Mmmmm....saline!

Saline has always been the bane of my existence, primarily because it usually had to do with my not taking appropriate care of my contacts and thus always being in pain when saline was in the picture. I take back all those bad feelings though as I spent the better part of the afternoon/evening getting pumped full at the ER after getting my ass kicked by the 107 heat index today. I spend most of my time working outside, often with fire which only adds insult to injury. No fire today, but a few things snowballed and the result was me so dehydrated that when I finished a couple mile hike back to my truck I (though I know better) downed a bunch of water and gatorade. That lasted for all of about 5 minutes before my stomach said "no honey, not today, I'm just not in the mood" and started sending it all back out the way it went down. Oddly enough (again, though I know better) I kept drinking more and my stomach kept kickin' it back up, eventually to the point that even a sip of water to take some Advil led to a "just wutchu you thinkin bout' bitch, didn't you hear me the first time?" from my stomach. I eventually got on the road, but I was so dizzy I felt like I was drunk and I could hardly keep my eyes focused. I pulled over and thankfully a couple co-workers were able to run out and pick up me and my truck. Anyway, on to the hospital...first of all, this is my first visit to the ER (that I remember anyway) as a patient outside of a major metropolitan area and without some sort of appendage pointing in the wrong direction. I walked in to see one other person in there and was brought back within about 30 minutes (I was bumped a couple times, by a stroke and a girl that busted up her head on a water slide). So here's where this entry goes from being about dehydration to being about the beautiful staff of the ER! WOW! First of all, everyone there was awesome. It doesn't hurt that all of the nurses, the nurse practitioner and the doc were all beautiful, but mainly they just did a damn good job with everything they were doing. I really appreciated the incredibly hard (yet joking, mostly) time both the triage nurse and my primary care nurse gave me about letting myself get soooo dehydrated. My first thought was damn, I'm going to have to get dehydrated more often, this was a pretty pleasant experience and I like these people, not to mention direct inject of saline! I don't think I've mentioned it to anyone yet, but at the end of the month I start in the EMT program at the local college and only found out this morning that this hospital ER is the one where I'll do my clinicals! I think I'll have to get in there during some of the busier times to see more stuff, but it sure does seem like it will be a great place to put in those hours!

I guess that's about it. I've backlogged on other stuff I should write a message about. We'll see whether or not that happens.