down the rabbit hole

i thought yesterday how funny life can be with all its curve balls.

the night before i hardly slept - 3 1/2 hours. i went to bed at midnight, woke at 2 am. tossed-turned-got water-checked the house-used the toilet and finally asleep again at 3:30. it was hard getting up at 5 for clinicals. which is why i turned on the lamp on my nightstand and then hid under the covers for twenty minutes before rolling out of bed.

i seriously considered "calling in sick"... i'd have to make the hours up sometime at the end of my school year. no, no. must save sick days for when i'm actually sick. plus the four little ones are probably going to take up some of that time as well this winter.

damn-a-damn. ok. i guess i'll get up.

i'm not crazy about one of my instructors at my current hospital. she very opinionated, which i really don't mind (i think most of us are), but it's in this cocky, abrasive sort of way. we were given 6 patients to take care of for the day (2 each student). two were on the fourth floor, the rest on the third. no one was taking the 4th floor pts, so i took them. i was relieved that my teacher will probably put herself with the other two students, and i won't have to interact with her as much. tee hee. i'm soo sneaky sometimes.

the saddest part of my day was when i was doing the chart reviews for my pts. both were 51 yr old women (the same age as my mom). one was severely obese with liver failure due to alcoholism (cirrhosis) and lung dysfunction from smoking and weight problems. she was in restraints because she kept trying to get out of bed and has fallen several times. her son is 12. she kept telling me how everyone bitches and moans that she never gets up and does things, and now she wants to get up and they won't let her. she was very disoriented and it was a little unnerving to have someone try to talk you into loosening their restraints when it's obvious they aren't in the right frame of mind.

my other pt was a homeless woman who tested positive for opiates. she was a crack user with severe asthma. also a smoker. her heart was very erratic and i would get nervous when i'd give her a treatment because albuterol is a beta 2 agonist, it stimulates the heart to beat faster. she was a DNR, "do not resuscitate" if she codes. she was very cooperative and asked me to turn the tv to channel 8 so she could watch "the young and the restless". her treatment took some time (albuterol and atrovent), so we watched tv. i laughed most of the time at the stupidity of the characters. although i could see where some of them were coming from. this husband was pissed at his wife from trying to make all these arrangements for him while she leaves town (probably to have an affair..) he bellows, "i have epilepsy, damn it! i am not an invalid!"

got out of school a little early. took my cpu to best buy and ended up being able to fix it easily. i now have a long-ass orange cord running down the hall to my computer because apparently computers need their own power supply otherwise they might start shutting down for no reason. the guy from "the geek squad" was really nice and funny. i can't believe they actually have "a geek squad". i could see totu working there; top dog in his black slacks, white dress shirt, black tie, glasses and clipboard. three pens in shirt pocket. moleskiene in back pocket. bluetooth wedged firmly in ear. screg standing next to him in matching attire. snicker. they also have badges, poor bastards.

4 pm. off the clairmont (north sd) to pick-up orgasmic veggies from the co-op lotus signed up for. she is so thoughtful to let me pay the small difference between the small and large orders, but give me half the veggies. she was out of town yesterday. i was glad to pick them up. i had a nice talk with one of the other members about bringing loquats to the site when they are in season. (i have a loquat tree in my backyard that bears tons of 'em in the spring)

hmmm.. it was 4.45 pm and there was no way i was going to drive home in southbound traffic. hot fudge was going to at work until 7 and we decided to use one of her coupons and have dinner later. that gave me a couple hours to kill, so i went to the la jolla coves for some time to myself. (damn it! of all the times NOT to have my camera! oh well, next time.) i parked (wheels curbed) on a hill with a fairly steep incline and walked into this coffee shop right in front of me. chatted with the guy behind the counter and purchased some cheap rock candy lollipops for the kids (so i could use my credit card to purchase the coffee. don't you just love that?). a life guard was in there and we started talking about drowning victims. i asked about his experience with them. do they cough up a lot of h2o during resuscitation? what about laryngospasms? salt h2o victims dying hour later from the salt being in the lungs causing the body pull h2o into the lungs (osmosis) which will internally drown someone. fascinating. he said, "i just try to keep 'em alive! you guys get to fix 'em!"

he (jason) had 2 cups of coffee with him, and it dawned on that he's probably on duty. "oh, i'm sorry to be so chatty. do you have to go back to duty?" he said, "yeah. come along. let's walk."
we get to the lifeguard station and sit on a bench. i got to look through some high powered binoculars at the crazy people swimming in the icy water out to buoys far out and then back. birds in flight, the other side of the bay to torrey pines, and into the houses on the edges of the cliffs. people dining in a nearby restaurant, breaking waves.

a guy comes to the station and says that someone fell in one of the little caves and cut his head. one of the lifeguards takes a look and ends having to patch the guy (aaron) up and recommended that he get to a hospital for stitches. the guy's girlfriend (rachel) comes over to us about ten minutes later stressed out because she doesn't know how to drive stick shift to get him to the hosp and he's nauseous. so i offered to get them to a hospital (scripps la jolla) if she can give me directions.

the lifeguards decided to check him again and poor aaron with blood on his beatles t-shirt ended up needing an ambulance after all. his heart rate was low (40s. normal range is 60-100. unless, of couse, you normally run low). he couldn't tell us if he was normally bradycardic, so it had to be assumed he wasn't. the life guard was stressing about low blood pressure and for some reason, he decided to turn down the o2 they were giving him via a nonrebreather mask. the mask was fogging up, and i felt weird telling him (very nicely - i'm merely a student, ya know) that i think he should turn it up because aaron was going to start retaining his co2 and would pass out. he also needs more o2, not less, if his heart rate is low because his heart isn't really in the mood to work right now, and he won't get the o2 he needs pumped to his tissues fast enough, therefore he should be saturated with o2. it was kinda neat that he listened to me.

the medics (usually an unruly bunch of people, i've noticed) showed up and got aaron (who just wanted to show off to his girl by prancing around on slippery rocks and ended up gashing his head open on a barnacle (Fuck! now she's really going to think i'm an idiot!!)) into the ambulance and off to the hospital.

i gave rachel a ride to aaron's car and she drove my automatic van to the hosp with me in his car driving stick following. it was a longish drive and so i listened to the rest of an audio book in the tape player (which sucked) and some of the radio stations. one tv station and mostly alternative type music.

rachel and i made it in one (actually two) piece(s) to the ER. she gave me a huge hug (big feat for such a little woman :)) and thanked me profusely.

rachel said while a warm smile, "there really are good people still left in the world..."

i drove off giggling, hoping that she will still think that after they discover that i'd changed all the preset radio stations to mexican music and hip-hop...