iditarod, fourth installment....

above is hugh neff. he's usually done his best runs in the quest. he looks to be doing pretty well in this race. seems to be a bit of a character...there are loads of those in alaska. he lives in tok. i think he's pretty excited to be with the big boys on this one.

loved this picture below of sled and dogs...it's #53, churchin. currently in about last place. he could get red lantern award...that goes to last place. of course, he also risks being told to drop out. i wish him well. finishing is the goal for many of the mushers. not many out there have run the iditarod.

more dogs...they are so cute and happy. hope they are doing well.

jeff king was in lead in the iditarod, but i just noticed that mackey took over the lead. these two have been rivals for several years now. it's a fun race this year with many in contention. should be a fairly close ending. these two are always resorting to trickery to get ahead. it's always fun out there on the trail...

below is mackey and his team. he's trying for a 4th win, king is trying for a 5th. king donated $50,000 to the purse in this race and i'm sure he'd like to get it back. funny too as both these leaders have had some trouble with the law this past years. king accidently shot a moose at the edge of denali park. that moose was in the park in the end. mackey...well, he's a cancer surviver and a smoker of marijuana. his medical marijuana card apparently expired and he got it for carrying. this is the first year the iditarod has said they will drug test the mushers. mackey has promised to avoid the marijuana for the race....of course, that could backfire....he could be faster.

i'm still hoping for king, not that i don't like mackey too. i love the games and silliness of the strategizing that happens in the iditarod. it's not so controlled as most things. there is still a wildness to it.

more teams have dropped out, scratched, from the race. our distant relative palfrey dropped out today. mostly, they have said it's the dogs...they dogs get tired and it's in thier best interest to just step out. savidis dropped out because he lost a dog, whitey. it took off, i hope they find the dog. he can't and wouldn't move on without the dog, after several days he had to drop out. if you get too far behind in this race they make you drop off. moon dropped out because he was knocked out, no surprise ramstead dropped out. her dogs were pooping all over at the restart. she has run the iditarod several times and mostly quits. not sure how or why she does the race. she just doesn't seem the type, not outdoorsy, out of shape. it's a pretty expensive adventure.

nice pleasant week at work. my one patient kept hoping i'd be back the next night and i was able to take care of her for 3 nights. she just started chemo and is losing her hair...at first everyone just kinda ignored it as we could tell it was devastating for her. the other morning i decided to just aknowledge it and make a joke. she was piling the hair up on the bedside table so i asked if she was saving it to make a stuffed animal, when i got a smile, we both started making more jokes. when i got back that night i asked the charge to seek out a box for her hair. we sometimes have keepsake boxes for when a child passes away so i thought that may work for her hair. linda was in charge and saw that we were out of them so she called down to the nicu to see if they had any boxes. they assumed we had lost a baby so they went above and beyond searching out boxes. linda felt bad that they were going to such trouble but didn't dare tell them it was for hair. eventually, a box was found and tiffany got stuff for her to decorate the box. you are never sure how such things will go but you go by instinct. it was just the thing for her i think. she set about decorating her box, her mom then brushed her hair and put the hair that fell out in the box. in a way it's strange, but sometimes you have to just find a way to aknowledge the loss, whatever it may be, so you can move through it.

most of our admits were less than critical. it can also show the difference between working with kids and working with adults. with adults you have to draw labs or start an iv, you just go in and say we are drawing labs or starting and iv and then you just start it. with kids...2 hours later you may get the iv started or the labs drawn. it's just a bigger process, full of drama. kids also don't always know how to express what is bothering them. my one kid was screaming about his stomach pain, which in the end turned out to be a full bladder. once i convinced him to pee he pee'd and fell asleep within minutes.

yesterday, i took the dogs out to n. bivouac for a stretch. love the sound on snow crunching under foot. it was just a beautiful day. it's always so nice between shifts to relax with a walk out on the trail. today i opted for the dog park. kinda a mistake..i should have just headed for the woods. the dogs enjoyed themselves. it was steal the toy from blossom day. the first dog was another labradoodle. nice enough dog, but i think he's got a sitter and the guy took forever to get the toy away. in the meantime the dog was headed the other way and rio was wandering off another direction. took me awhile to get us all back together. no sooner had i moved on from that another dog snapped up the toy. that owner was infuriating....she just stood there with her mouth hanging open doing nothing. she had no ability to control her dog and eventually she just walked off without even aknowledging that her dog had taken the toy. it's just rude. so annoying. ran into the professor and his dog is also a toy stealer and he hasn't really trained that one either. personally, i just believe that if you aren't training your dog it has no place at a dog park. so i would have been better off in the silence of the woods.

it's been a bad swim week. i bad. was too tired today. will have to start again tomorrow..new week. back to my movie...watching "gran torino". so far i'm really liking it. totally not what i had expected.