Seattle

Right now I'm in Washington with Jenni.

She told me she was going to cover a scrapbooking conference for her marketing company. Wahoo! I would definitely come!

We left sunny Salt Lake City.....

On the plane I met a woman from Korea....this is her story.....

She grew up in South Korea playing the flute.

At the age of 16, her parents sent her away to America where she would study the flute, learn English, and learn American culture....all in the hopes of a better future.

I asked her how she felt during that time. She said she was so lonely, she had no family and no friends. So she said she turned all of her attention to her studies. She would go to school and come home to study really hard. She said she cried herself to sleep the first 6 months. During her high school years she continued to have no friends. She then went to get her bachelors and master degree in flute performance and then in music therapy. She met and married a Korean man and now they have two kids. I asked how her experience changed how she was going to raise her family.

She says.....Korea is crazy. Kids at the age of 4 are already learning English and are enrolled in at least 5 extra curricular activities. They are not naive. They have no childhood. But if you don't raise your kids that way, then they are social outcasts. Parents will send their kids to America while they are still kids. Asia feels that they must become like America. They do not accept their individuality as a culture. But Americans as a culture are self-interested, independent, isolated from each other. Koreans, however, are in large a part of each other, very group oriented. Koreans are becoming more and more Americanized and our economy now keeps up with the world economy. I'm going to give my children a childhood, though. They are each enrolled in 2 extra curricular activities. They play, they get into some trouble, they will not know about the world so early on.

This woman had a strength and courage about her. Despite her difficult past, she held herself with poise and quiet confidence. She spoke with eloquence and considered her words. She had a rare beauty about her. I'm grateful to have met her....always puts life into perspective...the trials and struggles that some people endure and overcome.

We began our flight descent and my sinus infection took a turn for the worse. The pressure in the cabin was putting intense pressure on my head because it couldn't pressurize with the plane. I felt pins and needles in my head, and then I began feeling this popping sensation in my sinuses. For a second i thought....my word, my brains are going to blow out of my eyeballs or my ears, don't know which is going to happen first. I turned to the guy sitting on the other side of me and asked if he had experienced that before. He reassured me he had and that in fact, my brains would still be in place when we landed!!

So Jenni and I made it to Seattle! We found our rental car and Jenni informed me that we had to go to a city called Grand Mounds an hour and a half away where the hotel was located. We took the Grand Mounds exit and landed ourselves in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!

We saw a gas station.

We saw a few houses.

No hotel.

Where were we??

We keep driving down the main bumpy road to hopefully find it.

Nothing.

A few more house.

Trees.

We turn a corner and there before us is the largest hotel monstrosity I've seen outside of Vegas. The Great Wolf Lodge! We made it! And in front of the hotel are 40 foot wolf statues....sentinels, beacons of welcome to the great Northwest!

This place is great!

Indoor waterpark

Log cabin beds

A Starbucks....for hot apple cider of course, perfect for rainy days

Free wi-fi

Scrapbooking ladies!

Unfortunately my sinus infection has kept me bedridden while Jenni scraps away. But it is a blessing in disguise really that I'm in a place where my only options are a waterpark or my hotel bed. I opted for the bed and am now finally giving my body some much needed rest.

A relay race and a bunch of work shifts with little sleep in between....it was only a matter of time before my body finally gave out. I hate relaxing. I don't know how to do it. It is one of my goals to learn how.

So far in my little hotel bed I have.....

Watched the season finale of Lost....so good, I loved the little Lost moral of the story at the end

Gone out to McDonald's twice....that is the only restaurant in town

Found out my current IQ score...132. Wahoo!

Texted Heather Johnson...she has a sinus infection too

And video chatted with my brother Luke

Great day!

I'm a good cover

Two days ago at work was a most interesting day.....

I had a patient who was sick, really sick. He was my first admit of the day into the hospital. The poor man was really large! And he couldn't breath, fluid backed up into his lungs, a heart that wasn't working....he was so anxious he couldn't talk. I was working fast to get him to a more comfortable bed, pain meds meanwhile.

Our ER beds are hard as a rock!! They are really terrible. The med/surg beds are large and luxurious and every patient that finally makes it to one of those always breaths a sigh of relief that they no longer are on the half-of-a-twin-size bed, bed.

So I asked my doc....what room do you want him in?

He wants a med/surg bed.

I call house supervisor....we need a med/surg bed.

The admitting physician also concurs....med/surg bed.

Got it.

I give report to the floor nurse and explain that this patient is also on some heavy duty respiratory machine. She seems to okay it...she can handle it.

So I get the patient ready to go. And it turns into quite the little entourage. I've got his bed, the respiratory therapist has the machine with all the tubes attached. And we've got the whole family following behind....all of the family members are quite large.

We make our way slowly down the hall, barely fit in the elevator, but we are IN!

4th floor....

Get off the elevator, slowly make our way to the room. I see the admitting physician at the nurses' desk. Take 10 minutes to pull equipment and chairs out of the way to fit the ER bed next to the hospital bed. The med/surg nurses are staring at me. No help? Okay I start making requests....you be there, you help here....i feel really bossy. But the job must be done to slide the patient from the ER bed to the hospital bed. The family member decides to lift the patient to a standing position and move him from the ER bed to the hospital bed.

It's a heavy lift! But he manages to pick up the patient. I can see the patient is quickly getting frantic, no oxygen! Its an intense moment. We gotta get him to his bed quick so he can get oxygen.

Then a family member pipes up....I thought he was on the ICU floor. What? I pause for a second. Things aren't adding up. Med/surg nurses giving me blank stares, a respiratory machine, and a lengthy diagnosis.

Okay hold on everybody, I hear myself say....I'm sweating bullets, I feel my skin get really hot and flush. I can feel the family's frustrations....one family starts letting out profanities.

I run down to the admitting physician....where did you want him??

The physician tells me he was surprised to see us up on the med/surg floor and that he needed ICU care immediately. He couldn't wait on this floor, these nurses were not equipped to handle him.

The stress mounts.....I have 3 patients in the ER that I am in charge of who are not getting care. I call down to the ER floor....is everybody okay?? I talk to Tim and he reassures me I'm ok, he's got my patients. Thanks Tim! Okay resume care.

We get a bed in the ICU.....and our little entourage starts off again with tubes clanking and people bumping into each other. We make our way down to the ICU floor.

The ICU floor nurse is frustrated, I can feel it. She isn't making eye contact. Again, the family member lifts the patient, again panic ensues with the patient, lack of oxygen....but we make it to the ICU bed this time. The family's faces are frustrated. I've broken out into a full sweat now. We hook him up to monitors and get him comfortable.

The ICU nurse and I walk out so I can give report to the nurse. She looks at me and tells me what just happened was completely unacceptable. They had no idea a patient was coming and had no time to prepare....

Perspective is interesting.....not knowing what is coming and not being prepared is what I'm learning to do all day every day in the ER, but if it isn't what the norm, then not feeling prepared in the ICU must be very unnerving.

The ICU nurse continues her lament, I take the hit.

I go back down to the ER to face what is inevitably going wrong with my patients, and to begin pulling up my slack. Tim is amazing....he has everything under control, patients are well taken care of. My ER doc comes to his desk and I take in a big gulp of my pride.....Hey, doc I'm sorry I really thought that patient was going to the med/surg floor. Must have been my misunderstanding.

My doc looks confused and then says, What?? No. The admitting physician told me he was a med/surg floor patient. That is where he wanted him. It was not your fault. You just took the hit for him. It was his mistake.

I talked to some of the nurses who began to explain to me...I had just learned my first lesson about the nurse/doc relationship and mistakes in the hospital. The nurse will take the hit. The doc is the health facilitator, the nurse is the face of the hospital.

And I'm a good cover for our docs:).

Sun Never Sets on a Bad Bieber

Red Rock Relay 2010!! This is the rockin' relay course. We started at the top of Brian Head Ski resort and descended 7000 feet to Zion National Park. Amazing. We split the 188 mile relay with 12 peeps. Our team...Sun Never Sets on a Bad A$$ changed to Sun Never sets on a Bad Bieber....with none other than a poster of Justin Bieber himself on the back of our suburban as a beacon of hope on our runs!

Our race start began at 1145 on Friday morning, a crisp , chilly lift ride took our 6 runners from our first van to the top of Brian Head for the first descent. Megan Zitting, Laura Lewis, Jordan Edwards, Alex Wilcox, Amy Fish, and I met up with the first van to begin our first leg standing behind the Bieber!
We ran into Ben Mcgrath and John Hill who were on another team about 20 minutes behind us. Competition definitely ensued!
Our Navajo Ninja moves in honor of the beast of a run Jordan Edwards was about to undertake...a grueling 6.5 miles at 11,000 feet!

And why we are 'Beliebers!'...

When we needed water from our support burb or a little shout out of encouragement from the team....the Bieber poster was such a welcoming site because it differentiated our burb from the rest

To Be or not to Bieb! We Bieber!

And who is Justin Bieber?? 16 year old musical prodigy of Usher. His famous lyrics, "Baby, baby, baby, ohhhh, right....baby, baby, baby, ohhh right!" Greatest catchy tune. I plan on singing that song to my husband one day!

Orange soda man!

New experience from Red rock.....I experienced altitude sickness.

Wikipedia defines it as "a pathological effect of high altitude on humans caused by acute exposure to low partial pressure of oxygen at high altitude. It resembles a case of the flu, carbon monoxide poisoning, or a hangover. Symptoms include....nausea, fatigue, weakness, dizziness, insomnia, pins and needles, persistent rapid pulse, peripheral edema, pulmonary edema."

Most everyone on our team had some symptoms that resembled altitude sickness. I was running my first run at 4.5 miles at 9,000 feet when I started getting the chills, nausea, and I felt like I couldn't think straight. At the end of my run, my team was asking me questions and I couldn't understand anything they were saying. I felt like I had fluid building up in my lungs. Definitely wasn't ready for that moment.

The team....my red rock team was just that....they rocked!!! I loved them! There was never a dull moment in our car. And we lost one of our runners to some flu symptoms and it was so cool how fast our team mates jumped on helping our down teammate....

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a huge fascination with World War II. During our runner down moment during the night, I was having flashes in my mind of what it would have been like to be in the Ardennes Forest...I felt like we were getting a small taste.....no soldier left behind, we had to carry our soldier out and replace him. And we were so sleep deprived from our earlier runs but knew what had to be done. I love those epic moments of human struggle and then triumph.

Favorite moments of the run...

The Bieber dance parties

Cheering on our runners

The wonderful 30 minutes of sleep on a lawn chair at SUU's indoor swimming pool with the large air conditioners in the rafters that lulled us into a deep, deep sleep.

Frank and his twin...the moment when Megan freaked out over 'The Creeper!" that her and Katie Squires had seen at their last Ragnar...Frank was adorned in tube socks, shorty blue s horts, and a white tank top that didn't quite back up with the waistline of his shorts exposing some pudge and love handles. Frank turned out to be a cute little man though....Alex passed him up and Frank yells out "Goooood job, goooooood job (total exertion)".

My last run was 5.5 miles, the uphill was 2 miles, and then down 3 miles. I started the uphill on a highway shoulder and about half mile into it, the trail veers off onto a rocky trail up a hillside....i had no way of telling my support burb that I was no longer on the highway. So I just kept going up the hill, hoping that I was going the right way....no other runners in sight.

I turned a corner and saw my support burb parked a couple hundred feet on the road below me. I yelled and waved my hands frantically! "HELLLLLLLLLOOOOOOO!" They finally saw me and I threw my hands in the air....I had no idea what was going on!" But I kept running on, running on. It became a complete desert on the trail and I could no longer see the road, just a continual uphill. I finally got to the top of the hill, and there in front of me.......

Hundreds of miles of vistas

Red rock

Brilliant blue sky

Desert scrub

Bright sun rays

All of Southern Utah......and me. No one else

I threw my fists in the air and with a huge smile on my face that no one was going to see I yelled YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I was on top of the world!

Seeing Megan flying past runners at lightning speed on her last ascent run....it was remarkable....she is sooo fast!

Favorite, favorite moments.....loved being with my team, loved being surrounded by the beauty of southern utah, loved running my heart out to my rap music, loved the serenity of the stars and the quiet during the night, loved the energy of the 2400+ runners!

Okay, and the top favorite moment....clasping hands with my other teammates at the very end and running through the finish line! Triumph! Success! Victory!!

And the best part of all......we took 6th place!!!!!! Amazing Beliebers!!!!!!!!

Oregon!

Brent took us to this amazing waterfall in the Gorge. We are little dots on the bridge on the right.

My dream house and life....have my cute little family and husband and live in a cute little cottage on the Oregon coast.

Katie and I made it to the top of Mount Hood!!! A proud moment. I sat on the curb and ate some good peaches and bagels to all of oregon. We took a little snooze and then left Katie at the top...then we drove Brent an hour to where he would meet up with the second van on his team.

After the race! I'm such a proud friend! They ran so well. The altitude difference let them soar on their runs. Katie averaged 7 min miles, Brent 630 min miles. Amazing.

Gotta love oregon surfers!

Katie Squires, Brent Friess, and I took a road trip to Oregon last weekend so Katie and Brent could run the Hood to Coast race. It is the longest running relay race in the world...180+ miles from Mt. Hood to the Oregon Coast. We left at 6pm on Friday night and drove straight through the night 13 hours.

Started off the trip right with some Arbys....Brent and Katie preferred Subway. We divided and conquered. I was homeless for a little while on the curb til they came and picked me up.

We drove off into the Idaho night. Halfway through our Idaho drive, we encountered a MASSIVE wind/lightning storm. Huge sagebrush bushes began blowing across the freeway! They looked like little animals scurrying across the road. We died laughing. Successfully navigated the sagebrush.

I fell asleep for an hour or so and I woke up to the car sputtering....Brent has a worried look on his face. He says we are out of gas and still 5 miles outside of Boise. So we pull into a rest area and knock on the window of this truck and asked this man for gas, instead he decided he would follow us into town. So we jumped back on the road for amazing 20 minute coaching of the poor little car! We kept him going at 20 mph on the freeway needing to start and restart him over and over has he crept his little way up the hill that then descended into Boise....and we pulled in miraculously to a gas station just as the car died! Amazing.

I drove from 12am to 4pm and had a little dance party with myself clicked into Katie's ipod while Brent and Katie slept.

Katie drove from 4am to 7am and safely brought us to our destination at Mt. Hood. It was so beautiful when we arrived. The night sky gave way to the early dawn giving light to the millions of pine trees lining the backroads to Timberline Lodge. We rounded a bend to see this.....

Ah it was a beautiful site!! I screamed!

While I was sitting on the beach in Oregon I kept having these thoughts about life and where I'm going, what I want to accomplish, where I want to be in 5 years or so. I have been feeling so blessed that I had the opportunity to get an education and have a good job so I can go and see places like the beautiful Oregon coast. I feel so blessed that I live in America, that I have wonderful friends, a wonderful family, the gospel....because of where I am at in my life I feel like the opportunities are limitless. Life is a blessing and a gift, there is so much to do, so much to learn, different phases of life, moments of change, new understandings.

Since I've graduated I've had moments where I've begun to understand life and see it in a way I didn't know I could before

Each person has this infinite potential in their soul....it is an honor to work in the hospital and connect with patients on a very personal and intimate level as they come in during moments of great need

My life is the only chance I get to work hard, learn as much as I can, overcome my weaknesses, enhance my strengths.

Life is only lived in today. If I am doing what I need to do today, the future takes care of itself.

The Lord lets me make mistakes and try again the next day.

So many people have blessed my life. And looking back on college and now looking to what is in the future....I realize I could never have come as far as I did without the people that are in my life. My family is a huge strength to me. And thinking about my friends and all the people i've met and loved in school and even now we still see eachother....

Jenni Gasparrini

Ashley Cole Tucker

Katie Vargo

Caitlin Reese Johnson

Chelsie Campbell

Michelle Myers

Layne Watson

Katie Squires

Aubri Root

Sarah Chaves Tranter

Andrea Whitaker Garnder

Kerri Hart

Karen Boyer

Christina Jemison Mack

Megan Zitting

Katie Powers

Alexa Kohl

Jane Leavy

Megan Robinson

Megan Cutler

Laura Clyde

Morgan Anderson

Elissa Urban

Hilary Davis

Whitney Francom

Shaughnessy Ryan

Tawni Jensen

Allen Knight

Clayton Pratt

Austin Hackett

Paul Moyle

DJ Dorff

Ben Myers

Ben Tingey

Chris Florence

Tyler Hales

Spencer Rowan

Steve Dent

Scott Stevens

Chase Ellsworth

Danny Ellsworth

Dan Ash

Paul Stevens

Benjamin McGrath

Taylor Jones

Mike Lemon

Mike Barber

Tyler Lemmon

John Hill

Dave Blackwell

Shea Owens

Mike Hanks

Jacob Sohn

Jim Kohl

Karen Lundberg

Shelly Reed

Deborah Himes

Vickie Anderson

Ron Uhlberg

Renea Beckstrand

Catherine Coverston

Troy Carlton

A quick funny

I was dead tired from a road trip to Oregon last weekend. We partied hard and then I came back to a shift I needed to work at the hospital. I pulled up to work with 15 minutes to spare and decided to take a snooze, windows down, cool breeze....ultimate relaxation. I slipped into the depths of some good zzzzzz.

zzzzz.

It all happened so fast.

"WOOOGGGAAAA WOOOGA WOOOGA!"

I screamed so loud at Juston, one of my coworkers, who thought it would be hilarious to scare the living daylights out of me.

"Don't EVER do that again to me you hear??!!!!" And then he walked off.

We had a good laugh once I walked into work seeming that I couldn't fall back asleep. I was working for one of my favorite nurse's Stephanie who said she had had a similar experience with Juston. Except that Juston had jumped in the back of her car after her shift. She was ready to go when Juston jumped up behind the driver's seat. Looking back, he says he might not have done it foreseeing Stephanie screaming and then stepping on the gas and accelerating straight into the hospital!

Wise Words

Right now I'm finishing my clinical rotations in the ICU at the Veteran's Hospital in Salt Lake. Needless to say, I LOVE it! I have never before worked with such amazing people. The nurses and doctors recognize that it requires a team effort to restore these patients to full health. They are so willing to impart information and help with the learning process. They are always looking out for me too making sure I have ample opportunity to take stool samples, empty catheter bags, dump chest tube suctioning contents:) Most of the patients are war veterans who served in WWII, Korea, or Vietnam. They have some great stories to tell!

The patient I took care of on Friday was amazing! Two hours out of surgery and the man was cracking jokes. He had all the nurses and doctors rolling! I thought...how great that despite his ailments, he was brightening the day of those taking care of him. I went into his room to say goodbye and this is what he said to me...great words of wisdom. I think he shared the secret to life. We all know it. It just seems so much more validated coming from someone backed up with 88 years experience. And he said it full of emotion that it really moved me.
You have your whole life ahead of you! So I want to tell you some things I have learned from my life. The worst thing you can have is a closed mind. Always have an open mind. Always keep your mind busy. The greatest thing I learned to do was to work hard! I feel that principle is lost in your generation. Your generation is turned inward. Everything becomes all about me. So make sure you keep your body busy, your mind busy, continually serving others. I think I lived in the best generation because you know how many moms it took to raise a boy? At least eight. I hope the same for your generation.

The man giving the prayer in church said something funny. Maybe I shouldn't laugh...no it was too funny to not. He says, "We are so glad to come listen to men of God (giant pause)...and women." He sat down and died laughing.

These are just thoughts I've had recently:
So it seems to happen to me more often than not...I'll be getting a drink at the taller drinking fountain, only to see someone in my peripherals waiting for my fountain completely aware there is a shorter fountain right next to me. So then the question, do I smell? Do some people have massive personal bubbles? Does alot of the world have back problems that limits them from stooping a few inches lower? Maybe I'm unaware that the taller fountain is in some way glorified...who would even think of using the shorter fountain.

I love driving down the freeway and watching the cars on the other side of the freeway zip by. I'm still watching the road...just with one eye. So I'll be watching the cars with my other eye and then all of a sudden...a massive gap....no cars. What? Weird! What happened to the cars? And then I look in the distance to see hundreds of cars driving tightly together in V-formation. Wow, those cars must really love eachother. And then upon closer examination I notice the mother duck. Yes, the cop car. Proudly leading its entourage of ticket-fearful drivers! Makes me laugh everytime!

I drive alot commuting back and forth from the hospital or Logan. On one occasion I was so annoyed with the traffic due to construction. It usually doesn't bother me, but on this particular day I was close to just coming to a screeching halt in the middle of the road if I saw one more orange cone. But before I caused a pileup, I tried to change my mindset. And it was really cool to think about how the road system can be related to life. The road system is huge! So much good has come from our road system. We are connected to almost anyone, anywhere. Everything we ever needed, we have because truckers bring in products to the stores. We can get from point A to point B lickety split. Such is our life. It is a road system, with much good coming from the road system. But how do we grow into a great road system? Construction! We are continually in a state of construction in the gospel. If we weren't in construction to grow in different areas of our life, our roads would be vulnerable to the elements, to snow, rain, traffic. We always have to strive to make our roads better, a little improvement here, a lane there. We have lots of resources to help build our roads, the gospel, friends, family, books, the scriptures, church, the temple, the Lord, prayer. And with continual improvement to our roads soon enough we become an amazing infrastructure of roads going every direction. These roads can be compared to the lives we touch, the things we learn, the people we meet, the experiences we gain, the lessons we learn, the talents we develop.