Paper cuts/nine

OK.

Here I am four months later. Holidays are upon us. Thank goodness for the sling-shot into the next year.

Number one thing to remember the rest of your life in a hospital: If you have a cut on the tip of your dominant thumb, you will have a bad day. No amount of band-aids or tegaderm will be able to protect yourself from the burn of alcohol sanitizer in and out of each patient's room. Fact.

The only thing that can rival the pain from sanitizer is the SMELL of an inner city ER. Fact.

I promised updates from time to time, and here they are.

1. I've been enjoying my own adventure time outside the hospital. This provides much needed relief.

2. Training for half marathon in February. My friend made a good point in that training will bridge me to the newest episode of Walking Dead when it goes on hiatus next week.

3. Talking to myself, a whole lot. Also, going to Whole Foods and making the most immaculate salads possible. Spinach, strawberries, and a balsamic vinaigrette do wonders for your body.

4. Working. Seriously. Taking it minute by minute, day by day. Staircase  by staircase. Working towards new skills, and brushing up on existing ones. I actually keep my Sills book in my work bag. Do yourself a favor and keep that book/reference handy for your boards. I do know they are coming up. Kettering tokens work wonders for the clin sims portion. PF ratio. Are you impressed? You should be, that's all I've got right now.

5. Three days until I turn twenty seven. I get heartburn even thinking about it. Also, a very real threat of age affecting my brain. Staying in the moment really helps with that. I find that being in the city really does allow me to be independent.

6. White girl whiskey wasted. Relates to post above. Pounds to twitter on birthday, except I don't tweet.

7. Saving up time off from work. 140 hrs as it stands.

8. "Me and God" The Avett Brothers/"What Sarah Said" Deathcab for Cutie. Songs I've listened way too much in the past few weeks. I really do believe that sometimes music is the best form of expression. Of course, at least for me.

9. Ballet + yoga will do amazing things for your gluts, that is, if you care.

So enough of lists.

I just wanted to talk a smidge about what makes up happiness. It seriously is what you make of it.  The things that makes you giggle, smirk, or take a single second out of your hectic day to consider a positive moment in your existence. Some of the wisest people I've ever met, spoke of having great love within their families. I'll leave that to the breeders, for now.

I really can't believe over 4,000 people have read over my words. I just pray that my experience has helped push others in their efforts. Whether it be within respiratory, general craziness, or just to further your hatred for my whiny posts.

Thank you to all that have survived. If anything I have provided some what of comic/dumb/idiotic relief. Good night all.

There and back again

Soooo. I knew when I posted a picture of myself that this blog was no longer annonymous. I didn't think it was relavent enough for any of my co-workers to stumble upon, but for the first time ever I had someone ask me about it the other day at work. I dont mind at all that he did (hi), but it does make me think back to all of the verbose long rambling posts that I wrote out of lonliness/anger/boredom.

I didn't ever want to completely shut the blog down, mostly because I didn't want to lose all the posts. But it's time that I take down a lot of stuff that's just too personal. So I'll be weeding through the blog pulling down some stuff & archiving it for myself. Eventually the whole thing will probably come down because I just don't spend any more time writing posts.

Anywho. I just celebrated my 1 year anniversary at my hospital. Yayh. Still dating same guy, and it's been just lovely. So overall things have been good. I'm planning on starting back school next year, but we will see. I might start sooner if I can get my mind set on exactly what I want to do.

Later alligators.

RRT to PA

Hi all. After spending an inordinate amount of time researching some stuff, and stumbling onto some good PA student blogs, I realized how utterly neglected this one is. I know I did say I'd update from time to time, so here goes.

It's been...almost 5 months since I've last posted, and things around the hospital are... busy. I can't quite convey just how much is expected of us sometimes. Some nights when I get home I can't help but fling myself into bed and not move a muscle until the next morning. Anywho. No one said working in a hospital is a breeze.

The rapport with the fellow co-workers has been getting easier, but I still gravitate to the younger therapists. It's also been somewhat of a task to work with RN's. I guess I didn't have much of a problem when I was a student, eager to do anything at a moments notice, but now that I have a full assignment it become increasingly hard to handle them treating me like a tech. It's been a process, and I'm still continuing to learn from it all.

My health care experience is still ever-growing. I'm mostly in the ICU's with a floor or two thrown in there. I finally took a full time position at the current hospital I'm at, and have absolutely no intent on leaving anytime soon. My days are still filled with vent checks and breathing treatments, but also an insane amount of critical care. I'm lucky to be in a place where the RTs are practically running codes.

So, to the topic of this post. Some people think it's silly that I have only been working in respiratory for a little over a year (counting some of my clinical rotations on this one), and have aspirations of going back to school. I can see their point, but I don't agree with it. We all know respiratory therapy has a ceiling, and after a few years of practicing you get the gist of it all. It will take a few years before I'm ready to even apply to physicians assistant school, but I plan on working full time all the way through the pre-reqs. I see it as a way to keep getting that valuable experience while still maintaining the goal of PA.

I'd much rather get finished with PA school before starting to plan a family, and that's been my main reasoning for starting back with class pretty soon after graduating. I could have done it earlier, but I wanted to wait at least a year before starting back. Good news is that most PA schools are great about accepting RTs into their programs. I've got a short list of ones I'm looking into right now (Mercer, MCG, Emory, MUSC etc.). I'd like to remain in Georgia, but I'm not opposed to moving if I'm accepted into a program out of state. I'll be sure to keep up a little dialog now and then on this whole journey of getting into a PA program. I tried searching in vein for a blog of any former RRT that went to PA school, but there's not a whole lot out there.

The personal life has been good. I finally feel comfortable in the relationship that I'm in (still the same guy I started to see before I went to France), and I see it going in a good direction. I'm just glad that both of us are insanely happy. That's the main thing to focus on. I'm probably going to be moving closer to the city in the fall. I tried the whole no roommate thing/living on my own and I got so bored/lonely fast. Im probably going to look for a living situation with a friend or two, because once I head back to school I'll be budgeting more carefully since I'm going to try and pay for it out of pocket for a while.

Anyway, I'm getting tired and I need to start working on dinner. Good night all, and I'm sure I'll be back sometime in the coming months with some updates.