The hike was CRAZY!

I can’t even begin to explain how crazy and insane the hike was.

The first day Nikki and I got to the church at 7am and we packed up and started driving to the place where we were going to be hiking out of the canyon.

(riding in the back of the truck)

Then we all got in one truck and met up with everyone else at the trailhead. But… we got lost… The young single adult guy that was in charge of this whole hike (Dallin), had his GPS and the map and everything and we still got lost. Just drove down the wrong dirt road and wouldn’t know it was wrong till we ended up at the wrong place and would have to turn around.

(Finally ready to go!)

It took till 1pm before we met up with the other half of the group and started the first day of hiking. Dallin had said at our packing meeting that at the beginning there was going to be a lot of thorn bushes, and we all didn’t realize what he really was talking about or we weren’t listening, but there were thorns galore!

I felt like the hyena on the lion king that falls into all the thorns bushes! (you remember that part?) Lol, but luckily I was wearing long nylon hiking pants and I didn’t get that scratched up. Some of the girls wore shorts and had blood dripping down their legs from all the scratches. One girl fell into them, and started to cry! Keep in mind this is the first 2 hour of the hike and all of us are thinking, “Why in the world did I sign up for this?”

After we tackled the thorn bushes (they were locust, I think) we arrived to the ponds. Dallin had also warned us about how we were going to have to swim across some ponds, and again we really didn’t understand how hard and cold that was going to be.

(that's me pulling our packs across!! BURRR)

The ponds were pretty clear clean water but it was FREEZING water! When I jumped in I felt like I couldn’t breathe! It was so cold, and at first you couldn’t move or anything. I’m not scared of the water but the cold made me feel like I could have drowned right then and there. While dealing with the cold we were all trying to keep our backpacks dry as well. Nikki and I bought a pool float to ferry our packs across. We were lucky that all our stuff stayed dry (thank goodness!!!) Some people just waterproofed their bags and swam across and had a wet sleeping bag that night.

Anyway, we all got through the first pond and are soaking wet and that’s when a girl named Alesha started getting really cold and kept on getting cold and couldn’t get herself warm. She started shivering really bad and then said she felt sleepy. BAD SIGN! She was going into hypothermia! So we had to wait around a long time helping her warm up. Making her walk around, drink hot cocoa, and stay awake was really all we could do!

So this is the first day, the first few hours and we’ve already had all of this crazy stuff happen! Our pace was SO slow.. we definitely weren’t making 1 mile an hour. We probably only went 500 feet in 1 hour just because the ponds took so long to cross and then get warm after. Plus at the bottom of the canyon it was all boulders so we have to jump from boulder to boulder with our 40lb pack and soaking wet tennis shoes.

(These are the boulders!)

Around this time is when we got separated into two groups. The young adults that were doing fine in the front of the group and the adults that were tying to help Alesha get warm. We got so far separated that there was no way to communicate with them. Dallin was in the first group of people (so was I) and all he wanted to do was speed up the pace to make it to the campgrounds. So we speed up without knowing what all the leaders were going to do with Alesha. Dallin assumed they were going to turn back because she was having such a hard time in the first two ponds and there were 3 more to swim through plus there were a lot of waist deep crossings after that.

Even though everyone was going as fast as we could go we couldn’t do the 7 miles that we were supposed to. Dallin decided to stop at 7:30pm and set up camp. That’s when we realized that we hadn’t stopped through all our hiking for lunch water or snacks! NO WONDER NONE OF US COULD MOVE! I drank less than a cup of water that day and only ate some eggs for breakfast before we left at 7am. Bad huh? Once we stopped everyone realized they were starving and very dehydrated! Everyone in our gourp was okay though; all of us stayed pretty positive. We all ate our lunch and dinner that night and then we were out for the night (except Michael who had a wet sleeping bad, poor guy).

The next morning I thought Dallin would have us up hiking by at least 8am but it was 9am before most of us got out of our tents. Luckily we hadn’t left early because guess who caught up with us? Alesha and all the leaders! We couldn’t believe it! I guess they got Alisha a wet suit and had made it through all the swims!

So after the leaders caught up we all got our little lecture about staying as a group; we needed to hear it! (Especially Dallin!) So through the next day we stayed really close to everyone. Alesha was put in the front and we went as slow as our slowest person. That was good, but also bad at the same time because the 3 miles left over from the day before and the 4 miles we were supposed to hike were taking forever to hike.

When the Leaders cought up to us! Alesha is in the gray jacket standing up on the left side.

putting out the fire

keeping Alesha Company =)

(feeling much better after a good nights sleep and some fruit cups for breakfast!)

To make things worse it started to be really windy…. Then it started to rain… and then hail! Staying dry was out of the question and our only concern was hiking the 7 miles we had to hike before we could get OUT of the canyon. Of course we’re all scared that Alisha would get hypothermia again and there was really nothing we could do except for stop and make a fire to heat her up, but doing that would slow us down way more. After it started to hail the leaders make the decisions that we would hike out that day instead of staying another day in the canyon. All of us were happy about that because it had just been miserably cold and all of us were done.

smiles in the pictures of course but it was really cold!

staying positive!

thinking "please don't fall in"

We trudge through the mud, we slip and trip and fall over the boulders, we swim across freezing water and finally get to where we were going to have to climb straight up out of the canyon.

We stop there and the “drivers” all hike up and out to get the trucks while us hikers wait for two hours till they get back. That’s when I really get worried about Alesha because she was cold. She’s so skinny and she’s got wet clothes on and she’s shivering and she will get hypothermia again. We all know she will if she sits for any length of time. So I pull my stove out and make her hot cocoa again and Dallin tried to get a fire started but all the wood is wet and it’s taking forever. That’s when one other girls says she saw a cave back a little bit off the trial and we all decide to go back and wait there.

Nikki and I

drying out clothes out

The problem was that Alisha would have to cross the water again. It was waist deep there and she couldn’t do it. She said no no no, but we forced her to and finally got her in the cave. While I was trying to get her through the water Dallin had gone ahead and had the fire started by the time we got there. We all huddled around the fire for the next hour and then it was time to hike out and hope the leaders were back with the trucks. Before we leave, I make Alesha eat a ramen cup and do jumping jacks and stuff just so she would be okay on the climb out. She made it out great after that and we all survived!

Our last steep climb out of the canyon

It was really muddy!

There were no real bad injuries but we were all pretty beat up and sore. We all were happy and proud of ourselves for making it out alive. I never thought I would have been able to do a hike that was that hard, but when you’re stuck at the bottom of a canyon you don’t really have a choice… lol, it was fun though. It was super hard, but rewarding at the end.

I felt bad for Nikki, who had come on the hike because I had said how awesome the last hike was and how much fun she would have and then it turned out to be so hard. She was a trooper though and handled it well just like everyone else. She did say on the way home that she was never going on another backpacking hike again. =(

When we got back to town it was snowing and cold cold cold. When Nikki and I got back to Erin and Jeremy they were so happy we were home and had been so worried about us because they knew if they were having bad weather we must have been having even worse weather. It was crazy!! The pictures look lush and green and beautiful, and it was but it was still the hardest hike I have EVER done!

I still can't wait for the next one! (I say it was the hardest one every time, heehee)

AWW I LOVE MY LIFE!!!

I just found out my grade in my biology 202 class and it’s an “A”!! Straight A’s this semester! I. Love. That.

I am also going on a super duper intense hike next week with the institute group. The first think our leader said is, “this hike is not for everyone…” which makes me really excited it’s going to be challenging! I just love life and am so grateful for all my blessings! I can’t wait to get home and start working again for the Cavetts this summer and start swimming again and to be home with April and Aric, Tyler and Kylee, Kimberly and Ryan, and all my family!! I’ve missed you guys so much!! I love you too Lindy and Kyle (wish I could come home and spend time with you too!)

I also want to say thank you to Erin and Jeremy for EVERYTHING they have done for me these last two semesters! I’ve learned so much from them and I don’ think I could have made it through the ups and downs without them (especially getting those rejections letters!) I love them soooo much and will miss them over the summer a LOT!

Cadaver Lab!!

Hey hey hey! I just got back from the cadaver lab!! It was amazing!! Absolutely amazing! How can you not believe there is a God when you see how amazing our human bodies are!?! I don’t know!

So I’ll start at the beginning!

We get to the NAU health sciences building and go up to the 2^nd floor where the cadaver lab is. It’s not marked or anything.. it’s pretty low key.. they don’t tell a lot of people about it. Anyway we get there and our instructor, Dr. Leahman, explains that there are 6 bodies for us to look at AND if we feel nauseous at any time to let him know!

After that little chat we’re all nervous but we get gloves and goggles on and in we go. At first I panicked! The room was just a normal old classroom but had tables with partially covered bodies. It was not what I expected and the smell was SO over powering. The freakiest part for me was that the bodies still had skin on their hands and feet. Some of the female bodies even had painted toenails and fingernails. It was real! Real loved people; grandmas, grandpas, sisters, and brothers! Once I got over the shock of seeing all the bodies and started actually pointing out the organs and finding arteries, veins, bones and muscles I had been learning about it started to be an awesome experience!

All the bodies had a sheet of paper stating what they died from and how old they were. Once person had died from lung cancer and we got to look and see the breakdown of tissue and how the alveoli would have been completely destroyed. A lot of the bodies had been smokers and all of their lungs had black lines all through them, so sad that a lot of people don’t even know the damage they are doing to their lungs.

There were so many different things to look at: A knee replacement, a pacemaker still in the heart that was attached to the SA node, the valves in the heart, the kidney’s the gallbladder, the BRAIN (I held a whole human brain in my hands!!!), everything!

The body is so amazing!

We had a little old lady that had died at the age of 91 years old. Her lungs and heart still looked perfect compared to the other overweight and smoking bodies. It just really taught me the importance of the things we put in our body and how much it affect us! Gaining weight has to be the worst thing you can possibly do! The fat gets intertwined in everything, and it’s gross! I have seen it! One of our bodies was obese and it was just massive amounts of yellow fat. And all of his inners were just being squished and ugg.. not a pretty sight! Anyway, very eye opening experience of how much more you’ll get our of your body when you’re healthy! =)

Anyway it was amazing! I’m so thankful I can have these opportunities to learn about the human body and do it by hands on stuff! Learning from our textbooks is important but I learn the most while doing hands on stuff! I will never forget what those bodies looked like or how the organs felt. Amazing! I really REALLY want to go to body worlds now! Where they have all those cadavers.. you know what I’m talking about? Well it’s in phoenix now and I really want to go!! We’ll see! Maybe this summer!!

MY Clinical =)

I had the best day today in the hospital! Oh MY GOODNESS!! I can’t explain how alive I feel in the hospital. Today I was in the spine and joint surgery center and the majority of the patients had ether lumbar, thoracic or cervical spin injuries or we had some with hip replacements. I had the best PCT that I followed around all day. His name was Carlos and he was amazing. All of us students and Brenda (my really sweet instructor) walked into 3 north and Carlos looks at me and says “I want her!” I was shocked! At first it was bad… I was blushing and embarrassed, but later on in the day he said he could tell the moment I walked in that I was going to be someone who wants to learn and digs in and helps. He was a really sweet guy! I got super lucky!

I took so many vitals. For me they’re as easy as changing a baby’s dipper! “Hello, My name is Patricia, I’m your CAN today, I’m going to take your BP, temp, pulse, and respirations” said over and over especially in this unit! I was taking postoperative vitals which are taken every 15min the first hour after surgery and then every 30 min the second hour and then every hour after that. So vitals take up a lot of time but are so important.

One lady named Holly (she was my favorite patient of the day) had an extremely low BP around 2:30pm; we’re talking around 76/45. bad bad bad. I immediately reported it to the nurse and they found out that they needed to change her BP medication.

Another man was sitting in his chair and only needed moderate assist with things through the whole day. I had just taken his vitals and his BP was also low so Carlos and I decided to get him in bed to see if that helped it go back up. His BP wasn’t as bad as Holly; his was around 109/70. Anyway, so we’re getting him his walker he starts walking to his bed while Carlos goes around the bed to unhook an IV or something and I was just standing there when I see him start to wobble, so I get my arm under his shoulder but he’s really falling by then and I yell out, “aw, he’s falling” Carlos turns around and see’s what’s happening and comes and helps but it was crazy! Neither of us were prepared for him to fall. He had been fine all morning walking with his walker but because his BP was low he got dizzy and just lost it. Carlos was so grateful I was, telling me how good I was. Plus Carlos would have never forgiven himself if he had a fall on his watch! Thanks to me he didn’t. =) Both our hearts were pounding by the time we got him back in bed and it was quite the experience, I must admit! It could have been a hard fall, and I don’t know if this eighty year old man could of handled more broken bones and surgery. It was just good for me to learn that you never leave a patient alone and things happen when you least expect it. So EXCPECT them! That was my lesson!

I also did a accu-check on several patients. Just checking their blood sugar level, nothing that exciting, but I did scan the bar-codes, used the lancet, got the blood on the little strip, used the machine, then reported it to the nurse! I did it all! I Loved today! It was just like when you have your hemoglobin tested before you can give blood only I was the one sticking the patient. It was sweet!

What else… we used a sliding board with a patient that had been in a motorcycle accident and had broken L2-L6 and we had to be all careful not to twist his spin when transferring him to his air bed. Ahhhh.. Those beds are nice! Laying on one is like floating on clouds!

I did a ton of linen changing. I got that skill down! We recorded input and output of our patients, (emptied follies and stuff). We recorded percents of our patient’s meals. We used a mobile bed scale to weigh a patient with a broken femur.

Oh I was in helping Carlos with something and guess who walks in! Jeremy! He worked today at FMC as well and had been paged to come do a chest x-ray on one of our patients that was 91 years old. I asked Carlos if I could assist Jeremy and so I did a chest x-ray with him. It was so fun to help Jeremy and to be able to see what he does for his job. It was sad though.. the x-ray showed that this 91 year old man had lung cancer… and the nurse said later that he was going on hospice. There were no more surgeries or medication they could give to help except to keep him comfortable the last few weeks of life. Sad huh?

I also did an EKG on a patient. We viewed the heart from 12 different angles and it was awesome that I knew more about the printout then Carlos did. (heehee) Just because in bio we just learned all about the QRS-complex, the p-wave, the t-wave, and what happens during diastolic and systolic periods. It was sweet!

Lets see, lets see. SO many things! I’m probably forgetting half the stuff I did, but I don’t want to drag on..

It was just a great day because Carlos was complimenting me all day, I was helping SO many people and I was learning SO much! Carlos said I was the best student he’s ever had the privilege to teach, that I was excellent with the patients, that I knew and understood a lot of the bio behind everything. All day he was quizzing me on things PCT’s have to do and he asked me this one question about what we use a incentive spirometer for. The first thing that came to mind was your alveoli, and how high the risk of getting pneumonia is in the hospital. So I started saying all this stuff about how your alveoli and bronchi tree and he was just amazed! He also said I had a good aroma about me and that I was sharp! It just all made me feel so special, and wonderful! When I was leaving he gave me his number and full name so I can use him as a reference on my next application to FMC in the fall. Wow wow wow!

What a GOOD day!

Julia and Kendra

My Nieces are getting SO Big! Just since i've been here, in Flagstaff, They've grown a ton! I love them SO SO much!!

My Testimony

Church was amazing today! My testimony is growing and growing. Sometimes I do wish that I could have some huge life changing experience that I could share with people, but the truth is I’m a girl who hasn’t been through a lot of trials. I’ve never had a close friend or family member die. I’ve never had a hard time believing in the gospel. I’ve never been hungry, alone, or homeless. I’ve never really been tested like some have been, but I still have such a strong testimony and relationship with my Heavenly Father. I know my savior lives. I know that he’s my big brother and that he died for me because he loved me so much. He loves me more than I can even comprehend; more than I can love him back. I know that he watches over me and knows my name, joys, fears, weaknesses, and exactly what I’m feeling all the time. I know that things that are happening in my life are not unnoticed and that I just have to trust in the lord that everything will fall into place. Mostly, I just need to make sure I’m willing to be wherever I’m needed! That’s just my testimony of my savior not to mention my love for Joseph Smith, the book of Mormon, Thomas S. Monson, the power of prayer, and everything else I know is true and that has become a vital part of my life. I’m so grateful that I know all that and I really am blessed so much! The gospel is so so true

First two dates here in Flagstaff

SO... I guess I could tell you about my, not one, but TWO dates. Heehee, So Thursday I went on a date with a guy named Elliot. We went off-roading! Lol, pretty much just driving on a dirt road, but it was fun. I was glad he wasn’t going all crazy because really I didn’t trust him enough to do all that crazy fast stuff.

That’s another thing! Have I told any of you my theory on guys and driving? You can defiantly tell a lot by a guy as soon as he picks you up and you drive off together. I was a little nervous with him driving. He wasn’t bad or anything, just a little impatient, switched lanes a lot, followed really close behind the car in front, and I’m sure some of it was nerves, I mean I was sitting in the front seat, lol Just kidding!! but still, I like it when I feel totally and completely safe with the guy driving. AND maybe that just comes with time, too. I don’t know, but my first impression of his driving that made me get my seatbelt on as fast as possibly was probably not the best first impression. Anyway! So we go off-roading, it was fine, really beautiful scenery to look at. Then we went to his apartment and made cookies and watched youtube videos. It was short and fun and I’m not complaining, It was nice to go on a date! I’m not going to lie.

Then he asks me to go out again on Saturday.. I was a little hesitant to say yes just because I didn’t know what he’s intentions were.. but after I talked to him more and felt fine about it I said yes. This date turned out to be weird. I don’t think he thought about it much.. he just assumed he could pick me up and it would all just be perfect, but it didn’t really happen that way. He got off of work at 7pm and he picked me up at 8pm and said he was starving and that we were going to go get dinner! Well it’s 8 and I already ate dinner with Erin and the girls, but of course I said “great” and didn’t tell him that. Then after he asked me if I was hungry he finds out that I had already eaten dinner and decided to just skip dinner and go to get ice cream. I felt bad because he had just said he was starving but because I had already eaten I ruined the plans. So then we go to Baskin Robbins and got some ice cream, and that’s all he had planned except for maybe driving up to Lowell Observatory and looking at the starts, which we did for a few minutes but it was all pretty awkward… and I know he was still hungry but he wouldn’t get something to eat with me so he decides to just take me home. So after 50min I was back home, lol. He’s very sweet but he’s actually not an RM I don’t think.. I think he just became active again.. so yeah. All I want to do now is get him on a mission! But yeah! Two dates in one week, I am on a role! Lol