So Long Thatcher...

The day has come.  My parents have sold my childhood home of 23 years and are upgrading to a bigger and better home in Utah.  I thought my last chance to go home was back in June, but fortunately I was blessed with a tender mercy and had 5 days in a row off from work-- that NEVER happens!  Aaaand, Stephen got to come with so I got to show him my roots.  I introduced him to the Diamondbacks, Thatcher High School, EAC, the Gila River, what cotton looks like, breadsticks at R&R Pizza, green chile meat & flour tortilla chips at Casa Manana, Red Knolls, Mt. Graham, my brother, a few of my high school friends, and PLENTY of ward people very excited to meet him.  Not to mention we helped my parents pack up the house and load the U-haul.  Try cramming that into 2 and 1/2 days!  I thought we did pretty good!  My parents left the very next day with a tightly packed U-Haul with a goodbye to our empty house.

I honestly don't know when I'll ever be back to Thatcher, but I am sure going to miss it!  It was a wonderful place to grow up and all of my experiences and interactions there shaped me into who I am today.  And for that I will forever be grateful.

And mostly importantly and despairingly, I made my last and final purchase of Mi Casa tortillas... my life will never be the same again.

San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital

Wow, I've been SUPER behind on my blog posts.  Here's my attempt at catch up...

I just finished my second 4 week rotation at another community ER, San Gorgonio.  Again, I LOVED it.  This ER was even much smaller than Pomona and only 1 year old.  It was even better since it was just me and one doctor on shift at one time and I got to work in the back seeing higher acuity patients.  The schedule was a little insane-- 6 pm to 4 am, five days a week.  But it actually wasn't too bad since I'd sleep in till noon and still have plenty of time to go to the gym, cook dinner, or get other things done.  I definitely prefer the 10 hour shifts.  Plus, the house supervisor would bring us soup every night at midnight AND every Saturday night one of the nurses would go get us In-N-Out.  The nurses were super great as well.  It was a much more chill place to work.

GOAL: GET A JOB HERE ASAP!!

Diabetic Camp

We got home from Havasupai on a Saturday and then on Monday I left to work as medical staff at a diabetic camp in the San Bernardino Mountains, about an hour drive from my house.  It was a full SEVEN days and it wouldn't have been so bad, had I just not spent 4 days hiking and camping at Havasupai.  I think I was a little camped out.  Fortunately we got to stay in cabins and 2 of my other classmates from fellowship were also there.

As medical staff, we were each assigned a cabin of 13-17 year olds to monitor blood sugars and dose insulin 6 times a day-- before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner, at bedtime, midnight and 3 am.  The rest of the time was free time to spend sleeping, doing activities with your cabin, etc.  It was a fun week, but also exhausting.  We each had to spend one night in the infirmary (our version of the ER) to take care of kids coming in in the middle of the night.  

Normal blood sugar is 70 - 100.  Most of the kids had insulin pumps, which I had zero experience with so I definitely learned a lot that week.  We had to make sugar the kids' blood sugars didn't get so low they had a seizure or went into a coma OR so high they went into a coma.  It can go either way.  My one success of the week was on the last day when a girl in the cafeteria was feeling "low."  Turns out her sugars were in the 30's so I gave her a shot of glucagon, glucose tabs, and juice.  She could have easily had a seizure.  There were a few problems with kids getting dosed insulin and then not getting their food on time due to the long food line.  So I always stood in line with my girls and dosed them just before they got their food.  More work for me, but safer for them.

We also got to do some fun things, like a few hikes, campfires, an overnight campout in the open, and I even got to go canoeing with my cabin.  

BUT... I was super excited to be back in my own bed at the end of the week with a hot shower.

Havasupai

This place is INCREDIBLE.  I've been wanting to go here for YEARS and we finally made it happen!  A group of 20 of us all went together for 3 days, mixed between Utah and California peeps.  If you don't know much about Havasapai, it's an area on an Indian reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with incredibly clear water and lots of waterfalls, gorgeous to say the least.

We started our hike down Wednesday night around 3 am and made it in record time.  We had to wait at the village for at least an hour for the rest of our gang to come straggling in.  Then we hiked another mile or so to the campsite, set up camp, then spent the rest of the day at and around Lil Navajo Falls.

That night Stephen and I BOTH got stung by baby scorpions.  That was first time in ALL of my time growing up in Arizona actually seeing a scorpion, let alone getting stung by one.  I felt something sting me, Stephen thought I was imagining things then a few minutes later found the little guy in my sleeping bag!  Then 15 minutes later same thing happened to Stephen.  The next night a giant tarantula almost got us!

Day 2 was spent at Havasu Falls and exploring some old quartz mine caves.  We almost had a casualty with one of the guys almost having a giant beam fall on his head and a near attack of a swarm of Africanized bees after throwing rocks at their beehive.  Boys will be boys-- no excuse!

The last day, we hiked down the treacherous rock face to Mooney Falls and hiked about a mile downstream in the water jumping off little waterfalls and throwing mud at each other.  That evening we pack up and hiked out (some other wimps took the helicopter out) and made it back just before sunset, again in record time!

Utah

The beginning of July, Stephen and I drove up to Utah for a few short days to see my family.  My parents had just come back from Germany and driven across the country from Maryland.  So we had a few family BBQ's, ate at our favorite restaurants, had a picnic up the canyon and played some croquet.  And... I FINALLY got to climb Suicide Rock, a giant painted rock at the mouth of Parley's Canyon that I've driven by loads of times.

Not to mention I got to see this cute girl!  I love being an aunt :)