"This Isn't Working! We're Outta Control! Somebody Do Something! AAAAH!"

The hubby & I are back from our camping/white-water rafting trip in Ocoee, Tenn. Although our traveling to Atlanta (from which we drove from with friends) was challenging to say the least, we had an absolute blast!!!

We spent Friday night in Atlanta with our friends in their mid-town condo & had a dee-lish pizza dinner at local, little trendy pizzeria. That dinner was MUCH needed after that long & frustrating travel day of cancelled flights & lost luggage. We slept like the dead that night after recovering our luggage & then we drove to Ocoee, Tenn the next morning. We camped that Saturday night & did a 4-hour full-river white water trip which actually turned into like 5-6 hours because our guide only had us for the day & wanted us to have as much crazy fun as possible. It was exhilarating!!! Scary & fun all at once. Parts of the Ocoee River had class III & IV rapids. Also, part of that river was used in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.

Here is a pic of us rafting! ETK's hubby is "riding the bull" on the front of the raft. The guide is on the back. I am on the left side of the pic with noone in front of me & ETK & her hubby's friend behind me. Hubby is next to me. ETK is behind hubby. I did not do the riding the bull trick. Too scary for me! But the guide did A LOT of awesome tricks with us, including flipping us out of the raft at one point when it was "safer." AWESOME!!!

More info here: http://www.state.tn.us/environment/parks/Hiwassee/

We camped again Sunday night & Monday morning we tubed for 4 hours down the Hiwassee River near the Cherokee National Forest. Very cool! We rented our tubes from this historic Webb Brothers General Store. How quaint! They piled us & our tubes into the back of a pickup, all redneck-like, and drove us to our drop off site. For those of you familiar with tubing down the Guadalupe or Comal River here in Tejas, this is MUCH better. Cleaner water, bigger river, and more fun little rapids. It was so beautiful!!! It was fun & relaxing! But WOW we are soooo burned! We look like lobsters. Duh! We forgot to put on our sunblock that day. Not too bright eh? ;) Between the sore muscles from rafting and the burn from tubing, we are crying & complaining just walking around.














We drove back to Atlanta after our fun tubing trip, cleaned up, and had yummy Indian cuisine for our last meal in ATL. Tuesday: Back to H-town.

Poor hubby. He is on ANOTHER flight today for ANOTHER out-of-town business trip. I think he misses home & wants to be done with flying for awhile.

Anywho, we had a great vacation. I totally recommend a camping/tubing/rafting trip in Tenn to all. It was awesome!

I'll post more camping pics & info later....

Also, see ETK's posts on our trip: Check out "We Survived and We Survived Part Deaux."

Oh, and by the way, the quotes in the title of this post are in reference to what our GOOFY guide kept yelling out when we were going into the rapids. It totally freaked us out at first, but then when he kept doing that, we realized he was saying it on purpose and we then started laughing everytime he did. Then that was joke for the rest of the trip. He was definitely an interesting person & very good guide! He has been doing it since the 1960's. He was full of interesting & colorful stories and jokes....he could fit in with the blue collar comedy guys. Silliness!! "Woolie! " (what he named our group) "Getter Done! Yee-ah!"

Here are more pics:



I added a few more...thanks to ETK & her awesome camera!

Lovin this post!

Gotta love her...

http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/08_16_2007.html

I Must Have a Guardian Angel

I think I must have an angel watching out for me. I just barely made it out of the medical center today. H-town is flooding like crazy, and the med center always gets hit really hard. (Definitely something for me to consider on where I get a jobby-job after graduation.) I was at the VA again hanging out in the OR again watching plastic surgery cases. I was praying in the middle of the surgeries that my car wouldn't float away, or that I get stranded or not be able to make it home. I'm so glad I made it home.

Unfortunately, we are now trying to figure out what to do with the hubby. He had to fly to Mississippi for a day trip this AM, but his afternoon flight has been cancelled. What really makes that frustrating is that we have to be on a plane tomorrow late morning to head to Atlanta. Yikes. Hopefully this will work out some how. And then there is that system Dean that we have to worry about, too, while we are out of town....if we make it out of town. Argh! Well, the hubby is either going to have to come home tomorrow & possible miss the ATL flight & have to take a later one or he'll have to fly straight to ATL if that is possible. Either way, it looks like I am going to have to pack and take all of our stuff with me. EEK! Lord help us.

Well, I had a very good day at the VA today. I only saw two cases in the OR, but they let me do a lot!!!! It was sooo awesome. I FINALLY had an awesome resident take time to teach me how to suture (other than simple laceration suturing that I have already done in the ER) and let me do some suturing on the patient!! Saaa-weet! He also spent a little extra time after the case to teach me how to tie sutures using only your hands and not using suturing instruments. So, the first case was another panniculectomy. See my previous post on what that is. I assisted on one of those during my month in Victoria. This one wasn't nearly as long or as massive. This patient had lost like 100lbs, but the pannus that we had to remove wasn't nearly as large as the previous one I saw. So, they let me help suture abdominal tissue back together. Again, very cool. THEN, the next case consisted of incision, drainage, and debridement of a previous surgery wound on a finger that got severally infected. It was so bad, that we had to scrape out infected bone. This surgeon let me do A LOT! I got to cut out the old sutures, cut out the bad skin, scrape and cut out the infected bone, pack the wound, and help bandage it. We don't suture this back, because that only encourages more infection since it was a dirty wound. The tissue that was taken out gets cultured & the patient is put on antibiotics. Unfortunately, it may be likely that his finger may have to be amputated. They have to wait for the bone cultures to come back & see how the healing goes. At very least, the patient will have to have the finger fused if not taken off. The bone & tendons where so badly affected by the infection, it is highly likely it will come off. bummer.

So, my guardian angel helped me have a fun, educational, and safe day. Hopefully, they'll fly over to Mississippi and help the hubby out!!! HE NEEDS IT!!! We need him to be able to get to ATL tomorrow. :(

All Smokers Should See This!

THIS

Warning! The photos on the site can be disturbing to some.

Um, So Like Where was the Plastic?

Warning! There is mild description of a surgery in this post.

I had a very interesting day at the VA today. I got to hang out with the plastic surgery team with the morning consisting of clinic time & the afternoon in the OR. In the morning I saw a wide variety of patients needing to be evaluated for skin cancers, arterio-venous malformations, abscess incision and drainage, patients needing breast reduction, patients needing breast reconstruction, a broken nose, etc. WOW!!!!

THEN, I got to see a reconstructive surgery in the afternoon. Totally cool! The patient had a large section of tissue removed from his face the day before where there had been a recurrent squamous cell carcinoma. Poor patient!!! So, since the incision was what is known as "full-thickness," they had to take a flap of "full-thickness" skin from his forehead and flap it down next to his nose where the defect was. They then, stretch the forehead skin back together and suture it back & suture the skin flap. The patient will have to return in a few weeks to have it contoured some more, and do the final touches of the surgery. They wait a few weeks to allow the new blood flow to be created in that area. WOW!!!! It was soooo cool!!!

If you can handle the description and pictures, here is a similar procedure. Except, our patient had the skin right next to the nose replaced today.

Tomorrow I will be in the OR all day; no clinic. So, you will probably be hearing more cool stories from me if I have time to post. When I get home, I'll have to pack for the trip....so I may not have time to post right away.

Very cool!

WOW! I am lazy!

OK, not really. But I feel lazy. I slept in until 9! I never do that anymore.

The hubby is out of town right now, so instead of our normal in-bed-by-10, I was up late reading. It was kinda nice. Not that I don't miss my hubby. I do. But sometimes it is nice to have a quiet evening of no TV and just reading a good book.

I am FINALLY finishing The Secret Life of Bees. I am funny with books sometimes. Even if they are super good, it usually takes me a while to finish them. I get distracted at times, you see. ADD!!! How I ever have gotten this far in school, I dunno. ;p

I plan on finishing it today & starting another one. I have a stack I plan to read. Now I just need to figure which one is next. Or maybe I should start reading the Harry Potter books. Any other suggestions? I heard that Middlesex is good. Anyone read it? Any suggestions on the next book to consider?

Ummmm...

Hmm......uhhhhh....mmmm..............

Yup. I got nuthin.

It's flippin a million degrees outside, so don't want to do outdoors stuff.

I was a little productive today: did some chores, worked out, read a little.

Now I'm bored.

Don't feel like studying right now......

Sooooo......

I'm going shopping........

I think it fits me fairly well.

I added the Multiple Intelligences part to my profile.

So it says that I am an: ISTJ, Examiner, Protector, Naturalist, Kinesthetic

The Examiner!

ISTJs are responsible, loyal and hard working. They have an acute sense of right and wrong and work hard at preserving established norms and traditions. Because of their deep sense of duty they are dedicated to everything they do and are very dependable. ISTJs care deeply for those closest to them.

WEIRD!

I don't remember contacting this site about Merlah, but maybe I did some years ago??? My memory is horrible. But we're pretty sure that she is an aussie shepherd mix, more so than a border collie. hmm. So why would I have contacted them? But how else would they have gotten my info???? So, if you type in my maiden name or Merlah into Google pics, Merlah & me come up first....and if you scroll down on that webpage, there is a blurb about her. She does look a lot like a few of those dogs. Aussie Sherherd or Border Collie mix? I dunno. Whatever she is, we love her.

WEIRD!!!!