Highs and Lows

My week has had it’s ups and downs but over all it was a good week.
Guess who came to church?!? Jared and Amani (his fiancé)! I texted Jared and invited him this morning to go and surprisingly he was really excited about it. It was so good to see him AND for him to be really happy. Girls make boys change and I think Jared has changed a lot for Amani; in a good way. For example he opened her door and he was dressed nicely, he wasn’t the normal dirt under the fingernails Jared. He’s matured a lot from what I could tell, but I didn’t get to talk to him that much. Maybe this decision to get married will be just what Jared needs to realize the important things in life. I don’t know.. but we’re moving in the right direction! Maybe Amani will want to get baptized! Great things could happen! =) Staying positive here!

Boy though, I was nervous when the first speaker in sacrament started out by saying, “for those of you that have served your mission, keep serving! For those of you who haven’t gone, Go” and then the rest of church seemed to be themed on obedience. What can I say! It was meant for Jared to hear. I wonder what Amani thought of the whole thing. I’ll have to ask him. Anyway, answers to prayers that he came to church! Yay! That was a high of my week.

A low point was that I was told by an 8yr old, for the first time ever, that I’m a “jerk”. That was not a happy time. Man alive, I was floored. And all because I asked him to fold his clothes while I made dinner. The next day, to my surprise, he told me I was the best nanny ever (pretty sure Anne had something to do with that). With kids you never know what’s going to come out of their mouth.

I got the job as a caregiver. =) AND guess what I hear after the interview! That the son of the boss, who’s going to pima, and was there at the office when I had my interview, was “checking me out” (says Nicole, my coach that got me the job). Now I know why I was hired… whoopy…(roll eyes)

Anyway, I’m excited about that. I’ll stat training as a phlebotomist on August 15^th. Super excited for that. Things are going SOOO well.

On July 21^st we’re driving up to Idaho for Sarah’s graduation! I’m So glad I get be here, at home, to spend time with her before she leaves on her mission!

That’s pretty much everything that’s going on with me! Love you ALL!

What. A. Crazy. Day!

I knew it was going to be crazy, and last night I tossed and turned just thinking about it (didn’t fall asleep until after midnight). In my mind I couldn’t work out how I was going to get everything done. Normally I wouldn’t work for the Cavett’s on a Friday but come to find out, Anne did want me to work. I told her about my CNA test a while back but she had forgotten about it. My test started at 1pm (plus they said be there 20min early) and Anne said there was no way she was going to make it home from work that early.

Thankfully Riley said she would come to work with me and I would just leave for my test then come back. Simple simple, right?! BUT…it got way more complicated when Anne texted me and told me the boys were going to be at a karate camp until 12pm AND that I was supposed to pick them up there all the way on tanque verde right next to the kirk bear library. I’m SO worried that I wont be able to get the boys and get them home and THEN get to my test on time. On top of that, Connor has a private tutoring session with coach Steve at 4pm, Cayce has a play date with Ben at their house from 12-4pm and Riley has to be at an YCL meeting at 3pm at the Rustands house. A lot going on!

Riley and I decided to get the boys early from the camp (around 11:45am). That works out, we get the boys and we all get home by around 12:10 and then I rush off to the testing place all the way down Broadway (next to wings over Broadway! Yumm that sounds so good right now!) Anyway I get there and get checked in and I take my written test first. After the written test, I take my skills test. SO nerve-wracking! The skills I got were perineal care, dressing the bed-ridden patient, input, and isolation gown and gloves. Pretty easy stuff and I’ve practiced all of them a billion times but when I was told to perform them with my test proctor leaning over my shoulder I froze up, totally forgot all the steps, but I did managed to pull it together and I think I did okay… I’ll get my scores on Monday!!

After the entire test I rush back to work around 3:30pm. Poor Riley is so late and I can’t even take her to the Rustands because I have Ben over for a play-date and Connor is having his chess tutoring. So Riley calls mom and she comes and picks her up. Then I start doing all the chores around the house and try to think of something (SUPER Fast) I can make for dinner. Soon tutoring starts and Ben’s mom comes to pick him up. That’s when Ben’s mom says “I’ll see you guys again in about 45min.” I have no idea what she’s talking about and I text Anne and she’s forgotten about a birthday party that Cacey is supposed to go to. Anne says to have the boys all ready and dressed so they could go as soon as she got home.

Then a little later when I’m in the middle of making dinner she calls and says she’s not going to make it home in time. She asks me to take Connor to their grandma’s house. Pick up Ben (the friend). Go to target to get a present for Tyler the birthday boy. Then finally take them to the birthday party.

During all this I’m having my own little craziness. I started thinking about driving school (that i have to go to the next morning) and remember I needed to get a money order by tomorrow morning at 7:30am. I call Mom and panic when she says banks normally close at 5pm and don't open till around 9-10ish! Then I call the wells fargo in the fry’s plaza on 22^nd because I thought they stayed open later than 5pm (which is what time it was right then) and I was right! Thank goodness they stayed open till 7pm because I wouldn’t of been able to get one otherwise.

Anyway, Anne asks me to do all this PLUS I have to get to fry’s and get my money order before 7pm when they close. So I rush the boys in the shower, I rush them to eat dinner, and I rush them out to the car. I take Connor to the grandma’s house. I pick up Ben and introduce myself to Ben’s Dad and he was a little anxious about me (someone he had never seen or met before) taking his son to a bowling alley for a birthday party. I explain that Anne got stuck at work and that I was their Nanny. He asked how old I was and “jokingly” asked to see some ID. Then he asks who’s staying with the boys and I (of course) say that I would be, even though Anne said to just drop the boys off. After the Dad feels comfortable with all the details and everything I rush the boys to Target, find a gift. Rush to fry’s, get my money order. Then Finally arrived at the bowling alley! It actually was Tucson bowling right next to the seminary building! (That part worked out great because it was right next to fry’s!)

The Boys start bowling and it’s quite fun cheering them on and giving them high-fives and stuff so it’s not a problem that Anne doesn’t show up until 7:45pm. The only thing was after that I still have to go back and switch cars because the next morning I had driving school. Once I get on the road again Dan calls me and asks what in the world is going on! “Where is everyone? Where the boys are? Why I’m still working at 8 o’clock at night? All these questions. Then I get to the Cavetts and find that, in my rush, I had forgotten to unload the clean dishes and put away the clean laundry and some other stuff so I still have some work to get done at the house. keep in mind I had very little time at the house since I was gone taking the test. I finally get done and get home around 9pm.

On top of all this, Emily has been wanting to do something with me and I canceled last time when we had something planned and I couldn’t cancel again so after I get home, change out of my scrubs, and eat some dinner, I head over to her house. It was nice to chat with Emily and have some girl time! I’m glad it went, but I just barely got home and it’s 11pm and I’m exhausted. What. A. Crazy. Day!

It was crazy, but I still know I am very blessed to have my job, as a nanny, and I do love my boys!

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!!