the southerners come north

Back in October, JP's family came for a week long visit to check out this new city we call home.  It was such a great feeling to be able to show off this beautiful place!  The weather complied, and they packed their schedule with lots of the fun things New England has to offer.  Unfortunately, my body didn't comply nearly as well as the weather, and I got food poisoning on the first night of their visit.  That knocked me down for most of the trip, but the last two days I was able to extract myself from my apartment and enjoy their company.

There are six lighthouses within 20 minutes of Portland, and we visited each of them in turn.  Stopping only for lobster rolls of course!

And speaking of lobster, I think Jim was the winner in that arena.  He made it a point to have lobster something every single day he was here.  He had quite the tastings, lobster is everywhere you look around here!  I don't blame him, JP and I were just talking about how we don't eat it enough considering where we are and how cheap it is!  We knew we needed to do it up right for his family though, and we boiled up six jumbo lobsters for dinner one night. They were a hit! 

Jessica was the photographer of the trip, she's been learning all the tips and tricks for her camera.  I haven't seen any of her pictures yet, but I am sure they turned out great.  New England is a gorgeous place for photos in the fall!  We have been searching for a photographer for the wedding, and I have been lamenting the fact that both of our sisters would get great shots, if only they weren't in the wedding party!

And that is the whirlwind sum up of their trip, a month and a half later.  I know you were waiting!  Next time I'm gonna steer clear of the salmonella so I can be assured of more visiting and documenting time, and maybe even a more timely post!

ER

I started a rotation in the emergency department of a level 1 trauma center this week.  In a twist of events that I did not foresee, I feel as though I have ended this week as a completely changed person.  Have you ever felt like you went through an accelerated methaphorical personal growth spurt?  I feel like I found myself far outside anything close to a comfort zone, and instead of panicking, I just put my head down and jumped to the other side.  Well, maybe there was panic, but it was all internal, which for me is leaps and bounds my friends.

Things that have struck me so far about the ER:

1.  Wow some people utilize the healthcare system faaaaar more often than I do.  This actually was a realization I had when I was in my family med rotation, and I would open up a patient's chart to read their last clinical note and BAM there would be like fifteen interactions in their chart between the medical staff and them in the past seven days.  Holy cow, it never even occurred to me that I could even call my doctor and ask them questions, and these people are actively doing that on a multiple-times-per-day basis!  And in the ER, this is no different, which is weirder.  I saw a patient who was there for a viral upper respiratory infection, and who had been seen in the ER every single day for the past three days, and in fact was even there at 1am that morning, but left halfway through because he didn't want to wait any  longer.... Now that's just weird.

2.  Seeing kids in the ER is a whole different ball of wax than seeing them in the outpatient pediatrics.  Kids in the ER are terrifying.  They are crying and inconsolable, or lethargic and blue, and not easily distracted, and probably have bad things wrong with them that I am about to miss because I just spent six weeks seeing a parade of "worried well" children and thus have the mentality that they all probably have a viral illness of no significant consequence.  Case in point, I missed pneumonia in a 9 month old and then felt like a jackass.  I see a baby pop up on the bed board and I immediately wish I could just go see the guy who was here yesterday with a cold.  No thanks. 

3.  ER docs are some of the most badass people ever.  We had multiple cardiac arrests and heart attacks occur within minutes of each other, and the providers were so level headed and systematic.  My brain was like "oh no, ______, think things elise! ______remember all of the things!!______" and instantly all of the things I am supposed to know made hasty exits out the back door of my brain.  I was slowly processing I think these are the drugs that we should give, maybe, or is it this drug?, no that's right I think, the first drugs, let me see if they are giving those drugs.  That thought process took me five minutes, and they had already administered two rounds of epi and were five minutes into CPR while I grasped for shards of information in the far recesses of my brain about what they were going to do next.  It was pretty sad on my part, and pretty spectacularly amazing on their part. 

That's all I can think of for now.  I'm gearing up for three night shifts this week, and in thirteen days I will be flying to Belize to finish this rotation out in a clinic in Punta Gorda.  My life is pretty awesome.