Weird...

So, I have a dorm-type fridge in the hotel room here. The kind that the freezer and the fridge part are kind of connected. So, I needed to keep some stuff frozen, so I cranked it colder, and some of the stuff in my fridge froze. Oh well. The weird part was that I looked in and saw that one of the unopened bottles of wine I had from my New York winery tour... Well, the foil part over the cork had come off and the cork was pushed halfway out. I took the bottle out, removed the cork totally, and realized it had become a wine slushy. I put on one of those corks for partially finished bottles and set it out horizontally on the counter to thaw. Thought nothing of it. Then, around 3am (12 hours later)... I was awakened by a big "POP" and then the sound of things falling to the ground. Weird since I'm the only one in the hotel room and I have the door triple locked when I'm sleeping... I wake up and search for the culprit. The pre-mentioned wine bottle... The new cork had popped off and flew across the room. The cork, as well as the wine pouring out of the bottle, knocked things over. If liquid expands when it freezes... And therefore shrinks when it thaws... How did the cork go flying? I don't get it... It's just weird. So, anyway... End of the story is, I lost a full bottle of $14.99 Reisling. Hmmm... Weird.

Not a lot interesting lately...

The last few days in the ER havne't been too interesting. This is a combination of the things happening in the past few days...

Two garbage men rolled their garbage truck in the afternoon. Apparently they're top heavy. I got to stitch part of the passengers scalp back onto his head.

I was putting a splint on a six year old boy's broken wrist. He asked if he could come home with me and play with my kids. I told him I didn't have any kids yet. He told me, "Well, you better hurry up and get a baby in your tummy then!"

One of my really good, really easy IV's I put in an extremely drunk man (and by extremely drunk, I mean I swear he was swetting alcohol)... well, later when he sobered up enough to move, he stripped naked, ripped out his IV, and walked naked down the hall.

A 35-year-old woman got this big sliver under her finger nail and was absolutely out of control hystarical. She couldn't control herself. She's had five children, I think she should be more in control of her pain by now.

*****************************
On another note, just so you all know... I'm toying with the idea of joining the National gaurd as an officer in the medical unit after I graduate. At this point, the money and experience is the big drawing factor. They'll pay off about $31,000 per year of my student loans for 3 years. Plus the regular officer pay and bonuses. So... it's tempting. But I haven't talked to a medical recruiter yet. And I haven't decided anything. And I'm in no hurry to decide. If I decide to do it, I would hope that if I got activated somewhere, it would be a hurricane or earthquake like the national gaurd was origionally intended for. So... I'm thinking about it. If you have political opinions on this about if the war is right or wrong or whatever, I would appreciate you keeping that to yourself. I'm not considering it because I totally agree with everything the national gaurd is involved with... but I do think the pay is amazing, and the experience would be as well. So, that's where I stand. I won't be making a decision for awhile yet. So, don't worry. :)

Blahhh...

Super boring day in Mercy ER today... seriously, nothing fun to tell you about. I saw like, 9 patients in 10 hours... it was very very boring. I had Chinese food though. And watched the last 10 minutes of the ER season finale while working. So... that's about it. Hopefully tomorrow will be more interesting!

Don't provoke big rats

A 21-year-old kid came in today telling us a rat had bit him in the leg. Last I knew, rats didn't just up and bite people when walking through a public park. But then again, I've only lived in Port Huron for a week and a half. Well, I guess this guy provoked the rat first. He says it was a big rat. After it bit him, he found a big stick and killed the rat that bit him. He said if he was going to get rabies, he was taking the crazy rat down with him. We were getting all ready to treat this guy for possible rabies exposure when I actually looked it up (because I was told to look up the protocol for rabies immunoglobulin) and I found that you don't prophylax against rabies with rats. The CDC says there's a ZERO chance of getting rabies from rats. There's been one report of rabies in the united states in the last year, and it was from a raccoon. Yup, so the crazy kid went on his way with 10 days of antibiotics. And no worries of rabies.

I am... the Baby Whisperer

I got a new title today at the ER. I am the Baby Whisperer. Here's how it all came about...

We get this story... a 21 month old little girl and her 5 year old brother were playing outside, out in some dinky little town, and they have a pond. The neighbor looks out the window and sees the 5 year old boy standing by the pond, looks around and dosen't see any adults, so he goes out to make sure everything's ok. He walks over to the 5 year old and he points out into the pond and says "Baby!" The little girl is floating face down about 3 feet out from the edge of the pond. The neighbor dashes in, grabs her, and gives her a few rescue breaths after which she coughs and/or throws up a bunch of water. She starts screaming unconsolably. She's in the ambulance and off towards the nearest town with a hospital before they even find the family. Girl gets to our ER after what I was told was at least an hour long ambulance ride alone. Then she's rushed into the trauma room, surrounded by scary adults poking her with needles and sticking little things all over her. Understandably, still kicking and screaming like mad. After that's all done, one of the older nurses picks her up and tries to console her to no avail. Still kicking and screaming like mad. I could tell the nurse was getting tired, her arms were drooping. This little girl weighed around 30 pounds at 21 months, and she didn't look fat. Anyway, so I took her in my arms and after her struggling with me awhile, I decided to start singing to her. I picked twinkle twinkle little star... it worked. She stopped crying and just looked at me. I switched to another song. She screamed. So... Twinkle Twinkle it was. Over and over. But it worked, it even got her through X-rays. So, hence forth I am the baby whisperer. She didn't like anyone but me. Mom and uncle finally got there... there's a weird family dynamic, Mom was very unemotional and detached from the little girl. Anyway... it appears she's going to be ok and she was pretty lucky. Neighbor saved her life. But, where was mom? And why were these two small children outside at 9pm playing by the pond alone? Anyway... when I left she was headed to Children's Hospital in Detroit for a day or two for observation. Still don't like the feeling I got from mom. Just dosen't seem right. The nurses were going to call child protective services on them I think.

Pictures

I finally got 2 more albums published... Here's the shortcut to them... for the rest of my photos see the link on the right.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/aleathea/easter_2006

http://www.kodakgallery.com/aleathea/new_york_finger_lakes_adventure

A Busy Day at Mercy ER...

From the moment I walked in, for the next 11 hours I was there, it was non-stop. Here are some of the interesting parts...

A fast moving hockey puck can really split a guys chin open.

A woman lost a condom inside her vagina and I got the joy of taking it out for her.

I had to help do a lumbar puncture on a poor little really sick 4 year old boy.

A 70-year-old war vet yelled at me a lot because he didn't want to be in the hospital and didn't think that he needed to be in the hospital for a nosebleed if he had gone through "7 years in Germany with bullets flying at me" (his wife says it was only 2 years)... and this was nosebleed number 2 of the day which both lasted over 2 hours.

Lots of sick little kids.

An embedded tick in a 6 year old's head.

Ok, I'm too fried to remember what else happened today... I'm just glad for 24 hour McDonalds on a night like this... It's tireing... but I'm really loving ER.

Lesson of the day...

Do not leave curious 4 year old boys alone, even for 10 minutes. They will get into the medicine cabinet. And then you will not know what, if anything, they actually ingested. Then you will have to take them to the ER. You will have to wait in the ER for 4 hours for observation and to get a 4 hour Tylenol level... only to find out your child ingested, at most, 1 Tylenol. Then you will go home with a tired and crabby child around 12:30am.

In the meantime... the curious PA student and one of the RNs will taste the activated charcoal given to the child to see how horrible it tastes and why the kid puked. Even one sip, and we both understood why the kid puked.

There's why when you have children, you need to know how many pills you had in the bottle, so you know how many are missing when your kid gets into it... because they will get into it.

On another note... some of you have been asking what Port Huron is like, if it's a nice town and such.... I couldn't figure out how to explain it until today, and on my way to the hospital the perfect description hit me. Port Huron is like Superior, WI if Superior did not have the wonderful-ness of Dululth to make it suck less. It's just a dreary port city... like Superior.

Adventure from day 2...

1. I got to remove popcorn (unpopped) from both ears of a 4 year old who would not speak to me. Until I gave him a choice of stickers, and he said "Cat in the Hat"... Crazy, "does your ear hurt" and I couldn't get a simple Yes or No... but a full phrase to get a sticker. Kids.

2. A woman who couldn't figure out why her sick husband was so confused. Pretty easy for me to figure out... She told me that since he quit eating she let him drink as much beer as he wanted every day because that way at least he was getting some calories in him...

3. I got to stich my first awake patient... a man who dropped a chainsaw blade on his hand... smart guy. He cut the tip of his finger off last year.

That's the most fun ones... more tomorrow.

Not sleeping...

So, I woke up awhile ago and can't sleep... I ended up watching TV and on the Leno rerun that was on around 3:30am there was this funny woman on named Lisa something or other... anyway, she was talking about the men she dates when she said (and I know this is totally politically incorrect, but it was funny, maybe because I'm half asleep)...

"This one guy I dated, he was half black - half Indian... not Slurpie Indian... Casino Indian. It sucked because every time we went dancing it rained..."

Forgive me, I thought it was funny.

My New York Camping Adventure...

This past weekend was my first solo camping adventure. Granted, it was what I commonly refer to as "wussy camping" - aka Campground with showers camping... Anyway... I took the senic route up to the Finger Lakes region of New York from Philly, taking no road bigger than a state highway. It took a while longer than the big highways would have - but it was so much prettier it was worth it. I got there just after dark, around 9pm, and set up my tent. I hoped for no rain being the ground was too hard for me to get my ran fly staked out well, I need to get some kind of mallet to pound those things in for future trips. I also made my first fire without help! Almost 24 years of watching my parents make fires, and I actually learned something - go figure! Anyway... I went to bed kind of early after a little reading. I woke up to light rain on my tent, but I was warm and dry. I hoped it would stop soon. So I sat in my tent and pouted for awhile that it was raining on my one full day of camping. Finally around noon, I got dressed and headed out to drive around the lake and see what was out there. After just a bit, it stopped raining. So, I drove around the lake, through all the farm land, and it was pretty. Then I got back and did some hiking around the gorge. The sun came out for the end of my hike, but it stayed kind of chilly, so I headed back to sit by a fire. I kept the fire going so long Saturday night that I went through 2 1/2 wood bundles. But I was warm. And I love watching campfires. Fire it so interesting... Anway, I also met this woman a couple sites over from me who was also camping alone. She had ridden down from Rochester, NY on her motorcycle. We sat by my fire for a couple hours and she shared her bottle of wine and we chatted. We had a lot in common for her being a good 30 years older than me. She was fun. Then, pretty sleepy, I went to bed. My sleeping bag is awesome. I stayed warm despite the fact it was FREEZING all night. Literally. I mean, I had a half bag of ice sitting out that didn't fit in my cooler. When I woke up in the morning, before the sun came out, it was still a bag of ice. It didn't melt until the sun was shining bright. So, I stayed in my warm sleeping bag until it got warm. Then I broke down camp and headed out. I checked out a few wineries on my way north. This area of New York is one of the best in the country for wine, and possibly in one of the best in the world according to some things I have read. The funny thing to me was that the winery that said is a "can't miss" according to the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die... well, they're stuck up and they don't have much variety. I left there fairly quickly. I bought some good wine from a couple other wineries. If you come to visit me, I'll share. :) I drove by Niagra falls and saw it from my car in the summer... maybe I'll get back there to see it in the summer. I've only seen it frozen and it's pretty cool then. Anyway - in Canada I bought some gas. A friendly Canadian man at the next pump noted that I was far from home and tried to help me figure out how much their gas was in comparison to ours. Neither of us could do it in our heads, but he COULD tell me that it's more expensive than US gas. When it's $1.09 Canadian per liter... it's hard to figure out how many US$ per gallon. But... it did come out to approximately $37 for 10 gallons... definatley more... we're not up to $3.70 per gallon yet. Ick. Trying to figure out that calculation and the accents of all those around me, who were all talking to me by the way becasue of my "foreign" liscense plate... really made me feel as if I was in a different country. But... when I got back on the road and saw all the signs for all the same stores, hotels, and resturants that we have and I remembered that Canada is after all, just a part of the United States. Anyway... so I finally got to Michigan.

I was going to show you pictures... but this is refusing to upload pictures today. Sorry!

Bad blogger... shame

Ok, I'm bad at this, this keeping up with writing on here. Especially in comparison to my friend Heather. She's awesome. She writes almost daily. Except for her recent hiatus of a few days. But she's forgiven, even though I daily look forward to her wonderful writing.

Anywho... I'm going camping this weekend at Watkins Glen State Park. I've heard it's nice. One of the top 100 State Parks in the country. It's in New York, by the finger lakes. I made my reservations awhile ago, and then the forecast was RAIN all weekend and I was disappointed. But God knew I needed it... the rain in the forcast is GONE! Yay! Ok, so I'll be off on my nature retreat for the weekend. Even though the park sounds like it'll be crowded due to it being opening weekend for camping in most of NY. So yes, I will tell you all about it later.

Happy weekend all!

Baths

The power of a relaxing bath. Today was stressful, a lot of minor stresses, nothing huge, but when I got home tonight I was longing for a nice long soak in the bathtub. Only problem... no bathtub. Well, there is a bathtub, but the thing to plug it is broken, so pretty much it's just a shower. So here I sit, wishing I could soak in the bathtub to destress before bed... and I can't. Someday I'm going to put a whirlpool tub in my house. And a hot tub outside. And then I can sit in warm water whenever I want. :)

New ER tonight... YAY!

Oops...

For those of you that received a paper copy of my support letter... I neglected to re-proof read the letter after adding the picture on top. In doing this, I somehow deleted a whole sentence. Here is how the 1st paragraph ends and the 2nd paragraph should start...

"...This summer I will be going to Vinto, Bolivia in South America from August 5th to September 2nd. (end paragraph)
Hospitals of Hope is an organization that provides medical and dental care to people in third world countries. HOH has a clinic in Bolivia..."

Sorry about this mis-print. Also if you notice I changed the date to September 2nd (not the 7th as the original letter said).

I apologize for my errors.

Weather...

The weather people all just make things up I think. I got up and it was very rainy and gross so I went back to bed because I just couldn't convince myself to go outside in the rain to go to church. So, I layed around and relaxed all morning and afternoon. Then around 3pm it got nice out so I went grocery shopping. It was only supposed to be nice for a couple hours. It was supposed to be raining agian by 7pm. It hasn't started yet and it's 10pm. I didn't go out rollerblading because I didn't think I'd have time before it started raining on me. I would have had plenty of time. The weather people cheated me I think.

Aren't they cute...

These are my little cousins I get to see every time I go home. These are from Easter Sunday right before I left to come back to Philly.

It starts today...

As I posted before... I am going to Bolivia for four weeks in August. This is an elective rotation and I will get credit for school, but it is also medical missions - I will finally be able to use all my education to open doors to share Jesus with people. I am so excited for this opportunity.

Tomorrow morning I will be putting the first of my support letters in the mail. I also want to post the info on here so if I miss any of you in the paper mailing... I can reach you this way.

The first opportunity to partner with me in my ministry is to pray for me and the lives of each of the people I will come into contact with. If you would like to be a part of my prayer team, please contact me directly via the comments here, e-mail, or phone so I can keep giving you updates and further prayer requests as the days get closer.

The second opportunity to partner with me is by supporting me financially. I need a total of $2,430 which covers my travel, food, and housing. I have applied for a $500 matching grant through the Fellowship of Christian Physician Assistants, of which I am a member. This grant would partially cover this opportunity.

Please pray about this opportunity to partner with me in my ministry.

If you feel led to partner with me financially please send a check made out to Hospital of Hope, Inc. and send it to:

Hospitals of Hope
3545 N. Santa Fe
Wichita, KS 67219

And include in the envelope my name so they know to whom to credit the money, as well as your name and address.

Any questions or comments... please e-mail me at aleatheaanderson@yahoo.com or leave a comment below.

Why would you give that warning?

Today I saw a fancy convertible with this liscense plate:

RCKLSS

Reckless... now, as much as I appreciate the warning to watch out for his reckless driving... why would one give the cops that warning? I mean, if I was a cop and saw someone with that liscense plate... a liscense plate warning me that they were known for being reckless... I would pull them over. And almost everyone on the road has SOMETHING you could ticket them for if you pulled them over. So yes, that person is strange...

Hmmm... who went into the right career?

Physician Assistant is the #1 Top Growing Job in the United States! :)
(8 out of the 10 are in medicine/science)

Top 10 Best Jobs according to MONEY magizine and Salary.com (according to growth, pay, stress, and other factors) ...
1. Softwear Engineer
2. College Professor
3. Financial Advisor
4. Human Resources Manager
5. PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT
6. Market Research Analyst
7. Computer IT Analyst
8. Real Estate Appraiser
9. Pharmacist
10. Psychologist

Check out how yours compares...
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/other_jobs/index.html

Who says you can't go home...

I got to go home! It was short, but I got to go.

Thursday night I flew from Philadelphia to Milwaulkee. Then I picked up my rental car at 10:15pm and drove the 3 hours to Hillsboro, WI. I then slept a few restless hours at a hotel there before my job interview. I was nervous being this was my first real grown-up professional job interview. In my new pants suit, I went to my interview at the only cafe in the little small town. I shouldn't have been as nervous as I was because in small town midwestern fashion, the people interviewing me we all very nice. It's a classic small town, but I love it. The cool thing is... although it's a small town, they are far from "alone" in rural medicine. It is part of the Gunderson Luthern health system and all their medical records are on the computer. 24 hours a day you can get a specialist on the phone to consult with in 10 minutes through their phone system. X-rays are read by a specialist in another city in a half hour and they send you their report. Although it is a 1200 person farming community - you are far from alone in health care there and that is awesome. Anyway - they will let me know within 2 weeks what is going on with that option... in the meantime I'm still applying for other jobs!

After that, I drove back to Minneapolis and dropped off my rental car and hung around for awhile waitning for my sister to get off work. I took a cab to her work and got a ride home! Yay! I spent a couple days hanging out with my family and just relaxing. I even got a mild sunburn on Saturday just hanging out outside! Yay! That dosen't always happen in April in Minnesota.

Anyway... Over the weekend, mostly on the plane and sitting in the airport I read all of Francine Rivers Attonement Child and absolutely loved it.

Today I've been working on getting some stuff together for Bolivia. So much going on... but if you know me at all, you know I don't like to sit still.