Saturday I am going with my husband, my friend Tera and her husband Jason to the Devil Dash race. It's a 5K with 12 obstacles and a beer garden at the end. It promises to be a blast, considering the company. Sunday all four of us are hitting the East Canyon for another long hill run. I love running with friends so my long run for Monday has to be rescheduled. It was going to be for today, but as I mentioned in the last post I threw it to the side to take a transport for my work. We transport cardiac devices and since I flew with AirMed as a cardiac device transport nurse before I joined them full time then they are kind enough to call me and give me an opportunity to take the flight.
Yeah, it interferes with the long run I was going to do this morning, but I'll squeeze it in somewhere. I don't regret it for a minute. I love my job and I work with some great people. It was a long complicated transport with a very sick patient, but we got that patient where they needed to be and we did it safely. Every transport gives me the opportunity to learn something new and meet new people. The facility we picked this patient up from last night was just awesome. Even offered us snacks and drinks. I'm sure we would have taken them up on it if we thought we would have a second to even eat.
I really do wish I could write more about my patients and the experience. The laws of HIPPA are so strict and the last thing I want is to get called into my boss to talk about my running blog. This patient was so very sick and was in a pretty good hospital, but that hospital didn't have the resources that a huge teaching hospital has. The primary flight nurse was a guy that I worked in the SICU with, so I knew he was smart. Together, along with the medic and respiratory therapist we still had a very high pucker factor. Every movement had to be slow and organized. There was at least 5 invasive devices/lines that if pulled out could have caused fatal consequences. The feeling of handing the patient over to a well qualified team is amazing. A final relaxation.
I finally got to bed at 6am, which was 22 hours after I woke up the morning before. I cancelled my barre class this morning and woke up at 4pm. Right now I'm laying on the couch, blogging, eating dark chocolate, snuggling with my favorite blanket (woobie), watching TV and considering the odds that my bedtime is going to be early. I'm also trying to hydrate. I truly believe the answer to all physical ailments is hydration. Especially if you work a job that interrupts sleep, is highly active or involves flying.
Speaking of flying. I spend a lot of time taking off, flying, landing. I work with a small group of pilots that I respect immensely. I have never been hardly even nervous with all the flying..until last night. Don't get me wrong, best pilot ever! But we do fly in airplanes that are meticulously maintained but are machines, none the less. Last night on our final approach there was a light that didn't light up. Meaning - the pilot wasn't sure that one of our landing gear was down and secure. I heard, "oh that's not good", a request to the tower to fly past the airport to trouble shoot, then after about 1 minute he explained what was happening to the crew. He was very calm and we were all very quiet. One thing I've learned working as a flight nurse is that when things are tough you need to let the pilot do his job. The pilot can flip a switch so he can't hear us, but they usually only do that when ton's of chaos is going on in the back and they are flying through some tough weather.
So the plan was to fly past the tower so they could check our landing gear and make sure the light by the landing gear was on. Apparently there is a light that comes on once the landing gear is down and ready to land. It was the indicator light in the cockpit that wasn't lighting up. That was a long 5 minutes. I didn't know what to think about. I wasn't scared as much nervous. I knew that we could land either way it was just how well could we land. Add that to the fact we had a patient that takes at least 7 people and 15 minutes to unload. The tower even offered to pull out the engines - get all the emergency peeps out and ready to foam us down and rescue us (DIRTY!). Turns out the landing gear was down, locked and lighted up and we landed smooth as silk. Ahhhhhh. It was awesome. No firemen though - dangit!! The plane was taken out of service until it could be fixed, but we made it safe to the ground! I work with some rock stars!
I don't like to leave without a picture -
One of my favorites!
Blog on............
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