This week I had the chance to shadow the anesthesia department at the hospital. A brother in our ward, Laird Clark, is a nurse anesthetist and offered to show me what he does at work. I observed a couple hernia repairs, a tubal ligation, and laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal), but the gist of anesthesia was the same for all of them. As a nurse anesthetist, the patient's face is your workspace - you need to have control of their airway and breathing, and you monitor their vitals and responsiveness throughout the surgery. I left that day feeling very excited about potentially pursuing a career as a CRNA. It was Olivia's birthday this week and for Dani's gift to her she took Olivia and a friend on a river trip! Olivia had a blast, and later I took her out for milkshakes at Milt's.
After a long week on the river, Dani was pretty burned-out and so we escaped to the LaSals for a cool weekend. I got a year-long fishing license (first time ever!) and we went to Medicine Lake Friday afternoon. We had the entire lake and campground to ourselves, and by the end of the day I had caught my limit. Dani enjoyed reading "Desert Solitaire" while I cast for hours.
Our favorite quote from the book so far: "A man on foot... will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. Better to idle through one park in two weeks than try to race through a dozen in the same amount of time." -Edward Abbey
My salmon pictures from Alaska put these small rainbows to shame, but I was pretty happy to catch what I did!
Saturday morning after cleaning up camp we hiked around in the woods, grateful for the cooler mountain temperatures above the sweltering Moab valley.
Saturday evening I responded to my first "code" -- a patient with absent vital signs. We performed CPR for about 30 minutes, which ended unsuccessfully as we could not resuscitate our patient. As a new EMT I've looked forward to using the skills I've trained for in this type of situation, but also (for obvious reasons) I would never wish for a reason to use those skills, if that makes sense. The scene went smoother and calmer than I expected. I was surprised that the hardest part was after cleaning up, going home, and actually having time to think and analyze the event, prompting some hard-to-answer questions. The fact that it was a suicide made it even harder. I learned the less I know about the personal lives of patients the easier it is to handle. Luckily after a sober evening I was able to put it out of my mind and move on. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to work in the saving of lives.
After Chris's picture-fail of the bear we saw on Sunday we decided to head back to the glacier Monday morning before work. We once again walked around the little trails where people "supposedly" see bears allllll the time. After waiting for a bear to come with no avail we finally decided to hike East Glacier trail. We did this trail back in May and really enjoyed it. We found a small un-maintained trail that broke off the main path and decided to take it. With just a little bushwhacking we found Nugget Creek, an ice-blue river and a beautiful hidden beach. We stopped at this peaceful, serene place and couldn't help but catch the river blues. Chris and I started dreaming and talking about the day when we will buy a raft and go on private rafting trips. There wasn't rapids, but it still just made us itch to be on the water. What can we say, once a river rat ALWAYS a river rat.
Our water adventures continued on Wednesday when we finally got in some real Alaskan fishing! The Sunderlands (senior missionary couple who took us gold panning) let us borrow some fishing poles and we went to the beach next to the hatchery to go snagging. Snagging is a type of fishing where you use a weighted, three pronged fishing hook and instead of waiting for the fish to bite the bait you just cast and then jerk it as you reel in. As you are reeling in you snag the fish (it can be in the mouth, on a fin, in the side - just anywhere) and just hope that you are strong enough to get these large, fighting salmon to shore. We caught SO MANY FISH! For those of you that don't know, there are five different types of salmon. Our sweet primary boys had warned us that you absolutely do not keep the chum salmon if you catch them. These salmon are referred to as dog salmon - as in you can feed them to your dog. Our hometeachers actually confirmed the advice our nine year old boys gave, and told us that the dog salmon don't cook well and are too mushy. With this in mind we quickly became snob Alaskan fishermen and only wanted to catch the good salmon. Unfortunately for us we caught about three dog salmon to every one good salmon! But all was not lost and we still brought home five good salmon, and a broken fishing pole (these fish are big!).
First cast, first catch. Chum salmon.
Wednesday's catch
Once we were home Christopher filleted the salmon as I hid in the other room because I couldn't handle the smell or the dead eyeballs staring at me. Once he had the fish looking like something you could buy at the grocery store I rejoined him (with a good smelling candle and open windows) and we cooked a great dinner. We even bought some Martinelli's sparkling cider to celebrate our catch and make our at-home date night all the more romantic.
As we talked about the day it didn't take long to realize Chris had caught fishing fever. He had a blast and can't wait to go again - next time on a boat and fishing for even larger fish. On the other hand, I realized my favorite part of fishing was watching the sea lions. My least favorite part was when I caught a fish and it was really hard to reel it in, and then when it got to the shore it looked hurt because I was mean and got a nasty hook stuck in it, and even worse if it was a good salmon Chris would barbarically hit a rock over it's head and kill it, and later he would gut it and pulled out all its' insides!!! One fish had gotten hooked in the side and as it struggled to get off the hook it tore open its side until all its' eggs were flying around! Needless to say, I think I'm a little too sensitive to be good at fishing, and Barbie Dani came out this trip. I'll just stick with the hikes. We did enjoy looking through the pictures from the day though, and hope you enjoy this collage we put together entitled "How Dani REALLY Feels About Fishing."
Thursday morning Chris went back out fishing again (he bought his "day-license" strategically and made the most of the 24 hour time limit), and I opted to stay home because, well because I broke my fishing pole on Wednesday.... Anyways, Chris went at an opportune time and caught eight more salmon that he ended up taking to a warehouse to get smoked. He also brought home a bunch of salmon eggs because the night before we had the crazy idea to try caviar. We looked up online how to prepare caviar (soaking the eggs in a salt water brine), and tasted this delicacy. These pretty orange pearls popped open and gushed strong flavors in your mouth.... ok, ok, ok the truth is we don't care how expensive caviar can be - this stuff is disgusting! We will not be eating fish eggs again any time soon. Ewwwww.
Thursday's catch
On Friday we went to the stake youth conference. Our boss Mel Perkins was released as the Anchorage Temple president not long ago and had been asked to speak on temples to the youth. He asked us to join him because his wife was out of town, and because he thought the youth would relate more to us as we had gotten our own endowments and had been sealed in the temple more recently. It was an amazing experience. We loved watching his presentation, and also having the opportunity to bear our own testimonies of the temple to three different groups of teenagers. We know the temple is the House of God. We know the Spirit that you feel in there is real. And we are so grateful for the work that we can do there, and for the opportunity that it gives families to be together forever. Part of the presentation was watching pioneer John Roye Moyle's story about sacrifice and dedication to build the House of the Lord.
Let us all strive to be those people who act, and not those who are acted upon.
