Trip home and anesthesia!

We were able to go to Portland, Spokane, and back to Portland for the 4th of July! We tried to see everyone we possibly could in 8 days! So good to be home...so good to see friends and family! Had some fantastic non fryed food and got plenty of hugs! I loved walking into Deaconess to suprise the night shift. It felt like I should sit down and just start charting as if I was never gone! Home sweet home! 

I came home to start anesthesia. Why did I not go to CRNA school?? Anesthesia was amazing and best rotation yet! Those doctors are the most calm people you will ever meet. My LMA skills rocked, my oral airway skills rocked, but my intubation skills could not have been any more terrible. By Wednesday I finally started to get it. I watched every you tube video, read every how to, and even tried to get Mat to let me practice an awake intubation (something about his terrible gag reflux)! But finally I got it! And loved it! It reminds me of placing a foley! The anathesiologist didn't have the same reminder... But he had never placed a foley. Sometimes it just accidentally slips in the wrong hole! Anesthesia was great on teaching me  the tools of the trade. I absolutely love the bougie! That thing DR. Evans keeps in his book bag. And pre oxygenation is a girls best friend. Studies show if you pre-oxygenate patients for 2 minutes and keep a nasal cannula on them while you intubate you can extend your time to about 6 minutes before hypoxia. If you can't get it by then well...no comment! No worries everyone still had there teeth! Oral airways are also a girls best friend when bagging the butter balls aka Roanokes well fed people. 

Worst blogger ever! Where have I been? Ortho!

Yes I know! Last blog? I probably should just give this up as you have probably given up on reading! But today Mat and I have been in Roanoke for officially 6 months! We've made it. I feel like I should catch you up or atleast tell you about the exciting parts (and I have lots of time on this car ride)! 

I can't even begin to tell you all my stories but I will try to catch you up without terribly boring you.

May was a month of orthopedics! Two weeks straight baby...of fractures, dislocations, wash outs and OR time. Orthopedics is not my expertise or my favorite...but I really enjoyed the relocations and the splinting. And learned how much I don't know about orthopedics! I completed two very long 24 hour shifts. Well one 25 hour shift and one 24.My fellow colleagues learned Alissa gets pretty cranky at hour 16, very cranky at hour 20, and has a foul mouth at hour 25! At hour 24...I was holding the 300 lbs man's leg, for the third time as we were relocating the ankle for the 3rd time and splinting it for the third time as the man was drunk off ketamine and kept hitting on me as I was leaning against his sweaty belly, holding his 100llb thigh, dripping sweat myself and then the resident forgot some splint material! Really? He heard words I never knew I could say! I didn't understand why I was holding the thigh instead of yanking on the ankle as he got it wrong the first 2 times and 2 hours later. And if you can imagine I told him how I felt. Needless to say the man ended up in surgery and I finally got some sleep and a shower. I relocated a hip, a couple of shoulders, washed out some open fractures, reduced many distal radius, hematoma blocks, met a lot of cute old ladies with hip fractures, and learned to love to work with plaster. Nothing is more satisfying the reducing a blue ankle that then turns pink again. 

2 weeks was plenty long on that rotation. Lots of floor calls, lots of dilaudid, and my favorite consult from a floor nurse who stated  "he feels like he wants to vomit but can't" at 4am! Give him some white chocolate pudding for crying out loud!!