Episode 5 with Rich

Here is the 5th episode in season 1 of our little adventure we are on. We had such a wonderful time with Richard when we came to visit us back in Oregon. We did so many things in such a short amount of time that it's great to have this video to remember it all. From Crater Lake, to the Coast, to the Columbia Gorge to watch the Dave Matthews Band...it was definitely a lot of fun. The video was too long to upload as one big video..so that's why it is split into two parts. Hope you enjoy it. Stay Classy.

Mike Weir Wins! What a great day to be a Canadian

So sorry that there hasn't been an update in over 10 days...for some reason we have been a little slow at getting ourselves organized and settled here in Phoenix. However, we have finally taken some pictures of our apartment that I will put up at the bottom of this post....but first things first! Mike Weir won his first tournament in over 3 and a half years and we were there to see it! Not only did we get to watch it happen live but due to a crazy turn of events we ended up at the after party with Mike and his Wife and a bunch of Canadians. Here is how the whole situation happened from the beginning: We were at our friends Stacey and Joey's place for dinner the other night with some kids from their church as well as Ron and Cathy. Stacey and Joey are very good friends with Aaron Baddeley and his wife Richelle. For those of you who don't know, Aaron plays on the PGA tour and has had a really good year. Well, Aaron missed the cut which was pretty disappointing but it meant that Joey and Stacey weren't going to use the passes that Aaron gave to them. So Christine and I jumped at the opportunity to use the passes that Aaron left in order to go watch Mike play since he was playing pretty well. The passes were good for all of the days of the tourney so we went on Saturday to see how Mike did to determine whether we would go back for the final round on Sunday. We had a wonderful (but hot) day on Saturday as we walked all 18 holes with Mike and cheered him on.

It was amazing how many Canadians there were there!! Every conversation we overheard while walking by people was about where they were from in Canada...it was truly amazing. One group of guys that we walked around with had construction hard hats on that were painted in red and white with the maple leaf on them....I will come back to those guys in a bit. So because Mike played so well on Saturday we decided to go back on Sunday to watch the final round. Ron and Cathy also came with us so it was nice to share the experience with them too. So if you follow golf you saw Mike win in Scottsdale yesterday. It was a close match but Mike played very well and ended up beating Mark Hensby by 1 stroke. While Mike was doing his interviews on the 18th green Mr. Pegg and I were waiting down on the walkway hoping to snag a few autographs from him as they get used for charity auctions that Ron is involved with. While we were waiting for Mike, Aaron happened to be standing there waiting to congratulate Mike on the win...so I explained who I was and my connection to Stacey and Joey and I thanked him for the tickets. Mike took a while so Ron and I had a nice visit with Aaron and Richelle and Richelle's cousin....super friendly people and an honour to meet them. Well, Mike eventually made his way down to us (there were maybe 15 or so of us Canadians left) and he signed our stuff and we congratulated him and thanked him for signing. Just when we were getting ready to leave, the guys with the Canadian flag hard hats told us that we were all going to sing "O Canada" to Mike and invited us in to the fancy clubhouse area where women walked around asking us if we wanted champagne. It turns out that Brian Savage (formerly of the Montreal Canadians) was one of the guys with the hard hats that we were walking around with for a few days and he is good friends with Mike (Mike was staying at his house for the weekend).

So before you know it we were swept into this little after party with Mike and his wife and a handful of Canadians that hung around. I couldn't believe what had just happened!!! So we serenaded Mike (he started singing near the end) and then had a great time just talking to all the other Canadians.


It turns out that one of the guys that was hanging around Brian Savage used to play with my friend Chris Neil when Chris played for Grand Rapids....it was a very small world yesterday. I was so excited last night that I could barely fall asleep. When I woke up this morning I had to look at the pictures again just to see if it was all real. So, yesterday has to go down as one of the biggest highlights of our trip so far. Christine and I just had to look at each other and laugh yesterday as we were standing there with Mike Weir as people were sipping champagne....what an awesome day! I'm still in a bit of disbelief. I wondered if there was any way of getting Mike to sign the back of his cheque and then sneak it into our car.

Anyways...it was all amazing...but I will move on from that for now.

We are doing just fine here in Phoenix. Really enjoying our time with Stacey and Joey, and Ron and Cathy. It's so wonderful to have such good friends around while we are so far from home. Christine has only had one shift on her unit so far, but it went fine. She heads in for three night shifts in a row starting on Tuesday night...so we will know more after that. Here are a few snapshots of the inside of our appartment here...we really like it.

Hope this update finds you all well...thanks for reading all about our crazy experiences, we really appreciate it. Stay classy til next time.

Phoenix.

Hello from Phoenix...we made it!

We had a great drive down through California and across to Phoenix...sunny skies and straight roads. One thing that stands out most from our trip is how HUGE the greater Los Angeles area is. We travelled around 70mph the entire time and it took over 2 hours to get from one side of LA to the other...just amazing. The landscape was also pretty interesting as we watched the green hills of Oregon turn into the cactus filled deserts of Arizona. The most amazing sight from our road trip this time was driving so close to Mt. Shasta in California...an amazing thing to see(pics below).

Well, We are settling in to our new apartment and still unpacking some boxes and getting things organized. I'll post some pics of our new place once I take some...but it is very nice, big with good air conditioning! It was 99 degrees here our first day and 96 today....definitely different than what we left behind in Oregon. I think we are in a bit of culture shock still. When we were in Oregon it was easy to forget that we were in the U.S. but now we definitely feel like we are in a different country. Just so many things that are different from the west coast...it'll take some time to get used to.

We had a wonderful lunch today with our friend Stacey and her husband Joey (and daughter Isa). Christine and I haven't been to Phoenix to see Stacey in about 10 years...so we can't say enough about how great it is to be able to see her and her family and just be around some people that we know. We will see them again at church on Sunday.

I'm going to sign off for now because we are about to eat some dinner. We will check in again soon. Here are a few pics from our first "Canadian Thanksgiving" together...yummy.

finally Christine updates!

Happy Thanksgiving!! It is Christine writing today. I know, you are probably shocked! I figured I should probably make at least one entry seeing as we are leaving for our next placement in 2 days!!! The time we have spent here in Eugene has really flown by. It is hard to believe that we have been here for almost 3 months! It has been a wonderful 3 months though, and we both feel that Eugene was the perfect place to start our travel journey in. Shawn has done a wonderful job at keeping you posted on our road trips and sight seeing adventures...so I thought I would talk a little about the hospital that I have worked in and the experience that I have had.

So here we go...

A bit of info about the hospital: For the past 2 1/2 months I have been working at Sacred Heart Medical Center. It is the largest hospital between Portland and San Francisco (432 beds) and the only Level II trauma center in Lane County. The hospital is know for its 32-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Oregon Heart & Vascular Institute. I was hired to work in their pediatric unit with the ability to float to the NICU.

I started with two days of general hospital orientation and computer training, which was rather boring on the whole...but the computer training was ESSENTIAL!! This hospital does EVERYTHING on the computer! Which, to be honest, towards the end of the placement I grew to like....but in the beginning it was a little frightening. For those nurses who are reading, or just for general interest, here are the things that were done on the computer: documentation, nursing kardex, lab work, ALL order entry, medication records, image viewing (diagnostic tests), all physician's history's & physicals, any consult by any other discipline and many more things. The only units that still do paper charting is the ICU and NICU. So when I worked in pediatrics I would not write anything on a piece of paper all day long!! Now, I came from a hospital that was pretty advanced with computers but this was still quite different for me. There is something about not actually signing off on your physician's orders with ink that freaked me out a little bit....but I adjusted.

So after those 2 days I received 2 days of orientation on the unit. I was paired up with another nurse, basically got a tour of the unit and then jumped right in! On my first day we had probably the sickest child on the unit...of course!! She was a post-op patient and had an epidural catheter with Fentanyl infusing for pain management. Working for the past 2 years with neonates...I have never had a patient with an epidural or fentanyl. But once I had a brief overview of the machine that delivered the pain medicine I was ok. On the unit in which I worked the patient to nurse ratio was 3:1...so it is quite nice...but that day pretty much all of my time was taken up by the computer charting!! There were a few moments throughout the day that I thought to myself "what am I doing here?"...mainly those moments came when I was trying to navigate my way around the unit trying to find essential equipment, or when I was trying to figure out how to use the PYXIS machine(it electronically distributes medication), or when I would answer the phone and have NO CLUE how to help the person on the other end because I didn't even know anybodys names!! However, at the end of the day the computer charting did not get the best of me and I walked out the door feeling good about how things went...knowing that it was going to be ok!

Each day got easier and I couldn't have asked for better staff to work with. When we decided to come to the U.S one thing that I was worried about was how the staff would treat me...as an outsider coming into their unit. But I can truly say that the staff were amazingly welcoming, friendly and helpful. Not one person ever hesitated to answer my questions or point me in the right direction when I couldn't find something that I was looking for. They made me feel right at ease, and after one week I felt like I had been there for months. I am convinced the friendliness stems from the fact that Eugene is a smaller city with very down-to-earth people. I have a feeling it would be quite different if I was working in downtown L.A.

I worked a couple of shifts in pediatrics and then a decrease in pediatric patients allowed me to spend some time in the NICU. Ahhhhh...it was great to be back with the babies!!! It was so comforting to me...and it was a very easy adjustment. And the good thing was that I was back to paper charting...YEAH!!! The NICU at this hospital is a level 3 NICU. NICU's are broken down into three levels. Level 1-very stable babies requiring minimal interventions. Level 2- more complicated and acutely ill babies, sometimes requiring respiratory support. Level 3-very acutely ill babies and micro-preemies (ex.24 week gestation babies), requiring ventilators to breath. Now, in saying this...NICU's can be labeled a "level 3"...and not always have those types of babies...it simply means they are capable of caring for those types of babies. So, this hospital was a level 3, however functioned between a level 2 & 3...so I fit in well as the unit I worked in at North York was a level 2 advanced. Ok, so hopefully I haven't confused everyone! Overall I really enjoyed working in this unit. Many people have asked me over the past couple of years what I enjoyed more, pediatrics or NICU...and by being able to work both once again, I have realized that even though I enjoy interacting with the kids, my heart is really in the NICU. I love those babies...they are amazing fighters and you get to build wonderful relationships with their families. The best thing of all is that I see the beauty of God's creation in its purest form everyday that I am at work...not too bad eh?

ok...wow...this is a VERY long blog! If you made it this far...thanks for hanging in!

The remainder of my shifts at Sacred Heart were split about 3/4 in the NICU and 1/4 in pediatrics. Overall my experience was great!! I worked my last shift on Friday, and it was weird to walk out the hospital doors for the last time. I will more than likely never see any of the people that I have just worked with ever again...and it feels so strange! But that is how this travel nursing works....on to the next place! We are really excited to start in Phoenix and I am even more excited to be back working in a level 2 NICU full time. It should be a great placement.

Well, I think I am going to end this post...but I will write again soon! I still want to talk about some differences I have come across between working here compared to back home...but my fingers are starting to hurt from typing so much (haha).

I hope that you are having a fabulous thanksgiving weekend...we think about you all often! Thanks for all of your support :) And as Shawn says...."stay classy"

Hockey Night in Canada....I mean Oregon!

So you can watch Hockey games over the internet these days. It usually costs quite a bit of money for the season but they are doing a free preview for the first week of the season...which means that we have been able to watch the back-to-back Sens/Leafs games to open the new season. I can't tell you how great it is to watch CBC and see some Canadian content...even to see people in the crowd drinking Tim Horton's is enough to make our bodies ache for home. However, it is a bit strange being on the west coast because the games are over before we even eat dinner....it's actually kinda nice. Anyways, we were just so excited to be able to watch the Sens that I had to blog about it. Here is a video of me watching the introductions of the game in Ottawa. Seeing my friend Chris playing on CBC makes home not feel so far away. Go Sens!

Episode 4

Vancouver, White Rock, Portland, Astoria, Seaside, Ecola State Park, Cannon Beach.