Sunday, February 5, 2012

Flight Medic

This week was busy with clinicals as usual, but mixed in with our classes we went down to the airport and got trained to fly on the airplane!! :) I'm so excited to hopefully go up soon!
This is the airplane I'll be flying on, with a picture of my class! :)
Ian and I inside of the plane. I'm sitting on the cot where the patient would lay.
This is the helicopter that only takes the Medic and the nurse, so we don't get to fly on this one.
Inside of the Helicopter. Itty bitty living space!


Date Night: Star Gazing

Here we are! Date night last weekend we went star gazing. We layed in the back of our car with the seats down. We used blankets to stay warm and had the heat on full blast, surprisingly it was just enought to stay warm!! :) Plus the Winter here hasn't been bad AT ALL!! It's been an average of 30 degrees, which for Rexburg is FANTASTIC!! Hardly any snow and even if it does it melts the next day b/c of the 35 degree weather.Bradley John in the trunk The blankets used in the back of the trunk. This is how we laid to look at the stars. Either on the back edge or inside of the trunk.

We drove out to the "haunted" swing, just past Rexburg for no lights and peacefulness! It was so nice to escape from Rexburg for a little bit and just be with each other.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

DC Part 2

Sunday morning we woke up and went to church. At the National Cathedral! I'm so glad we went, I had never been to Mass before, so it was really cool to see how they did everything. This was Brad's favorite stained glass window. On top of the Cathedral you could walk around. The architecture was just beautiful. Reminded me of Europe.Arlington Cemetery. Such a special place!! These guys are amazing for all that they do (all soldiers that is) Saw the Changing of the guards




Sisterly lovinSo many graves Walking the streets of Georgetown. Outside of Sprinkles Cupcakes Our cupcakes, not as good as Gigi's in Georgia or even Coco bean in Rexburg. Monday morning I got to practice Topi's hair more!! I Love doing hair!! Especially hers, it's so soft and perfectly thick! We headed to the Capitol building for a tour. This used to be the front entrance to the Capitol building. Tori jumping in the very center of Washington DC!!








Brad somehow secretly stuck these stickers on my bum, after our tour of the Capitol building...And I walked around with them on... Probably for at least 10 minutes... hahaNot happy... jk, I didn't care.



The stickers were then used in a sticker war between everyone. I think this is after I stuck mother. I love my mommy!!

On the Capitol stairsI just loved Connor's jump! hahahahaha....

Saw the Hope Diamond and many others!! We also stopped by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but your not allowed to take pictures of them anymore! :( When I went a two years ago to DC we could as long as there was no flash, but not no more. At least I got my pictures then!

Where Abe was shot, still set up as it was back in the day for the President. The chair Lincoln sat in when he was shot in the head. (The one closest to the camera)



Tori "lying" in the bed that Abe died in. His beds were always short for him, he would have to lay diagonally.Here we are on the subway, had to snap a quick picture, cause it was Brads first time on the subway.

We enjoyed lots of hot cocoa in the executive lounge of the hotel.

Whenever we had to drive somewhere in DC the girls were stuck in the back. We enjoyed our squishy time together though. :)


The last night we enjoyed some Cheesecake factory in our hotel rooms! :) What a great way to end a great trip. Thanks mommy and Papi for the wonderful Christmas break!! :)

DC Part 1

We arrived in DC and stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial.Washington DC Temple where we did Sealings. SO beautiful!!


World War II Memorial. In front of Guam and the Phillippines, where my Grandpa served! The vietnam memorialBrad and Connor outside the Abraham Lincoln memorial. Topi and I looking down the strip towards the Washinton monument.








Abe and I! The new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial




The wall next to the Korean memorial

Across the river from Thomas Jefferson

Here we are outside of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial


After walking to Jefferson's we headed to the Holocaust Museum where we spent about 3 hours I think. It took forever to go through everything, but was such an amazing educational experience. Visited the white house We visited the pentagon memorial from when the plane crashed into it. We then went on a tour of the Pentagon!! Crazy stuff, the whole time our tour guide had to walk backwards so that he always had an eye on us! :) haha




On New Years Eve we did a hotel scavenger hunt; girls vs. boys. We won, duh! :)


Sunday, January 22, 2012

Ambulance ride along

So I want to keep track of some of my ambulance calls that I go on, becuase they are awesome, and good learning experiences for me. I'm not sure if I want to start a new blog for those, or just post them on here... I'm still undecided, so for now they will be on here. (Might be gruesome for some?!) I'm not going to go into full detail of what everything is or why we did something, but if you have questions please ask!




Call to: Car Accident

Some lady had been hit from behind turning out of Walmart. She had hit her head on the steering wheel. When we got there she had some old shirt that she was holding on her forehead that had a lot of blood on it. When we took the shirt off her face had a ton of dried blood, and some fresh gooey blood all over! We got her into the back of the ambulance and I just worked on cleaning her face. She had two big cuts on her forehead. One over each eyebrow, both were pretty deep, but only an inch long. We just took her to the hospital, nothing we could do, but it's always fun to see some blood.


Call to: Fainting in Car

We pull up to this lady who is pulled over in a Home Depot. She had a history of Atrial Fibrillation. She had been driving and almost passing out while on the road. So she pulled over and tried to hold her breathe/bear down. Which usually calms a person enough who has atrial fibrillation or any kind of tachycardia, but this time it wasn't working. She continued to feel faint and a little nauseous. When we got there the medic could feel her pulse at about 160. (average is 60-100) In the ambulance we got her hooked up to our monitor with a 3 lead and BP. Her Rhythm was SVT and blood pressure was about 177/90, high for her.


Immediately the medic says to start an IV in the AC, which I got to do. The other medic got the Adenosine out, which slows the heart. So we push that and just stare at the monitor. This drug is so cool to watch, becuase normally it slows the HR to a flat line on the monitor and then starts the heart again just at a more reasonable rate. Well she was tachy'n at 190 when we pushed the drug. Her rhythm got wider and wider and slowed to about 130. She got super pale and said her chest hurt, and she didn't like the feeling, felt like she was going to pass out. She started coming back though and her HR went up to 214!!! So a normal person's maximum heart rate, they say, is 220- their age. She was about 55, so her max was around 170, and she was at 214! NOT GOOD!! The medic calls for the Valium, to sedate her to cardiovert her. Once he says that she says she has been cardioverted twice before!! umm RED FLAG, now we were plannig to shock her. We applied the Defib pads, and she asks us to please not to shock her, becuase her doctor doesn't want her to be shocked again. I guess she had some other heart problem that doesn't respond well to it. So we had it as our back up if our next dose of Adenosine wouldn't work. We each got a vial of adenosine and on the count of three pushed it in, as we pulled up to the hospital. So we brought her in and the nurses got her hooked up to their machines. We stayed a bit just to see if they were going to shock her, or if our last dose of the drug had worked. The pulse came up as 110!! It worked!! I felt like we had saved her, just a little bit... she was on the brink in the ambulance a couple times of almost coding. I'm so grateful I'm learning this knowledge and can see it all being applied! SO COOL!




Call to: Headache

This call came about 30 minutes before I was leaving, so at first I was thinking stupid lame-o call! Some person has a headache and wants to go to the hospital... So we get to this ladies house and she's curled up on the couch. She was released from the hospital yesterday... So we decided to just transport in. Once in the ambulance the medic tells her we're going to start an IV. We start looking over her arms, but she only has a few baby veins. She starts pointing at her neck and groaning. I was just confused, I told her we we're trying to help her with her pain (which was around her neck). But she was trying to tell us that she had her IV there yesterday, because the nurses couldn't get one in her arm either. The medic looks at me and says, "well, wanna do it?" I smile and say I would LOVE to!! :) So he shows be how to do it and I poke her, SUCCESS!! :) In class we call it an EJ, cause it's in the external jugular vein. So I got my first EJ!! This is what the vein looked like. mmmm... Juicy!