True Confessions of a Somewhat New Blogger

Alright, alright, I must admit that I love this blog world. As my husband can attest, (and I may as well admit since these are in fact "true confessions") I get almost giddy about things associated with my, well alright, OUR blog (eventhough it really is mine). Not in a I'm going to take the time to decorate my blog with clever borders and headings way, because, as many of you know all too well, I stink at decorating of all sorts. Once, I was asked to be on the decorating committee for an Enrichment activity. It was not a pretty site. Trust me.

No indeed, decorating my blog is not something I have found excitement in (yet anyways...I may have to start because my blog is constantly being put to shame by all you clever and creative blog decorators). Instead, I get giddy when I come up with a new post idea. I sit there brainstorming in my head for days and occasionally Derek can catch me laughing to myself and he'll ask what I'm laughing about. I just say, "I was thinking of a really great blog post." He shakes his head in amazement at my dorkiness, and I continue brainstorming in my head.

I get giddy when I finally do post that great blog idea I've been brainstorming about and all of you write comments. I once described to Derek how I feel when I am clicking on the link to my blog shortly after posting something new. Honestly, as I am scrolling down to see what kind of comments you guys have left, it is a somewhat similar feeling to the night before your first day of school. My stomach gets butterflies and the end of that post with the all to familiar link to the comments page cannot appear soon enough. I think, when I admitted this to Derek, he questioned whether in some part of this eternity that he has agreed to with me he would ever be less embarrassed by my oddness.

I find it all quite funny actually. Before I finally broke down and started a blog of my own, I had many friends tell me that I needed to join the world of blogging. I always tossed it aside as something too juvenile for me. "What is blogging?" I would ask. "Is that something like MySpace?" All I knew about MySpace was that it was something my younger sister and all her friends were into. And, it didn't seem like something I wanted to be part of. I was more grown-up than that.

As many of you also may know, I am terrible at keeping in touch. I long to have long-lasting friendships, but yet I struggle to keep in touch. For example, take the Christmas card thing. It sounds like such a novel idea, a great way to let everyone know that you still exsist even though you've moved to Oregon and sacrificed your life to PA school. However, I can't seem to put together a Christmas card. Maybe some year. One year I will send Christmas cards and you will all be shocked and amazed. I was joking with someone the other day that sending out a Christmas card might be too big of a starting goal for me. Christmas is a busy time of year afterall with all the shopping and traveling to visit family and such. It may be smarter for me to send September cards. Nothing happens in September. I could more likely handle September cards.

I have never been great at emailing. It's should be so easy. People even email me. All I would have to do is hit reply and type a few sentences, but that can sometimes be a very daunting task for me. How much do I tell them? What should I not tell them? How does it look to someone if they email you and you email them back that very same day? I always figure the person thinks geez, "Chelsea must have nothing to do but sit around and wait for my emails so she can email me back." Like I'm all too eager and starving for an email or something. But, if I don't email right away, that person's email gets lost in the world of my inbox, and I totally forget to write back. This is what usually happens. Plus, writing to multiple people I start to feel like I am repeating my life over and over. I get to the point where I have memorized the most recent life events in fable form that I just repeat quickly over and over for anyone who asks what I've been up to. It reminds me of those "tall tales" that get passed down from generation to generation only I pass them down from friend to friend to family member and so on. Each time I tell it, it gets stretched just a little more to make it more and more entertaining probably more so for myself than anyone else.

Anyways, when I began this year of my clinical rotations, I finally decided I should try out this "blog" thing. People were always asking me to tell them about intersting things I came across in the clinic, and frankly, I got tired of telling the same stories over and over again. Lexie found me the cartoon I posted above. She said it totally reminded her of me and my blog. And it made me realize how much I love this blog. I love that I can post what I've been up to and let everyone who cares to know all at once. I have almost entirely cut out emails (Thank goodness!) Although, as I confessed earlier, I wasn't very good at writing emails before anyways. Plus, I get to keep in touch with all my friends who have blogs as well. I feel like I totally know what is going on in so many of your lives, and I love it! I know without the blog world that really would not be possible. I just couldn't keep up with that many people (I am incapable as I discussed earlier). Anyways, I know Thanksgiving is long gone, but today I am grateful for the blog world and the way it saves me from guilt by not being able to keep in touch with all of you and the way it keeps me out of the habbit of telling tall tales (well, sort of).

A Weekend Away From the ER

The picture at the left is called Before the Shot and it was done by Norman Rockwell. I love this picture and think it is absolutely hillarious. I love looking at the little boy with his drawers down making sure the doctor is indeed a certified doctor before he pokes him in the butt with a long sharp needle. In fact, I love all of Norman Rockwell's paintings. This weekend Lexie and I drove up to Akron Ohio to the Akron art museum to see the Norman Rockwell exhibit. It was awesome. They had a full collection of the Saturday Morning Post magazines that he had painted covers for and a bunch of original paintings as well. I just think he is so clever. You can look at a painting he's done over and over and always see something else that he put in there that you had never noticed before. Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to see all the Post pictures that he painted throughout his years working for them.

After the art museum, Lexie and I had dinner at this awesome diner. It was inside an old boxcar train. The tables were set up right inside the train and you could walk from boxcar to boxcar. We sat in a boxcar that had a cabnet with a pull down sink and pull down toilet. It was a fun atmosphere to eat dinner in. Well, maybe not the pull down toilet part now that I think of it, but it was still hillarious none the less. The toilet and sink are folded up inside that cabnet underneath the mirror at the left.
Then, we drove up to Kirtland and spent Saturday seeing church sites. Here is a picture of the Kirtland temple. It was really neat to see. It is owned by the RLDS church which is now known as the Community of Christ church, and they give the tours. So, they don't say too much about all the amazing occurances we believe took place in this awesome building, but it was still neat to go inside. And, they wouldn't let me take any pictures inside, so this is the best you get. I put myself in the picture so you can see how teeny I look compared to the huge building.
And this was the sticker I was given to wear after I paid my $2 Kirtland temple tour fee.
After the temple, we went down the to the LDS visitors center in Kirtland. On site there, they let you watch a neat video about Kirtland. Then, we had two very nice sister missionaries give us a tour of Newel K. Whitney's home, his store, and a few others things. The main story of Kirtland is that Sidney Rigdon was a Baptist minister in town there. From his studies, he firmly believed that many of the simple truths of the gospel that was set up at the time of christ had been lost. He believed that there needed to be a restoration of that gospel. Newel K. Whitney was a member of his congregation. Anyways, when missionaries came to the town of Kirtland proclaiming that they were there to teach the people about Joseph Smith who had been called as a prophet of the Lord to restore the true gospel of Christ to the earth, his whole congregation was all ears and most of them were soon baptised including Newel K. Whitney and his family. However, after the missionaries left over a hundred new converts, people started to get a little unsure of how to go about living this new gospel. So, Newel K. Whitney prayed that Joseph Smith would come to Kirtland to clear up the confusion. Joseph Smith saw a vision of Newel K. Whitney praying and decided to take off to Kirtland to see how he could help. He arrived in Kirtland, pulled up to Newel K. Whitney's store, walked in and immediately recongnized Newel K. Whitney as the man from his vision. He said, "Newel K. Whitney! Thou art the man!" Then Newel responded, "You have the advantage of me, I could not call you by name as you have me." Joseph said, "I am Joseph the Prophet. You’ve prayed me here, now what do you want of me?" Pretty cool huh? Anyways, here is a picture of Lexie and I standing of the front porch of the Whitney home where Joseph stayed for a while after he first arrived in Kirtland.
Next, is a picture of Lexie and I behind the counters of the Newel K. Whitney store. This was my favorite part of our weekend in Kirtland. The missionaries took us upstairs to the room in the store where they had held the School of the Prophets. This was where Joseph received the revelation of the Word of Wisdom as well as 16 other revelations. We sat there in this room and one sister missionary read us the following account that had taken place during one of the meetings of the School of the Prophets. It's from John Murdock and he remembers the following,“In one of these meetings the prophet told us if we could humble ourselves before God, and exercise strong faith, we should see the face of the Lord. And about midday the visions of my mind were opened, and the eyes of my understanding were enlightened, and I saw the form of a man, most lovely, the visage of his face was sound and fair as the sun. His hair a bright silver grey, curled in most majestic form, His eyes a keen penetrating blue, and the skin of his neck a most beautiful white and he was covered from the neck to the feet with a loose garment, pure white, whiter than any garment I have ever before seen. His countenance was most penetrating, and yet most lovely. And while I was endeavoring to comprehend the whole personage from head to feet it slipped from me, and the vision was closed up. But it left on my mind the impression of love, for months, that I never felt before to that degree.” Anyways, there in that room, above Newel K. Whitney's general store, I had the overwhelming feeling that my Savior loved me too, and I was so greatful to that sister missionary for sharing that account with us in the very room that it had occured so many years before.
So, now I'm back in the ER again. I had my first code. Well, it was sort of a code in the sense that I was doing chest compressions and pushing epinephrine through this guy's IV. But, I think this guy was long gone before he got to the ER. By the time he got here, there wasn't much we could do for him.

And, in other hospital news...I had my first real MI (heart attack) walk through the door. We've had loads and loads of people come in complaining of "chest pain," but this was the first guy who was real. And, he had the ST elevation on his EKG to prove it! But, we acted quickly to get some "clot busters" in him and prepared him for a life-flight up to Columbus. Luckily, by the time he had arrived in Columbus, our meds had worked, and he didn't need to be taken to the cath lab. So, he lived! As opposed to the other guy I told you about which is always nice.