another week, another walk...or more...

loved this picture of blossom running through the tall grasses. you can see the fall colours coming in on the blades. that dog loves her tennis ball! i just got a vanity plate. they were only $30 bucks so what the hell. "blosom" was taken so i went with "dogluv". hope it doesn't have some disgusting meaning that will get me in trouble. i just love those pups!! not in any weird way though. single female....leaves one open to all sorts of odd gossip. just single...never found the right guy, wasn't willing to compromise on a bad match.
below is proof that bears really do shit in the woods. lots of scat on my walk with blossom today. didn't look too fresh so i wasn't too worried. i had the bear spray and we both had bells.

i'm on my two days off work. was a strange and busy week at work. not bad really. i did get called in on thursday so overtime from midnight til 7am so that was cool. i ended up getting one admit. they had to fillet open the guys leg because he'd gotten compartment syndrome. really nice guy with beautiful eyelashes, 73 years old and still rides his motorcycle. cool. it was funny. i introduced myself and he said he had a cousin named betsy, betsy ann palfrey. that is pretty freaky. my first name isn't all that common.

next night i had him and a head trauma that wasn't really waking up. had to take him to mri. that is always such a bother with all the tubes and lines and you can't have metal in the mri room. road trips with icu patients take forever to prepare for. the mri took like 1 hour and when i got back i was behind and trying to get the patients all sorted out. the nurses i'd followed didn't leave them all neat like i prefer. the dude with the fillet leg had oozed blood everywhere so i gave them both baths and then had to speed chart so that i could give them to another nurse. two patients had died on the shift already (expected deaths) and so they combined the remaining two patients, that spare nurse took my two patients i was moved to take a sledd (continuous dialysis) patient, that nurse was moved to take a balloon pump patient and then the charge was finally freed back up to be charge again. see kinda crazy.

third night was chill and fourth i ended up with 2 admits in peds. we had a kid code and die of the swine flu saturday night apparently so i think we may be getting some panic medivacs from outlying area's. so one of my admits came from talkeetna. really in the end she had a touch of pnuemonia, but mostly she was constipated. so that means her family will pay a great deal of cash for an emema. medivac's are $10,000 - $20,000 plus. when one lives in the bush sometimes it's better safe than sorry. medical help can be hard to come by and often the weather can make travel impossible. i recal several long and frightening nights in ketchikan when weather prevented patient transfers and there are just some situations where living far from major medical will just mean death.

hopefully, i'll get up to the denali highway next week and there will be spectacular fall colours still. for now anchorage is working on the change so i took a few pictures of leaves in transition. did loads of yardwork yesterday and cleaned house. the guy came today to do the energy rating. you can get up to $10,000 from government to improve your homes energy rating right now. i think it only goes til the end of the year and there was a wait list for the rating. i think i applied late last winter or early spring and i finally got in.

spent a great deal of my walk time in the bog or at the dog park. rio is getting sore on her other knee...so do i get a second brace or what...? guess she won't be doing as much walking. the brace did give her 2 more years of walks. she is over 5 now which is getting up for there for a dog her size.

when i came home from work i discovered that i'd accidently left the cat, sapogi, out in the outdoor kitty run and blocked the entrance to get back in. he'd scratched his way out of the screens on the kitty run and shredded the flap i had between the inside and the outdoor cat run space. poor cat. he's an indoor cat except that run so i'm really lucky that he didn't go further once he escaped the run...he bolted into the house as soon as i went to let the dogs out. so i put up the run for the season. it's getting into the low 40's at night anyway.

back to work tomorrow night for 2 or 3...i'm still deciding. i want to hit the road and got overtime on sunday night as well because of the labor day holiday.

watched "saint ralph" over several days. it was my net flix. it was about a young man in the 50's at a private catholic school. he's on his own as his mom is in the hospital in a coma. he's sort of slipped through the cracks and needs a miracle. he decides if he wins the boston marathon that will be the miracle he needs to make his mom wake up. it was a funny, sweet flick. typical teen, getting himself in trouble all the time.

the only other "major" event of my week is that the three-legged frog finally went to froggie heaven. that frog lived longer than any frog should have and i'm kinda excited to be able to clean out the tank and work towards cleaning out this office space and re-decorating it eventually. i want to get rid of the carpet, re-paint so about more perm bookshelves...hmm. not sure about the money part of all that, but a girl can dream.