney wasn't rated for him and would collapse without a couple people supporting it).

Anyways, 10 minutes out from Home, Patient complains of chest pain. Well... We don't have an IV and his blood pressure is hovering around 100 systolic. So we can't give nitro, we can't give morphine... They say MONA greets all heart pain, but this time only the vowels made it. (MONA = Morphine, Oxygen, Nitro, and Aspirin). Then he starts going in and out of consciousness and the heart rate monitor shows that he is going into V-fib. We decided if he went unconscious and we couldn't get him back with painful stimuli in about three seconds, then we'd put in an IO so we could give him meds. One time, we were literally about to put the IO in, we felt out the location and... "wha?" *eye lids flutter open*

Then he started cycling between normal rhythms, V-fib, and A-fib, coinciding with his changes in consciousness. The monitor was screaming at us "ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION". At one point, we had the pads out and ready to go, but again, the moment we were about to do something he'd come back. And to top it all off, 20 minutes out of Little City's hospital, he just suddenly came back, heart rhythm became textbook normal, he was fully alert, talking, and the only pain he had was in his bottom from being on it for so long. When we got him to the hospital, the nurse didn't believe us and when we asked her how their ekg looked she was like "oh I didn't even look at it, it's normal"... GRAGH.

Even more annoying, we had called ahead asking for a special gurney and help moving the patient. We get into the ambulance bay and there's the gurney, but no help. So we poke our heads in and ask for three of four people. The guy at the desk looks around, then says "I don't think we have the staff" (there are plenty of nurses just standing at the desk.) The lady (really only four years older than me) EMT-III who had been in the back with me went off on them and we got our help. Eventually. It took a good fifteen minutes just to unload the patient because of this.

We had to mark his neck with a sharpie because we were having so much difficulty locating his carotid pulse that once we got it we didn't want to risk losing it, we only found a radial pulse once... yeah, it was bad. Oh! and we wanted to take a D-stick, because it would have been so convenient if all his problems were coming from high blood sugar. We prick him, turn on the meter and "Low battery, shutting down". NOOO!!!!! Thus began a frantic search for spare batteries. While the other EMT was calling the EMS chief, I was like 'wait, what other small portable objects do we have on the ambulance? THE PORTABLE SAT METER!' After rooting about one of the boxes I managed to find it and thank goodness, two AAA batteries... All ambulances should carry spare batteries. Seriously.

Another random story from the ride. His legs were pretty much too large to fit on the gurney together, so they kept sliding off (in spite of the straps). So we had to keep putting them back on. I swear one leg weighed as much as I did. It was certainly thicker than my waist, but anyways. I had just finished replacing a leg when our driver took a sudden turn. I put my hands down for stability and ended up balancing on them as my legs went into the air. I managed, somehow, not to crash down on the patient and stayed balanced above him until the turn stopped.

Btw, we were going 95 pretty much the entire way... if the ambulance could have gone faster, we would have. Even still, I got back to my house just before 11pm. /sigh

Anyways, do yourself a favor, especially because you'll be doing us a favor at the same time. Go outside and walk. Or bike, I don't care. Just do some sort of exercise that will elevate your heart rate at least four times a week, especially if you have an illness like diabetes. You probably don't realize just how much good it can do for you.

Unpleasant surprises

2011-07-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

Last night was one of the (very) few times that I managed to fall asleep before midnight. I also wasn't having any weird, freaky dreams about a future me stealing my car (repeatedly), or a zombie carebear apocalypse destroying humanity*. So all in all it was shaping up to be a nice night.

Imagine my surprise as I wake up to the most horrid screeching sound I have ever heard. My heart went something like "thump. thump.thumpthumthutht---" It was also loud. Very, very loud. After a minute or so of frantically flailing around I realized where I was and set out to find the source of the noise. You'd think it wouldn't take very long to find, but with the way the sound echoed about the room, I had a really difficult time pinpointing the source. Finally, my eyes settled on the pale green glow on the gas/carbon monoxide detector's diminutive LED. Low battery.

It's one of those annoying little devices that wails at you when its battery gets low. "LOOK AT ME MY BATTERY IS RUNNING OUT I CAN'T JUST TURN AN LED ON TO TELL YOU BECAUSE THAT WOULDN'T BE ENOUGH SO NOW I HAVE TO WASTE WHAT LITTLE BATTERY REMAINS TO ME TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THAT I'M DYING HERE! HERE, LET ME SPURT SOME MORE OF MY BLOOD IN YOUR FACE! CAN I GET A TRANSFUSION NOW!? OMG LOOK AT ME! WHY AREN'T YOU LOOKING!?" Just like those aggravating smoke detectors. Just like those annoying alarms on the glass doors we had in Florida. Just like... You know, this incident clearly dredged up some unhappy memories. That and spending the night on the couch (just in case it wasn't only a battery issue). >.>

*My cousin and I have been on a bit of a horror spree lately. Usually watching one or two movies a night. It's entertaining but it does give me some pretty messed up dreams. This is mostly because the movies are messed up, but also because they meld with things that the girls watch. Thus Zombie Apocalypse: Carebear Edition. Carebears would swarm people and hug them, turning them into another carebear. Once we started driving them back (because let's face it, if you can't keep an over-sized teddy bear away from you, you have issues) they evolved. The carebear stare became a tool for ranged conversion. Their eyes would turn red, they'd float into the air and hearts should shoot out of their stomachs, converting anyone they touched. We lost so many people to the stare... That and the damned balls, those were the worst.

My car

2011-07-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

I'm using a little old Dodge Neon. It works well, especially considering it has almost 117,500 miles on it. Every now and then, however, it throws something completely surprising at me. For example, when I turn on the air, it will occasionally shoot bugs out of the vents. Yes, bugs. Or rather bug parts. Wings, bodies, heads, they've all come out of the air vents, which is why I direct the airflow around myself and not directly at me. Being covered in bug bodies during the first barrage was enough for me, thanks.

The latest and greatest surprise came when I was driving down the highway today. Everything was going fine and then suddenly the speedometer dropped to 0 and the odometer stopped working. I managed to make it into the clinic without getting pulled over for speeding or having someone rage at me for driving too slow, but it was a rather worrisome experience. Coming back everything worked just fine, but having random parts of the car just give out like that doesn't give me the peace of mind I'm used to. My assumption is that a sensor is on the fritz and I'm going to have it checked out soon.

Happy 4th

2011-07-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend was exhausting, which is to say I was pretty much busy doing something for every waking moment. That and not sleeping. Between the rain hitting the metal roof and the constant snoring (from two to three people. I could feel the vibrations through the floor and my bed. It was crazy.)there was plenty of noise to keep me awake. Then the fan in my laptop decided to go psycho. It's kind of creepy when you wake up in the middle of the night to what sounds like heavy breathing right next to your bed.

But I did have fun. I got to spend roughly four days with more of my extended family (though not my immediate family. My brother was tied up with work and didn't manage to make it down). I had the chance to further refine my potato salad recipe. My limited German was put to the test because my Opa would randomly insert German words into his sentences or just flat out answer in German. "Where's the Maggi?" *Long string of German words* "Right... Thanks." It is nice to know, however, that I can understand at least enough of it to get the gist.

While I was at FHB I gave Fable 2 a whirl. Now, I really liked Fable: The Lost Chapters (for computer, I was playing Fable 2 on the xbox 360) and I must say I was a little disappointed by this sequel. I will still finish it just for the story, but the game play seems very simplified and the magic system is pretty terrible compared to the first. Oh, speaking of disappointments... Dungeon Siege 3. EPIC FAIL. It might have been good on a console, but the computer version has many, many issues.

On the flip side, Mass Effect 2 (yeah, yeah, I FINALLY started playing it) is freaking amazing. I will probably end up playing through it multiple times when I have more free time just to further explore the options. I also can't wait to get back into the Starcraft 2 competitive scene. This past year I didn't play much of it, just swiftly rose to high gold then stopped, but after watching the dreamhack SC2 finals, I'm really excited to climb as high as I can. I would start now, or at least practice since the end of season 2 is just around the corner, but I lack the proper internet connection.

Anyways, I digress. This weekend. Being Far Far Away, it doesn't actually get dark enough for fireworks, so we had to forgo that part of the 4th celebrations. Instead, my family pulled out a plethora of handguns and rifles and many rounds were fired. I was planning on making red velvet cupcakes and then decorating them with blue and white frosting, but I managed to completely forget about it. To make up for it, I am currently baking a batch of those lemon muffins so we can have cake for breakfast. Because let's face it, muffins are just an excuse to have cake first thing in the morning.

While I was in Little City, I picked up a mini-muffin tin, so I'm making dozens of these bite-sized little things. I'm thinking they will be perfect for the girls. ^_^ Also, I can bring them into the clinic and all the people I work with won't have to feel quite as guilty about eating one. I swear 3/4 of the people there are on diets. >.> My only regret is that I only picked up one of the tins, because it's taking a rather long time...

I haven't posted for a while mainly because I haven't really had anything to post about. Practically nothing new has happened in the clinic, we've had almost no ambulance runs, and yeah. The only thing of note is that I'm helping one of the doctors here pass the test for his Wisconsin license. Hehehe. To be fair, he really doesn't need my help, he just has a LOT of bad luck (or karma) accumulated. And honestly, some of those questions are a bit tricky, especially the legal questions. O.o

Combative Patients

2011-06-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm tired, so I'm not going to be saying much, but the other night we had an ambulance and rescue truck called to a location about an hour and a half away. The call literally came right as I stepped in the door and said hello to my hostess. So much for dinner. /sigh

It was raining and none of us wanted to be outside breaking open a car. Luckily for us, the EMS group up in that area managed to extract the patient from his car and transferred him to us when we met up with them (about an hour out from the clinic). This patient... Where do I begin? He would not answer questions, ripped out his IV before we could stop him, was belligerent, threatened to break out of his spider straps (hah, good luck with that one...) numerous times, called our provider some very unbecoming names once we got back to the clinic, and was generally just a nightmare to deal with. Eventually he settled down and became more cooperative (mostly after our provider threatened to keep him bound in the spider straps and just send him to Little City ^_^).

Anyways, we were all glad once we finished dealing with him and could go home. Cheesecake made the night so much better. I only wish I had made a red velvet instead of a generic New York Style. Mmm, chocolaty velvet.

Patience and cheesecake

2011-06-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not using cheesecake as a reward for patience. The process of making it, however, takes quite a bit. At least with the kitchen I have available. Seriously. No rubber spatula. No spring-form pan (I realized this after I had made the filling already T_T). An oven which can't realistically go above 400F (and even that temp takes about an hour to get to). And amidst a myriad of other minor issues, the only sugar in the house was in sugar packets. You know, those dinky little things with less than a teaspoon of sugar in them... Yeah, there went a good half hour of my life. Scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spoon between additions took another decent chunk, but if you are going to do something, you might as well do it as best you can with what you have.

And now I'm sitting here, waiting... waiting for the cheesecake to cool down so I can actually try a piece. Oh, and I'm actually waiting on two to cool. Turns out the recipe made a LOT of cheesecake... That or I'm using tiny little cake pans. Either way, they look good, but I'm a little worried they might not be cooked all the way through.

In addition to the trials and tribulations of today's baking spree (the cheesecakes, several loaves of bread with only one bread pan, pitas [they puffed up perfectly this time, btw], and home made hot pockets for someone's lunch), the three little girls were unbelievably energetic and loud. The youngest would not stop screaming, the middle child made a horrific mess, and the eldest's new favorite phrase is a toss up between "COME BACK HERE AND APOLOGIZE!" and "no!" The lot of them were ushered outside for a little while before it started raining (still raining, twelve hours later), but that only seemed to give them more energy. Normally in such circumstances I'd seek solace on a nice LONG bike ride, or at the very least hide away from all the chaos, but being shackled to that demonic oven (I actually managed to burn myself on it while adjusting the time) kept me in the middle of it all.

Since I'm talking about baking, the other day I made yet another black forest cake (I can't remember if I posted about the first one, though technically it was only a BFC in spirit, it was still good and made the perfect sentimental anniversary gift). This one was amazing. Since this was a rather special occasion, I decided to have my brother pick up a bottle of kirsch, and even the small amount I used really did add to/bring out the cherry flavor. I had a bit of an issue with the cherries I used for the filling though, and the bottom layer was a touch soggy, but meh. Chocolate + cherries = happiness, however brief. And whipped cream. That helps too.

I think next weekend my hostess is going to request croissants, which I love, but amg it's a lengthy process. Layering in all that butter, letting it chill between folds, eating them all in about two seconds flat... *Ahem*

Week summary

2011-06-18T00:45:00.000-07:00

Such a miserable week. Monday I couldn't drag myself out of bed until 11am, and then I was only up long enough to talk a little with my hostess, say 'hi' to the girls, eat something, and then pass out on the couch. I ended up officially waking up at 4pm. So for me, Monday didn't actually happen. Tuesday and Wednesday I went in to work about the clinic, but I was pretty much a zombie the entire time. Learned about clotting and the various ways medication affect it. Thursday there was a call to pick up a patient with a blood pressure of 215/199. Not even joking, and he was about an hour away. Also on Thursday my depressed immune system decided to pay me back by letting me catch some nasty little GI bug. I could barely keep anything down, and had crazy stomach pain. Thankfully, it cleared up in a couple of days.

Also, at some point during the week (well before the GI issue) I tried soy milk for the first time. Vanilla flavored. Not bad actually, and it's supposedly healthier too. Not to mention it's $2 cheaper up here than the same volume of regular milk. The local grocery store is making a killing because they are basically the only place to shop for this town, and many of the northern towns. I mean, who sells bread at $5.05 a loaf? and milk at $5.00 a HALF gallon. So glad I make my own bread and only rarely drink milk. >.< I actually pretty much just use milk for baking, and unfortunately you can't substitute in soy milk. The consistency is different, and it does have a very distinct taste. Oh, and whilst I'm ranting about prices, how much is your gas? Mine is $4.29-$4.39. I praise my lucky stars the crazy little dodge neon I'm driving gets 33-38 mpg.

Hands on experience

2011-06-15T00:21:00.000-07:00

Nothing beats it. I'm good at learning by reading, but actually going in and pulling the staples out of someone's leg, or stitching up someone's head will always be better. Marginally. >.> And that's one of the things I love about helping out at the clinic and working with the EMS up here. The vast majority of the patients in the clinic are more than willing to let me, uh, 'work' on them (perhaps because they don't know I've never done it before...) And with EMS patients, they usually can't even say no. Oh implied consent, you are wonderful. Of course, everything I'm doing is supervised, I HAVE read about it before, and it is all for the patient's good.

Speaking of getting experience, I'll soon be taking a two day class on swift water rescue. Day one will be all the class room stuff, day two will be practical experience. It should be fun. ^_^

Mornings

2011-06-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

Normally, I like mornings. No really, I do. They are quiet and peaceful. Cooler than midday and not as bright. I work well when I first wake up and above all else I am usually alone.

Well this morning was not like most mornings. I woke up with bright sunlight shining right on my face, then I was surrounded by small children (one of whom still only communicates by screaming), and it was a little *too* cool. The heat was off at night and my shampoo turned into a very, very thick gel. Not to mention it was still ice cold going into my hair because I was too impatient to wait for it to warm. I couldn't even get my face wash out of the tube, it was so stiff. Then, to top it all off, I opened my deodorant and watched as it went sailing through a perfect ark before shattering on the floor. It never occurred to me that deodorant could shatter. /facepalm

And pita bread. I thought "Oh! It's flat. It doesn't need to rise, I can make it quick and then go to sleep early." Yeah... I'm still waiting. But the dough did feel amazingly silky and it was fun to knead.

Fun in the Little City

2011-06-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

I decided to pull a LONG weekend. I left Home late Thursday night (originally I was going to leave before dinner, but I got pulled into making that chocolate cake), got to FHB just after 10pm, played some games with my cousins and then crashed. I'd been running on borrowed time ever since that last medevac to the Big City. I ended up sleeping right through until 11am... My excuse was that my phone died so I didn't have any way to tell the time, but really, I needed the sleep.

Anyways, even with that annoyingly late start to the day, I managed to fit in many games of badminton, more video games (I'm getting better with the darned 360 controllers), and was still able to drive two hours to the Little City and meet up with my brother right as he got off of work. We went out to dinner at a restaurant called Vallata. It was expensive, and supposedly an upscale establishment, but being Far Far Away the facilities were a little shoddy and there were people in t-shirts. *rolls eyes*

The food was also... meh. I could make better for a fraction of the cost. At the very least, it was a good opportunity to catch up with my brother, cE, and get to know V a little better. She's an amusing lady to be sure. Dinner also took close to two hours. Not even joking. I think at one point our waitress forgot about us. I mean, she even asked "have I asked you this already?"

Anyways, after dinner my brother and I tied up a few loose ends in the Little City and then stopped by his new residence. I didn't really get a chance to see more than the living room area as my attention became occupied by a very energetic little dog who was desperately trying everything to be noticed. I did, however, manage to convince him to drive back FHB with me, in spite of the hour (we ended up getting in at 12:30am >.>). Now, he could have just as easily come up in the morning, but I wanted to ride in his car. It has lumbar support. I don't know how, but I managed to put my back out driving from Home to FHB.

I'm not old enough to drink legally (I'll be honest, first draft of this I split that infinitive, clearly I was exposed to Star Trek at too young an age and it has permanently scarred my language skills) and I'm already experiencing back problems. FROM DRIVING. I'm in for a wonderful life. /sigh And yeah, badminton with lower back pain probably wasn't the smartest thing, but it was fun. And my team won every match. Also, coming down in the same car meant I got to spend four more hours (two on the drive down, and two on the drive back to pick up my car) with my brother. Always a plus.

Potentially, it could let me spend more time with him, but at the rate things are going it doesn't look like it. He's good at the whole sleeping in thing. I'm generally not. As proven by the fact that I'm up, all alone, typing this out at 7am even though I went to sleep around 3am last night.

On a random note, it occurs to me that I tend to put in rather long parentheticals which really do break up my sentences. I blame Ancient Greek. I remember one particular sentence that essentially went 'The farmer, *page and a half of various dependent and independent clauses*, went to the market.' By the time I got to the end of it I had almost forgotten who 'he' was referring to...

Burning the Midnight Oil

2011-06-11T04:13:00.000-07:00

Literally. That midnight, I was in a Navajo, flying to the Big City with a patient who had jumped out of a moving vehicle. We got to the hospital around 1am, got a slice of pie from Village Inn after situating the patient with the hospital (it was terrible, the Graham cracker crust was too thick and masked the flavor of the key lime filling, the whipped cream layer on top was thicker than the filling and judging from the density had been sitting around for a while. I can't really complain though, I didn't have to pay for it. >.>), and then ended up flying back with the patient because his injuries weren't as severe as we thought. He was incredibly lucky, didn't even break any bones or suffer a concussion despite a rather nasty blow to the head. Well, lucky depending on how you look at it... Medevacs are rather expensive.

Anyways, when all was said and done, I was crawling into bed at 5am with the prospect of waking up early and heading to the clinic. Fun, fun, fun. Thankfully, I've discovered the perfect task to work on while in a zombie like state. Dictations. At some point after meeting with a patient, our provider records all the important S.O.A.P.(E.) information and then someone (in this case me) comes along and actually writes it into the chart. It doesn't require a lot of thought, and I still learn a great deal.

Then the next night, there was a call just after midnight for two ambulance crews. I was already asleep and was awakened by my radio, but at the time I wasn't sure if it was really happening or if I was dreaming it. It didn't help that my hostess had just been telling me about a situation very similar to that being described over the radio. Needless to say, I did not respond to this one... I heard later that it took them about three hours to resolve this one, and they didn't need to transport anyone from the clinic.

Lemon muffins and chocolate cake

2011-06-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

Shortly before coming up here, I discovered a recipe for lemon poppy seed muffins over at Annie's Eats. Unfortunately, poppy seeds are prohibitively expensive at Home. So I decided to give the muffins a go without them. After all, the seeds would really only add a little, barely noticeable crunch. As far as I can tell, they really don't have much of a taste.

Halfway into making them, I realized we didn't have any yogurt in the house. The recipe calls for a cup. The closest thing I had on hand was 1/3 cup of sour cream, so I used that, diluted with about a tablespoon of lemon juice. And you know what? They came out amazing. Light, puffy, and perfectly flavored. Or so I'm told... I didn't actually get to try one. I had to run out of the house so I wouldn't be late for my CPR/First Aid class whilst the muffins were still cooling, and they were all gone by the time I got back. They certainly looked and felt light and airy when I slid them out of the muffin sheet, but alas, I only got to smell that tantalizing lemon fragrance. I'll definitely be making them again as we now have a bag full of lemons just sitting in the refrigerator. Calling to me...

As for the chocolate cake, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it was fantastic. I patched my Oma's recipe together as best I could from memory (quite a feat, seeing how I never actually saw her make it) and cobbled together a black forest cake. It had to be the fastest cake I've ever made and decorated. Right before I set out to FHB, my hostess decided to ask me if I could bake a cake for her anniversary. Of course, I couldn't say no. I mean, 1) it's baking a cake, 2) she's family 3) she pulled out the good cocoa for it. It smelled unbelievable, and was so rich and dark. /drool

Anyways, I was worried the cake would come out as a brick, because as a sponge cake, it basically starts life as a meringue and then has the flour + cocoa folded into it. I didn't fold. I whisked. I was crunched for time, and the best implement I could find to fold the dry ingredients in was completely useless. The moment I turned the blender on, I could see my batter deflate as all the air I had whisked in previously came rushing out. A little disheartening, but meh. The consistency still came out just right and the higher quality cocoa was definitely noticeable.

After stuffing the cake in the refrigerator so it would cool down faster, I applied a whipped cream frosting. With a bread knife. When I first set the bowl of frosting down next to the cake, I looked back and forth between the two thinking "Oh snap. I don't have a cake icing spatula, I don't even have a normal spatula..." Then I notice the knife stand. *Light bulb* (I've now seen Despicable Me, oh, a good seven or eight times now.) The bread knife actually worked out pretty well all things considered. Having a regular dinner plate for a cake platter didn't exactly make it easy to frost the lower edges, but I managed. And then piping from a Ziploc bag with no tips limited the amount of finesse I could bring to bear on the finishing touches, but all in all it still looked delectable.

My only regret is that I only had a chance to savor one piece before I flew out the door.

Edit: I suppose I should mention that a week ago I made a red velvet cake. Or rather a deep forest green velvet cake because we didn't have any red food coloring. Then because the little people I stay with would enjoy it I made a pink frosting. It looked abominable, but they loved it and I relish the taste of velvet cakes. As a side note, always remember to use powdered sugar in frostings. It saves the effort of having to go back and degranulate it. I realized my mistake right as I added the last of the sugar. Not wanting to waste it, but also not wanting to serve a grainy frosting, I worked some magic and smoothed it out.

Week summary

2011-06-04T10:50:00.000-07:00

All in all it was a pretty uneventful week. I had another medvac down to the Big City, this time with a lifetime EtOH abuser who was paying for his mistakes. That's not me being judgmental, just an apt assessment. Then there was someone who had absolutely nothing wrong with him (that we could find), but was complaining of chest pains. After hours too. Other than that, the biggest thing is that I'm now sitting in with our provider when she deals with patients, so I get to see how she works.

A true taste of vacation

2011-06-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

Sort of. This memorial day weekend I had another long weekend and planned to spend all of it (starting on Friday) at Familial Home Base with a large chunk of my extended family. Of course, this didn't go quite as I had planned. I found out earlier in the week *coughWednesdaycough* that there was a CPR and first aid class early Saturday morning, and that the second half of extrication training was that afternoon. Whatever, I could just leave at like 4pm on Saturday and still spend two nights at FHB. Oh was I disappointed. The CPR class was amazing, our teachers knew what they were doing and moved at a brisk pace so we actually finished an hour early.

The extrication training was supposed to be cutting up three cars (one on its wheels, one of its side, and one completely flipped) in order to remove our 'patients'. Three cars... in the field we need to do a car in under 30 minutes tops. Preferably like 10 minutes. It took FOUR HOURS. The car on its wheels took two hours on its own. It was ridiculous. Nothing against our instructor, but boy he can go on. 'And this tool does this, and this one does the same thing, and then there's this one, and this one, and blah blah blah let me show you how they all work even though it's pretty much exactly the same.'

When we had finally finished, instead of packing up and heading back to the clinic quickly, people decided to sit around and talk. Telling the exact same stories they had been telling the entire day, just in a slightly different way. Urgh, old men. So I finally got back home at about 6:30, and ended up leaving Home for FHB at around 7pm. I realize that the training is important, but I hate having my time wasted. The class could have been done in a much more efficient manner, and we would have learned just as much.

I will admit that I did enjoy breaking car windows with the spring loaded center punch. Just stick it in the corner of the window, apply a little pressure, and POP! Entire window shatters. >.> Perhaps I enjoyed it a little too much...

Once I got to FHB, I enjoyed myself. I helped uE fix up the car I am borrowing so it runs much smoother now, and once again he went above and beyond what was necessary. For sleeping arrangements I was originally on a cot. Now, I don't have any problems sleeping on cots, goodness knows I've spent months on one before. This particular cot, however, squeaks whenever you move on it. Roll over? Squeak. Scratch your nose? Squeak. Twitch in a dream? Squeak. Anyways, I think you get the point. All this squeaking would keep me awake and wake me up when I finally managed to fall asleep, so I migrated to a very comfortable armchair. This armchair and I go way back. Way, way back. I've also spent numerous nights sleeping soundly on it, so I spent the rest of the night in comfort. Of course, when uE saw me sleeping in a chair, he decided that he needed to set up a bed for me. Never mind that it needs to be pulled out of storage, that there is very little space for it, and that I'm perfectly happy to sleep in the chair. The bed is coming out. /sigh I do appreciate it, really. But I hate creating such a fuss.

During the days, I played DotA with my cousins, actually beat them in Halo Reach (still not sure if they let me win or not... I will always doubt my abilities when it comes to xbox. I'm a computer gamer through and through), and mostly cleaned house in Super Smash Brother's Melee. I got my bottom handed to me so many times in high school by a friend that I've actually become proficient in the game. We also did some skeet shooting (or rather, they did and I watched for a little while), and had a mini barbecue. I'm slowly refining my Oma's potato salad, and I've learned of another possible ingredient from my Opa. Speaking of which, that man is full of surprises.

1) He's playing croquet... I'm pretty sure he's mocked the game on numerous occasions and it just seems so out of character.
2) I've heard rumor that he has been walking outside barefoot.
3) He's gardening. Like, actually tilling the earth, planting seeds, and watering them gardening. He's set up a tomato (or potato, I never quite heard properly what was being said) patch. To me, that was always and ever, now and forever Oma's domain. Speaking of Oma... My god I'm almost afraid she's going to come back and haunt us. Well, haunt certain people first and then us for doing nothing.

AND speaking of doing nothing. I feel like I have to say this. There are certain situations where doing nothing at all can be just as harmful as actually doing something. Certain situations where doing almost anything would be better. I know that there are many, many ways to take that statement. Feel free to see what you will in it. Maybe in a later post I'll talk about it more.

To the Big City!

2011-06-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

The view for about the first fifteen minutes was beyond amazing... The river was snaking back and forth below us, swathed by luscious dark and bright green trees. The mountains in the distance were beautifully white capped, and there were patches of snow beneath us too. Then we hit the clouds. After enduring the dull gray for a few minutes we burst forth into... more gray. Which at the time was rather boring, but it got worse. Once we got through the next layer of clouds there was nothing between me and the bright, blistering sun. Just lots of white fluff reflecting it back. I did manage to get a minor sunburn on the way down.

Flying to the Big City, we go higher than when we just go to Little City, so we were at 14k feet instead of 8k. Now, I didn't realize it, but I probably should have been on oxygen flying down (I certainly was on the way back up). I got a headache and kept falling asleep, but the EMT in the plane seemed perfectly fine, so I thought it was just because I hadn't really slept well the night before. Oops. On a related note, nasal canula are kind of uncomfortable. It basically blows oxygen right up your nose, so exhaling feels weird and of course you have two short tubes going up your nostrils.

BEWARE THE DANGERS OF SMALL CHILDREN. Seriously. Our patient got kneed in the eye by a four year old. I don't know how it happened, and frankly, I don't want to know how it happened. What I do know is that she's probably lost the eye by now. I saw it for about two seconds (I was looking over the provider's shoulder when she took a quick peek) and the orb looked deflated. Also, lots of blood, but that wasn't the important part. Not fun. Of course, with eye injuries, you need to cover both eyes. If you just cover the injured eye, the patient will continue to look around, and the eyes track together, even if one is closed. This is bad. So the poor patient was blinded for most of the time in our ER, the entire transport, and presumably she will remain that way in the Big City's ER/hospital until this is all resolved.

All things considered though, the patient was really nice. Polite and quiet. The only thing which wasn't agreeable was that I had to hold the patient's hand whenever the flight became turbulent. Part of this whole 'compassion' thing, and making the patient as comfortable as possible. I understand why she wanted the contact though. Going from a sighted world to suddenly not being able to see anything, being brought into a strange environment, and then feeling like the plane is going to shake apart can be a little unnerving.

I've decided to play it even safer, just to avoid any HIPAA related complications, so I'm removing all locations from the blog. From here on out (and in previous posts) you'll now just be seeing Home, Little City, and Big City whenever patients are involved. (And since all patients are coming from Home, I'll be taking the name completely off the blog.)

Unruly patients

2011-06-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

Usually, the patients we get in the clinic, or deal with on the EMS end are nice, generally well behaved, and accept the fact that we are there to help and that they need our help. Every so often, however, we get someone who refuses to cooperate. Heart problems and chest pains? LET US GIVE YOU YOUR DARNED NITRO. You complain that your chest hurts, struggle, yell, moan, and do everything else, but the moment that little pill gets close to your mouth, bam. Closed tight. /sigh Then, you decide not to let us put a catheter in. No, no, don't take our word for it. Feel for yourself how uncomfortable you are going to be when that other medication kicks in and starts flushing fluids out of your system. Don't make all of our lives easier by letting the catheter drain you. URGH.

And then the medvac flight. Wonderful view of the mountains, we have your vitals stable, and then you decide you need to flail around and almost pull the emergency exit release. At least I'm faster, by the grace of god... (See what I did there? eh? eh?) Anyways, I did manage to slam my hand against it before the patient's fingers got around it, but it was still one of those wide-eyed, did that really almost happen moments.

Oh, remember how we didn't get a catheter in? We had to bring portable urinals and he was strapped to a gurney... 2 + 2 = SCARRED. FOR. LIFE.

Anyways, that's that rant out of the way. On the bright side, there is a pretty good burger place in the Little City which we go to after getting the patient set up at the hospital. Jalapeno Burger ftw. It's amazing and I actually find is spicy!

I have a backlog of posts that I just haven't had a chance to put up. So I've set it up to post them, one a day, for the next few days.

Absence

2011-05-25T23:41:00.001-07:00

In all the rush of coming up to Alaska right after finals, I had forgotten about other events going on in the lower 48. My old high school's graduation for starters. Granted, there is only one person I'd have gone to see walk, but several other friends from previous years are also going to be there.

It's a shame that I won't get to see them, but practically speaking it's better for me to be up here. I'm getting experience, learning a great deal, and seeing sights most people may never see. Seeing friends would be icing, however the cake would be a lie, and what is icing without the cake?