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Name: Liz
Gender: Female
Interests: Mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, running
Expertise: Natural resource management
Occupation: Engineering Technician
Industry: Local Government
Message: message me
Member Since:
12/10/2004
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| The Good and the Bad NewsWe'll start with the good news (besides the fact that I have my wedding dress!!). I found out this morning that I passed my EMT-Basic written exam (I passed the practical exam at the end of March)! I am now officially an EMT-Basic. This will be a big help for my volunteering at the fire department (80% of our calls are medical-related).
Now, the bad news, that I mentioned in my previous post. JD shattered his ankle on the Grand Canyon 2 weeks ago!
Here's the jump that caused all the problems:
This is (well, WAS) an extremely popular jumping spot on a small side creek on the Grand Canyon. The cliffs are about a 3 mile hike in, fording the creek several times. Unfortunately, a flash flood last year filled in the creek, so JD landed in about 2 feet of water. Since JD's group was one of the first of the season, no one knew. (It turns out that someone else had done the same thing about 5 days earlier, but there was no way that JD's group could have gotten the news).
To quote JD: "i immediately came up and felt a pop in my ankle and looked down and realized it was dislocated and displaced laterally and rotated about 75 degrees externally. i looked at the group of friends i was rafting with and just said "drugs. helicopter. now." this was about 12.30pm. they helped get me out of the water and after checking and realizing that i wasn't hurt anywhere other than my ankle, i passed out for a few minutes. when i woke up people had already left to go get my big ass first aid kit and materials for making a stretcher. i was covered with whatever spare clothes we had and the two guys left up with me, rob and dirk, did an amazing job of keeping me warm while we waited for everyone else to arrive, even through a couple rain showers where i know they were getting cold themselves. about 3 pm the first guy back from the boats came back with some warm clothes and pain meds. i then started a big enough course of oxycodone that by all accounts should have killed a hippo. as the next few people came in we realized that they had been able to get through to the park
service with the sat phone and after a few tries realized that they wouldn't likely be able to fly this afternoon and either way we would have to start hiking out. we formed a splint out of a sleeping bag, paco pad (big air mattress made out of rafting rubber) and some cam straps, which actually turned out to be pretty damn good. we then rigged a stretcher out of a tarp and some oars and started the long process out. got an iv started but otherwise closed fracture with good circulation, motor, and sensation in the foot, so i was doing relatively ok."
The evacuation was, not surprisingly, pretty difficult. They made it about a mile before deciding to spend the night up the creek. The next morning, the helicopter was able to land in the canyon, about 100 ft from where they had slept.
JD was loaded up, flown to the park south rim, and then 2 different ambulances to get to the Flagstaff hospital, where he finally called me, just over 24 hrs after the whole incident started. I was on my way to a friend's Easter party, and just kept driving straight to the airport, getting in touch with my family to find out what airlines would fly to Flagstaff that day. I made it to the hospital about 8pm, 1.5 hrs after JD was done with his surgery. Luckily I had my gym bag in the car, so I had a few personal items.
Here's the before picture of the dislocated tibia
And the picture after the surgery:
We spent 2 nights at the hospital, and then JD was able to sit & stand long enough to fly back to Portland. My family was great - Julie made the plane arrangements for us, and my parents were kind enough to pay for the tickets. THANK YOU!!
The flight and drive to our house wore JD out, and he's been slowly recovering since then. Last week he got the stitches out and a real cast, and it'll be another 7-10 weeks before he's allowed to start putting weight on his foot.
So I've been working on a lot of "his" projects around the house, such as installing the bamboo flooring, going to the dump, and other fun things like that! He's going stir-crazy already, even with getting out of the house every day this weekend.
JD was actually lucky that his ankle dislocated, or else the damage could have been much worse - shattering both bones, or transferring the energy up to his knee or hip. In the grand scheme of things, I'll take an ankle fracture over the alternatives. (and yes, we've all mentioned what a good thing it is that he didn't dive - he said that he never considered it)
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| Earth Hour, & other thingsTonight was "Earth Hour" - a now annual event when people around the world turn out their lights at 8:30 PM local time for 1 hour. Check out http://www.earthhour.org/home/ for more information. Sorry that I forgot to tell you all in advance.
Anyways, I turned out the lights and computer and lit the candles and wandered around the house for an hour. One thing that I noticed was the number of things that were still lit or running (not including the cats) in our house that were plugged in. I made a quick list and thought that I'd share it with you:
Phones
Answering Machine (yeah, we're still back in the dark ages with a landline and an actual answering machine)
Microwave clock
Wood Stove fan (distributes the heat around the house - I eventually got guilty and turned it off)
Thermostat
Alarm clocks (2)
Fire Department Pager
Roomba
CO Detector (see Mom - I do use it!)
Chicken Coop light (only until 9 PM when it automatically turns off)
Night light in the guest bedroom
Palm Pilot charger
DSL Router
Since this wasn't an actual power outage, I was still able to wash the dishes by candlelight (but the well runs on electricity), and I put on my headlamp to check on the chickens and read the mail (as a side note, my headlamp is screaming pink to keep JD from "borrowing" it and forgetting to return it - he even "borrowed" the headlamp that he gave me as an Xmas present, and now can't find it!). Its amazing how much electricity we use even when we're trying not to use electricity!
Earlier today I headed in towards town for a practice session for my EMT-Basic class. Now I have the following monologue running through my head:
"BSI, Scene Safe, Number of Patients, Nature of Illness..."
I wish that JD was here to help me practice for the test next weekend, but he left on Tuesday for the Grand Canyon. A friend of a friend got a permit through the lottery to go, and JD used his professional raft guide and paramedic certifications to get on (this is basically the trip of a lifetime, although hopefully we'll be able to do it together in a few years). I talked to him on Friday at pretty much the last time that he'll have cell phone reception for the next 21 days. This is the longest that we've been apart since we moved here and he led a backpacking trip in British Columbia while I lived on my friend's floor in Portland. While I'm enjoying the quiet (our roommate moved out on Monday and JD left on Tuesday), its really weird not having him hear and being able to tell him the random day-to-day things.
I also hung out with my friends Nisu and Liane and Rick (and Nisu and Liane's adorable son, Alexander), and picked up a parmesan halibut fillet for tomorrow night with leftovers for lunch on Monday. Yum!
And that's the news here :)
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| Stair ClimbOver the first weekend of March, JD and I headed up to Seattle to compete in the Seattle Firefighters' Stair Climb, along with 4 other people from Hoodland. The event consisted of climbing 69 flights of stairs - 1,311 stairs total in full turnout gear, including being "on air" (i.e. breathing from a tank instead of breathing room air). One of the people from Hoodland was our "bottle changer" - she was on the 40th floor of the tower all day long, and was responsible for changing out our air bottles for us. Thank goodness for her!
Here's our team of climbers. Ron (on the left), who is our Captain, was getting ready to climb when this picture was taken. He was in the 9th battalion, Scott (on the right) was in the 20th battalion, Phil (2nd left) was in the 27th, JD was in the 28th, and I was in the 38th out of 38 battalions (I'm the short one in the middle).
And here's the tower itself!
Waiting around was kind of boring, plus I was fighting a horrible cold and we had gotten up early, so I took a nap on the floor. That's my new Hoodland jacket that I'm using as a blanket - quite reflective!
Here's what the stairs looked like. I became well aquaninted with them!
This is JD standing in line, getting read to climb. We all had to go outside to get ready to enter the building and climb all the way up. I liked the perspective of the picture - I had to lie on the ground to get it.
And JD just before he goes in (as a side note, they need to do more outreach to young children, since when firefighters have all their gear on they look and sound really scary - definitely like monsters!).
Here I am waiting inside. The funny thing about pictures that JD takes is that they make me look even shorter than I am, since he's taking them from so high up!! I feel like an Oompa-Loompa from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
JD tried to get the same picture of me as I did of him, but I think that he kind of missed the idea ;)
And finally, me at the top (JD didn't sit around long enough at the top to get a picture taken). I was just a little sweaty!! There was another picture where you could see my pants, and those were drenched, too. Of course, I did also have the volunteers on the stairs pour water down the front and back of my jacket when I had the chance.
It was a very neat event. I didn't finish as fast as I was hoping - I came in 1317 out of 1385, in a time of 38:09 (so I have some work to do). JD got the best time in our department - 17:06, and came in 210th out of 1385!
We also wandered around Seattle a bit, and found some amazing tea down at Pike's Place Market - its the Market Spice Tea. They had little cups with samples, so of course we took some since we both love tea. We made it about 30 steps outside of the shop before we immediately turned around and bought some. YUM! We also got 2 Dungeness crabs to bring home for dinner (and yes, they threw them to us). Still not as good as MD Blue Crabs, but I'll take it ;)
Very fun weekend, and I'm looking forward to it again next year!
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