A Brief Update!

So we still don't have the internet! The other house in L.A. does, so I am taking advantage of it while I am here. I really need to be working on my student loan deferment so this is going to be brief:

Retreat: The retreat was a lot of fun. I met the other 19 volunteers. We are spilt into four houses in three cities. 12 of us are in LA-6 in each house. Our house is called the Miraculous Medal house. The other house is the Boyle Heights hosue. We spent a great deal of time eating, bonding and learning the basics of the program.

House: I love my housemates! They're totally great. They are from CA, WA, NY OH and Holly from MN. We have family dinner nights and it's great!

Traffic: Sucks. When 6 lanes are moving on average of 20 mph and is slowing down and speeding up with a lot of merging...noboby is happy.

Work: It took a week longer because of poor communication. I could elaborate, but it is horribly frustrating. We have started our first week-it is very different and is too early to tell just how it is going to be.

We are having plenty of fun and are super busy. There are plenty of stressors, but things are going great overall! Hopefully the next update will come off my own internet!!

Final Days in MN

While I had this last week here in MN planned out, I find a lot more popping up. I am incredibly swamped in every way. My desk is covered in papers and letters, clothes are scattered all over the place-it is wild. Even my e-mail account is ridiculous despite a very recent clean up.

I am saying my last farewells; it is challenging. I am very exciting for this upcoming week. We will be at a retreat and so I am not sure about my internet access. We will be given time to journal-I will use word documents for the days and then upload them here once I find internet access. Hopefully I can get pictures to go with it!

Public Account

Greetings All!

In my experiences (prior to have a google account) I wanted to post on others' blogs, but didn't want to make the account; therefore, I have created an account just for posting here!

Username: amos.guest
Password: password2010

If you forget, the password is in the security question (Clever, eh)

If you use this to post, please sign your name unless you have some wild desire to stay anonymous.

8th Floor SFMC

After a great last day at Pelican Valley, which included a very nice surprise get-together (with ice cream cake), I got my CA license in the mail! Shortly thereafter, I had a brief phone conversation with my nurse manager, Beverly. She had a chance to look at my resume today and was impressed and we were able to talk about some of my experiences (sweet!) She informed me that volunteers do 3 12-hour shifts per week and VSC prefers we work day shifts (NICE! Never going to get that again!)

She told me about the 8th floor. It is a 36 bed floor for Adult Surgical/Trauma patients. It is a level 1 trauma center, but they only stabilize Peds. The RN to Patient Ratio is typically 1:5 (Yowza). They do not take vents. They are switching to E-Charting and they just implemented a new computer system to look up research articles and Evidence-Based practice.

My very good friend, fellow VSC West volunteer and RN Holly Thompson will also be on that floor; however, Beverly said she is going to see if one of us can be placed on the 7th floor. She told me about it briefly. It is a telemetry unit that does take vents and oncology. Kind of a wild mix, but awesome. Both floors sound good-personally I'd prefer the 7th floor, but will be very happy and will learn a ton on either floor.

One week and I fly out. I have a lot to do to prepare.