Well, I made it back from a week of snowboarding in South Lake Tahoe in one piece. I’m not the world’s greatest snowboarder so I’m slightly bruised and I am sporting a serious sunburn, but it was all worth it. If you’re down with spring skiing, Heavenly at the end of March lives up to it’s name. The conditions were fantastic, the mountain is amazing and the people that staff the place are great. I took a private lesson with a 24 year old woman who was the best snowboard instructor I’ve ever had. She immediately showed me where I was making mistakes and worked on drills with me to make my snowboarding so much better. It was the best $120 I’ve ever spent. My wife is not a snowboarder, instead she strapped on her skis and rocked those long cruisers that Heavenly is famous for. She spent her days exploring the mountain and then we would meet for a cocktail at Snow Beach midway through the day. What a perfect vacation. If you haven’t been to Lake Tahoe, go. Seriously.
In other news, I finally got my Washington State EMT cert. This state amazes me. It took forever for my paperwork to go through the system. I think they still use pack mules to transport the applications from Seattle to Olympia. But, now that I have my card I was scheduled to work with an FTO to show me the proper way to tech calls. Of course, it was a day with the SIP. As I mentioned previously, I’m not new to writing a PCR, so I had one shift worth of “training” before I was cut loose to do it on my own. (Actually, the training was simply how to write a PCR the “IFT way” so we can bill the patient’s insurance and get paid.) So, the end result is that I am now an official EMT/Tech at IFT. Yippee. I plan on not driving again for a LONG time.
We did a long distance discharge from the local University Med Center to a home in BFE yesterday. The woman we were taking home was at the end of her battle with metastatic breast cancer and she wanted to die at her home, in the mountains that she loved. It was a really good trip, as her sister rode in the back with us and we all talked and joked and admired the scenery as we took our 120 mile trip into the Cascades. To be honest, I enjoy Hospice trips when the family is there. I truly believe that when everyone comes to grips with the impending death of their mom or sister and can say goodbye in a positive way it makes the grief process, while never easy, certainly less abrupt. I’ve lost loved ones quickly, and while I was grateful that they didn’t suffer, I wish that I could have had just one more conversation to tell them how much them meant to me.
Anyhow, this run into the mountains was a little different for a couple of reasons. For one thing, for the first time in my life, I had more than a touch of motion sickness. As we were winding our way up the curvy two lane highway, I was forced to concentrate on the cabinet full of 4x4s and breathe through my nose to keep from puking in the back of the truck as we swayed around the corners. I’m not normally car sick, and I still feel a little queasy this morning, so I’m thinking I may be coming down with something. Either that or it’s just too much coffee. I think I was a little green around the gills, because the patient’s sister, who was sitting in the airway seat, looked over at me, smiled knowingly, and said “I get a little woozy on this road too.” Thanks ma’am. Maybe we can share the emesis basin.
We made it to the house with no vomiting and carried the patient into a warm and cozy cabin in the middle of a beautiful 5 acre meadow in the shadow of the Cascades. Not to be morbid, but if you have to die, that’s the place to do it. I know I’d rather be looking out at nature’s beauty from my own bedroom, rather than listening to the ding of unanswered call bells in some shitty smelling SNF surrounded by people I don’t know as I worked hard on dying. The patient’s family gatherd around the bed and her brother watched carefully as I connected a NC to the oxygen concentrator that the Hospice folks had dropped off. I handed him a box of gloves and a couple of bottles of sterile water for the O2 humidifier and then we made our way back out to the rig, ready for he long, twisty drive back to civilization. Unfortunately, it had been snowing and the spot where we had parked the truck had become a slick, slushy, muddy mess. We wound up using our wool blankets as “traction devices”, wedging them under the ties to provide a little bit of grip, as putting a set of chains on the rig would have just dug up the entire yard. Both brother and sister came out of the house to help us push and we all wound up laughing and joking as we spun our way down the driveway. Total miles for the call, 250. Yeah, it was a pretty good day.
Here a couple of pictures to give you an idea of where we went…
The mountains are a special place. I’m glad I was able to help this woman get home to a place she loves, where she can pass on in comfort, surrounded by loving family.
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