November Mayhem

Half way through November and halfway through my third rotation. I spend most of my days in the ER in Pocatello seeing a lot of urgent care stuff but not a lot of emergent care. In the ER here the PAs do a lot of the easy stuff seen in the ER and the docs cover the really emergent situations. I get to work with the docs sometimes but usually I spend most of my time with the PAs. To tell you the truth most people couldn't care less if the student was there or not. You have to make yourself known and volunteer/ask for different assignments. I've got to see some pretty cool stuff in the past two weeks though. Probably the most exciting was participating in a "code." For those that don't know when a code is called in a hospital it means that a person has crashed and is in need of resuscitation. I was part of the CPR team. Unfortunately for the pt it was an unsuccessful code, but that's part of the business. Other things I've been a part of have been simple suturing/stapling, splinting, and saving lives...one sore throat at a time.
In the off times I've been out playing flag football with some classmates (see pic above), going to Jazz games, watching Bond movies, and enjoying my sleep.
While on my journeys through the ER I have come across some interesting information. Apparently the space shuttle has been docked with the international space station for quite some time and, if you catch it at the right time, you can see them pass overhead. Right now it passes overhead every two hours or so at night, but you have to catch it just at the right time because if you don't it will be eclipsed by the earth's shadow. If any of you are interested here is the website to follow the path http://www.n2yo.com and to check the times it flies over click on the 5-day prediction with graphics link. My preceptor is the one who actually showed me this website. It's actually quite exciting to watch as it passes overhead and then fades away as it passes behind the earth's shadow. The following videos were taken this evening and last night. In the first one it passed behind some trees before disappearing and in the second one it's kind of hard to know that it's moving, but you see it fade away.


So that's basically what's been going on. Not a whole heck of a lot to report on. Thanksgiving is just around the corner and most people I know will be heading home for the holidays...except for me. From my experience back at McKay-Dee I've learned that the best times to see interesting cases weekends and holidays so I figured that I'll take a shift in the ER for Thanksgiving. I'll make it home for Christmas though.

"Yo man let's get outta here!" "Werd to ya motha"