Well folks, I'm officially exhausted! I've had maybe 3 hours of sleep in over 30 hours and it's really beating me up. I'm starting to greatly dislike these long shifts that I have.... I worked an 8 hour shift on Sunday and was up part of the night so I slept most of the morning after getting off. I then went back to work at 11 on Monday night and I'm here till tomorrow morning at 7. An hour after being at work, we got called to do a transport to Barnes. Talk about a bad dream! We left the hospital at 12:30 and finally made it back to Columbia at 4:30. The nice thing about late transports is, nobody's on the road. :) Bad thing is that you're so tired that it's hard to stay awake. I ended up getting some coffee in hopes that it would keep me awake for the drive home....it worked for the first hour. The caffeine made me sick for the rest of the morning though, so I think it's probably best if I stay away from it. :-/ I did get two hours of sleep that morning which helped quite a bit! I was able to lay down later that day and got maybe another hour of sleep. Some of you are probably wondering why I'm not sleeping now. Well, I laid down at seven in hopes of sleeping till morning and got up an hour later not having slept at all. So, guess what?! I'm wide awake!

Ok, so that was awhile ago...now I'm tired. ;) I had more to write, but that's all gonna have to wait. I may not write till next week since I have my race this weekend. :) Woohoo! I'm actually kinda worried since I don't feel ready... I'll try to write next week though and let you know if I lived! ;-) hehe

Sleep well, everyone! :)

BEWARE!

This is what happens if you work too much overtime. You pretty much end up freaking out all your patients...and yourself. I now give you permission to run screaming from your computer.

2 years....

So, I realized today that it has been two years (plus two days... I started on the 5th) since I started working at Boone. Time really flies because it doesn't seem like it's been that long. I've learned so much in the past year and I'm very grateful for my job. I remember when I first started and how nervous I was. It took me a long time to feel like I fit in with this group here. I felt like I was invading a close family. And we all know that is never fun. But that soon changed and I fit in pretty well now. At least I think. ;) I was very shy when I started and talking to my patients was really hard.  They don't exactly teach you what questions to ask in class and it's just something you learn on the job. Thankfully, I did learn it and I have no trouble talking with my patients now. :)
Two years ago, I had no idea how to get around in Columbia and had no clue what streets were what. I still get teased about the time when I couldn't find the address for a call, only to find out that it was very close to the base and on a main road so I should've known it. I felt like the biggest idiot ever! I was so upset with myself that it wasn't even funny. I don't think my boss could've punished me more than I did myself. I was upset for weeks about it! But when I'm teased about it now, I just laugh and call myself an idiot. ;) I learned from my mistake though and I now make sure I know exactly where I'm going before leaving the base.
One of the guy's from work has a party every year, and I was asked several times if I would come. So, I'm going to take my carrot cake (it was requested) and chocolate chip cookies, and have a good time. I think there's going to be a hayride, which is awesome cause I haven't been on one in forever! ;) I really have a fun time with the people I work with and so I'm sure it'll be fun. :)
Lol, I just remembered a shift I had a week or so ago where something was said and I ended up throwing ice at one of the guys. Who then decided to throw water on me but missed when I hit his hand and it went smack dab into my partner's face who was sitting looking through a magazine. I so wish we had a video tape of the expression on his face as the water is dripping from it. It was priceless! They later got me back when I was grabbed and they threw water all over me. I told them I looked totally unprofessional, but they really didn't seem to care. They happen to be two of my favorite people (I actually have lots of favorites;-) to work with....and don't worry, they're in their 40's. ;)

Well, now that I've completely bored you with work.... I'll change the subject. :) Ok, this may sound really silly, but I love listening to Disney songs. I even have a pandora station for it! My favorite (Disney song, that is) right now is "Colours of the Wind" and "Beauty and the Beast" :) If you haven't listened to them recently, you should. Oh, and listen to "Reflection" too. It's also really good. :) Tell me honestly, did you laugh when you read about the songs I like? I bet you at least smiled. =)

Anyway, that's all for now. :) I'm gonna go to bed soon since I have a long run in the morning and I need to get up early. Sleep well everyone and goodnight! :-)

It's been awhile....like almost 3 weeks! I won't say that I'll try to do better at writing in the future, cause we all know that probably won't happen. I will try to not go over a month without posting though. ;)
Work is great, as always. I still very much enjoy it. Actually, I do have days that I hate it, but the good outweigh the bad. ;) This week is the first (in a couple months) that I've not had overtime! It feels really weird to only be working 40 hours. This week has been pretty insane though. For some reason I'm only working 8 hour shifts, which isn't much fun. I've worked the past three days and I have tomorrow off. Then I'll work Friday and then a night on Saturday. So, technically I have 2 full days off. My plan tomorrow is to run and then do something profitable besides laying around. Sounds good, right? =)
Okay, so I very rarely work serious calls at work. And if I do, it's only one a shift. Today, I had two serious calls and the potential of a third one. Our first guy was breathing ineffectively and we came really close to intubating him. He woke up pretty quick when my partner was about to stick a tube down and said he didn't want us sticking anything down him. My partner told the pt that if he started breathing better we wouldn't keep trying to stick a tube down. It actually worked, because by the time we got to the hospital he was breathing on his own. Before we were having to assist his breathing with a bag....and no, that would not be a brown paper bag. ;-)
Our second pt was a 2 y/o with Epiglottitis and croup that we were transporting to another hospital nearby. She really didn't look so great when we picked her up, but she did improve on the way to the hospital. We must have amazing skills cause our pt's keep improving in our care. ;)
Our third pt, decided to blow the tips of his fingers off. Thankfully, that was all he decided to blow off. I didn't know this but Silver and Azide is very explosive and you should definitely handle with care. This call was pretty insane. It was on the MU campus and so we went to where we thought the Chemistry building was. That's where fire personnel thought it was. Unfortunately, after looking around for a little bit we all found out that we were in the Physic's building and needed to be over next door. So, we drag all our stuff over to the next building and take the elevator to the second floor. Only to find out that we need to be on the other side of the elevators and the hallway doesn't wrap around. We finally find the room after taking the elevator back down to the first floor, walking around to the other side of the building and taking that elevator up. Oh, and did I mention that they had told us when we got on scene that this was going to be a trauma alert? That had us going crazy since we couldn't find the room. For those curious, a trauma alert basically means the pt is in bad shape. So, we're thinking at this time that this guy's face must've been half blown off or something. Turns out though that it was just the tips of a few of his fingers that had been blown off. He was conscious, alert, and had no breathing trouble, so he was actually doing fairly well considering it all. He said that he knew that the chemical's could explode but didn't think they would explode that much. I'm guessing he won't be messing too much with those chemical's anymore. We never did find his finger tips, so hopefully an unsuspecting student doesn't find them and get the scare of his or her life.
After that, we did an MCA flip. Which means we took a pt from the hospital to radiation and then back to the hospital.
And our last call was a stroke pt. We had her to the hospital 24 minutes after being dispatched for the call. Not bad! =)
And in a nutshell, that was how my day went. And now it's time for me to hit the sack because otherwise I will not want to get up in the morning for my run. :)

Btw, I totally just realized that all I do in life is: work, run, bake, eat and sleep. Yes, my life is boring. ;-)

It's a purdy sight!

Well, ain't this just the purdiest sight you've ever done see! It's Hillary on this here blog of hers.... rareness! =) Well, I'm not dead. Yay! I've had a good couple weeks. Went home the last two weekends, and then filling in the other days with work. This week has gotten slightly insane and I'm not even finished with it yet. I worked a 9-5 shift on Tuesday, a 24 on Wednesday, got asked to work today at 10 and then didn't get off till 6:30, I work tomorrow 7-3, and then another 24 on Saturday. I'll end up with over 30 hours of overtime which is pretty awesome. :) Today was crazy. We went through 3 trucks today... and no, I did not wreck them. That's the first thing you all thought, right? ;) Our first truck was leaking/pouring out fuel (never a good thing), and so we switched to a new truck. It proved to be a good one, except that we did end up switching out of it after our transport. Nobody bothered to tell me why... Finally, we got into the 3rd truck and we stuck with it. It had just come from the shop and so we figured we wouldn't have any issues with it. WRONG! Guess what didn't work? The sirens! We got a call right after switching into it and our sirens wouldn't turn on at all. Thankfully, one of our other trucks jumped the call for us so we could take the truck back to the shop. But, while heading there we got another call. We obviously didn't run hot to it and after we finished we were able to get over to the shop. Turns out it was an easy fix and in less than 5 minutes we were back on the road. Of course, we got a late call and were 30 minutes late getting off work. It is somewhat annoying to never have a set time that you get off. Oh well, life really does just keep going on whether you get off work on time or not. ;)

This is what I'm listening to at the moment: The Piano Guys. If you've never heard of the Piano Guys, you're really missing out! Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson are awesome musicians and I love pretty much all their music. Listen to them. I promise you won't be disappointed. I have a hard time picking my favorite song as all of theirs are good. :) Oh, and if you like them on Facebook they will post every time they have a new song out. It's very handy. :)

Well, I seriously need to get to bed. It's already after 11 and I have to be at work by 7. Yuck!
Night all and sleep well!

Parasailing!

I loved the boat... a lot. :) It was almost as cool as going parasailing, but not quite. ;)

Well, you all know who he is. :)

So.... if you don't hold the leg straps when you go up you'll get a wedgie. Thankfully, they told us that before it happened. ;)

I look like I'm freaking out but really I'm just very excited and probably yelling something. ;)

Man.... I so want to do that again. It was such a blast. :)

We just look like a speck.. 

And we were dunked! That was definitely cool. :)

The guy in red shorts was yelling for us to stand when we came in....

and Nate missed it.... the camera was too fascinating to him. ;)

And it's Uncle Craig and Aunt B's turn!

They had just as much fun as we did. :)

Preparing for "launch"... ;)

Uncle Craig is already taking pictures... love it! :)

Obviously, the guy said something funny... I don't even remember what it was, so I guess it wasn't that funny. ;)

I love how high you get and how peaceful it is. 

I didn't get one of them actually hitting the water.. this is as they were coming up. 

Yeah, they liked it :)

I'm so glad we got to spend time with them. They were pretty fantastic. :)

 

 I really like this picture. They're so happy! :)

Group picture with our boat driver! :)

So, after all these pictures of parasailing, you're probably thinking how fun it would be to do....AND, YOU'RE RIGHT! ;) I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again, if you're at the beach it's a must! You won't be disappointed! Well, unless you're afraid of heights...cause then you'll just be freaking out and that is never fun. ;) 

Oh, and the pictures from our water-proof camera didn't copy over to my computer so I'll post them whenever I get them again. :)

More vacation pictures....we're still on the first day! lol

Ok, so back to the vacation pictures.... if you all are still interested. If not, just don't look at them. ;) I'm so helpful. =D

Waiting for our lunch to arrive. 

This was our view during lunch...absolutely beautiful!

 It was such a beautiful day and all my pictures turned out fantastic!

Now who would ever want old beer. ;)

It's a bar for RA's! For those of who you don't know, Nate is an RA at CofO.

I really loved the palm trees. 

This was pretty in color, but I liked it in black and white too. :)

And another palm tree picture. :)