Nurse Sean (dot) com

So, last Friday at 7:00am I had my first code blue. It’s a moment I have been fearing…but it really wasn’t too bad. Around 6:00am, my patient started going down hill. I kept increasing her oxygen rate, changing her to a more powerful oxygen delivery device…nothing worked. Her vital signs became increasingly difficult to get as the blood flow to her extremeties became worse by the second. She was in some kind of shock, but as they rolled her (intubated and being pumped full of blood) to the ICU, they still hadn’t really figured out why. Hemoglobin was fine, lungs/heart looked good, temperature was fine etc.

I learned a lot from this experience, including a few warning signs that I could have grasped onto earlier. But this is how nurses learn…by reflecting on what they did, how they did it, and what they would do differently in the future. I have already done this to death over the several nights following that night, so I won’t go through it here. I will just say that although I could have done things better, I still did things well, and correctly. I may have saved this woman’s life. I am very proud of myself.

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On to happier things! Over the long weekend, Richard and I decided to drive down to visit our neighbors to the south. We went to Great Falls, Montana!

I used to go to Great Falls all the time as a child. My parents honeymooned there, so it was almost exclusively our first stopping point on our family road trips. Great Falls would be followed by Spokane, then Vernon, then home.

Being a know-it-all, I thought I knew exactly how to get there. Drive south to Fort McLeod, then continue south to Sweetgrass where the border crossing is (has anyone detected the flaw in my thinking yet?). In Fort Mcleod, we took a wrong turn. Actually, we reached a fork in the road and chose the wrong fork. As a result, we ended up in Lethbridge, desperate for a map. So, map in hand, I saw our flaw and we drove back to Fort McLeod. We were now an hour over our expected time of 5.5 hours of driving (this time was well memorized by me from my childhood road trips).

We drove south from Fort McLeod on a very dark, windy road past Cardston (the Mormon temple is beautiful at night), and to the boarder crossing. Something seemed “off.” I remembered the road being a very big highway all the way from Calgary to Great Falls. This was a very tiny road in the middle of nowhere. Also, there was no town of Sweetgrass to be seen.

I chalked it up to my Dad occassionally taking different boarder crossings. Sometimes we would skip Great Falls and go Straight to Spokane etc. So, I’m wasn’t worried. However, the crossing guard told us that it would be about four hours until we got to Great falls. I thought this was very strange since I remembered it being only two hours.

After the boarder we were literally in what felt like the middle of nowhere. We were on a very tiny, ice, windy road that seemed to climb up and down mountains. I kept saying, “I could have sworn this was supposed to be a major highway!”

You know those movies where a stranger walks into a bar where they are VERY out of place, the music scratches to a stop, and everyone is silently staring at you. We had one of those moments as we bought gas in Browning. It was obviously an all Native American town, and while we were never made to feel unwelcomed, it was obvious that they weren’t used to seeing caucasians stop and get gas…there was a lot of strange stares going in our direction.

Back on the road, I finally decided to check the map Richard picked up at the Boarder. You should have seen the look on my face when I realized we had taken the wrong road! We were most definitely on a road that would end up in Great Falls; however, it was a long winding road that went way out of the way through the Blackfeet Indian reserve.

Even more astounding was that the road I DID want to take was straight down from Lethbridge. ACK! We were in Lethbridge but turned back because we thought it was the WRONG way! *CRIES*

We just looked at each other and decided that eventually it would be hilarious…

So, ten hours later (this includes, going the right way by accident, lunches, going the wrong way etc. etc.) we checked into the hotel. I was exhausted since I only had 2 hours of sleep (hard to sleep after a code blue). We still managed to order pizza and go to bed at 1:00am

The next day we drove around, shopped. I love buying all the products that haven’t hit Canada yet, and I love buying drugs that are prescription here, but over-the-counter in the US.

This was some kind of plant near the military base in Great Falls. I loved the mountains hanging out in the background. In this area, mountains stick up here and there, rather than all together like the rockies.

This is a similar mountain that I saw on the way home.

Here’s a nice picture of the nice big highway that we took back. Yes, this is the one we were supposed to be taking there. The trip back was only 5 hours long…now that we knew the right way! And yes, there was such a place as Sweetgrass!

Great Falls reminded us A LOT of Moose Jaw. It was about the same size, had the same lonely and run down “feel,” and was surrounded by similar prairies. We did notice that the customer service in this town was over-the-top incredible! I was left wondering if it is just really good, or if Calgary’s has become so bad that it was just relatively amazing. People were so friendly and were always going out of their way to help us.

There was even an awesome woman in the Albertson’s grocery store who had an awesome southern accent. She spent a good half an hour looking for Richard’s favorite snack food for us. She was so apologetic when she couldn’t find it. I loved the way she called us “honey.”

Ugh…and now I have to go back to work tomorrow after six days of freedom.

*sigh*