Trying to see in the dark...

My first week working the night shift...

 I was a bit worried going into the week, thinking  I would be completely sleep deprived after three 12 hour night shifts in the Emergency Room...so going into my first night shift, I prayed the words that so often come out of my mouth in pure desperation... Jesus, I lift this up to You, please give me strength...  And, oh my, I am glad I prayed that prayer and even more glad that we have a God that answers prayer...

My week started with the norm; Caring for the regulars who are found lying on the road intoxicated (even though they were discharged from our ER sober the night before), caring for the regulars whose "primary care provider" is the ER, caring for a few patients with chest pain, and some elderly patients who took unfortunate falls... things stayed at what we call "normal" until I experienced my first full-blown "code"...as we worked for hours and hours on a patient in respiratory distress...

I then realized for the first time...that sometimes in life...after the adrenaline wears off... there is nothing left to do but stand in utter disbelief... trying to make sense of what just happened...

When a young person dies with no found cause and after hours of meds and CPR...you can't help but wonder WHY? Why would this person's life end is such a dark way? With no family around? No pain killers? No grasp of what was going on?

The doctor's words still ring in my head...Time of death:---  Good job, everybody, we did everything we could...

We did do everything we could...but it wasn't enough... Despite the expensive drugs and the bags and bags of blood...it just wasn't enough to save that life...

Over the weekend, as I tried to make sense of this dark situation...then I was reminded in the most beautiful way that, even though we can't truly save lives,...there is someone who CAN...a SAVIOR, a MESSIAH...our KING...!

....I am so thankful that we have a loving God who sacrificed his own life to give us HOPE beyond this life...


I truly believe that God protects us and gives us what we need when we need it. I always knew that the first time I saw a patient die would be incredibly difficult.  I don't think that experiencing this difficult situation the week of Easter was a coincidence... this week I needed a big reminder that we have hope and life beyond what happens here...and what better a reminder than a Risen King!

I am also reminded that God protects his children beyond what we could ever imagine...he protected me, he will protect my patients, their families, you, and your family... Thank you, Jesus~for being our light, our protector, and ultimately giving us life! And Happy Easter!
 

Oh, how I love spontaneous vacations...!

Being new in the ER, I am unable to pick up extra shifts so I am back to 12 hours, 3 days a week...which is very exhausting but also pretty great because that means I get 4 days off every week! It just so happened that a couple weeks ago I had a gap in my schedule... 6 days off! How wonderful!! So I decided to make sure that my husband also got 6 days off...then planned, what I like to think of as our first annual, SKI TRIP!!

This was Jon's first time downhill skiing and my third (?)... so being the very inexperienced skiers we are, we of course decided to tackle the sport head on and go to the biggest ski mountains in Colorado (go big or go home, right???!!)... ASPEN here we come!!!!

Thanks to hotwire (which I would highly recommend), we got a great hotel deal, thanks to Frontier Airlines we got some cheap plane tickets, and thanks to our waiter at breakfast the morning we flew in we found a great ski rental place!!

As a re-cap; I must say that this was one of our more successful vacations...nothing stolen, lost, crashed, etc... (we have a bad record of disaster vacations including our honeymoon...which was absolutely amazing regardless of the mishaps...) Here are some highlights:

•  Got to see a good friend who lives in Colorado Springs!! She drove all the way to Denver so we could have breakfast and catch up! Miss this girl!

• Jon insisted on making me ride up the ski lift to "Panda Peak" where 3-5 yr olds try out the slopes THREE times before going up the mountains..
• Not long after Panda Peak, Jon decided he was ready for some jumps and "accidentally" led me down a BLACK DIAMOND!!
• On our first day..65 degrees and sunny, so I decided to bypass the free sunscreen they were giving out (I rarely pass on free stuff, but it was SPF 70...!!)
• Second day...we are both burnt  to the crisp, and I totally paid for not accepting the free sunscreen...with a SWOLLEN FACE!! How embarrassing!!

• Snowstorm and blizzard keeps MOST of the skiers off the lifts...which was awfully nice except for the fact that the ski lifts all shut down due to lightning...they told us that NEVER happens, we just looked at each other and shrug...OF COURSE it happens when we are here...!

• Day three...my face= MORE SWOLLEN!! I am about to cry because never in my sunburn experience have I dealt with this type of reaction...finally I had to give in and take some Benadryl...!

• On a more pleasant note...I must add that after everyday of skiing we relaxed in the resort mountainside hot tub...!

• We left thankful for having been surrounded by the Rockies 5 awesome days...those beautiful mountains are a BIG, POWERFUL witness to how MIGHTY our God is and how completely creative and beautiful He is!!  

And to sum it all up...I learned some very valuable lessons: 1. ALWAYS use sunscreen!! (I have denied this truth for years...finally learned my lesson.) 2. If you have time off, treat yourself to a vacation...!!  3. Marry someone who will love you even if your face looks like a balloon <3

In way over my head with this blog thing...

So I have been wanting to start a blog for a while now...because I so enjoy reading other blogs. However, anybody who know me well knows that I am not one to sit down and take the time to figure out how to actually set up a blog. When facebook came out...I was the same way...so what did I do?? I had a much more computer savvy friend set it up for me...(thank you, Sarah Heineman!)! So of course I needed to get lots of pointers from her before starting this. Still then I wanted to add some finishing touches to make it just perfect...only to realize that a perfect blog is SO out of my scope of practice. And so I have settled with this simple blog...! Please do not expect fancy buttons or headers or anything of that sort...!!

My goal with this blogging thing is to write down my thoughts, experiences, maybe some crazy Emergency Room stories, or some "of course this happened to ME" stories (as bad luck and weird things happen to follow me closely). And so, since I don't scrapbook or journal (as of now)... I can preserve some memories and have some fun sharing it with you!