Panther Attack and Bday Fishing

Katherine and I drove up to Put this weekend to spend a day fishing with Dad for his birthday.  We started the day off with a walk around the property so he could catch us up on everything that has changed since our last visit.  Since it is spring we were doing a walk through the garden so he could show us all the stuff that has been planted for this summer.  I was holding one of their cats, a black one named Panther, as we walked.  While I was distracted listening to Dad's description of all the stuff he and Rob planted, Dad and Julie's new puppy, Thunder, decided to find out what cat tastes like and he latched onto Panther's tail/back legs/butt - I don't really know what he grabbed/bit, all I know is that Panther FREAKED OUT and the next thing I know she is shredding my hand as Thunder tried to tear her away.  When we finally free Panther from Thunder's jaws I look down and realize that one of my fingers is pretty badly cut.

Long story short - I ended up in the local ER getting it cleaned out properly and getting a prescription for a course of antibiotics... not the way we pictured our relaxing day of fishing starting!  We did still manage to make it out to a neighbor's lake for some fishing though:

L to R: Julie, Dad, Paige, Lucy, Rob, Julian

Happy Birthday Dad!!!!

Graduation Week

So close!  Our degrees don't actually confer until August 30th (at which point I will still have to study for and take our national certification exam) but Columbia University held their graduation ceremonies for the entire university this past week.  The School of Nursing coordinates their school-specific ceremony with the big University Commencement ceremony so that our friends/family only need to travel here once.  So I made it! (kind of) Woohoo!

 

  

 

NYSANA visits Niagara Falls

I am currently the student representative to the New York State Association of Nurse Anesthetist's Board of Directors (that is a picture of the 2011-2012 board).  The organization, also known as NYSANA, is the professional organization of CRNAs in New York state (where as the AANA, which I lobbied for in DC, is the professional organization of all CRNAs in the US).  How did I end up in this position?  Last year I volunteered to be the Columbia student representative to NYSANA.  I was told that I would basically just be a point person so that when NYSANA had information pertinent to Columbia SRNAs they would email it to me and I would forward it on to my fellow students.  There are four nurse anesthesia programs in the state of New York (including Columbia), each of these schools has a student representative to NYSANA performing the same duty at their respective program.  Well it turns out that the four of us are also on a rotation to have our student rep act as THE student representative to the NYSANA Board of Directors... and guess which program's turn it was?  It is actually pretty cool to see the inner workings of our professional organization, we have a monthly conference call to discuss what is going on in the world of CRNAs in NY (what are we lobbying for? what are we doing about AAs?).  We also have a fall and spring educational meeting which CRNAs from the state can attend lectures at to receive Continuing Education credits (which they will need a certain number of to maintain their professional licensure).  It is a little intimidating to see how much work goes into this - and we are only one state!  These CRNAs volunteer SO MUCH TIME and energy towards protecting our profession, I am glad that they are willing to do this because it would be far too much to ask of most people (including me!).  A few weekends ago we had our spring educational meeting in Niagara Falls, NY:

Long Island Jewish

Three weeks ago I started my seventh (out of eight!) clinical rotation at Long Island Jewish Medical Center!  Recap: one, two, three, four, five, six.  I am doing a general rotation (I am done with all of my specialty rotations like pediatrics, trauma, OB, etc) which means now I just need to focus on getting enough cases (in total - we need 550 cases to graduate, and in specific categories like extremity surgery - we need to do 50 of these before graduating).  LIJ is a great clinical site because there are no anesthesia residents there (no doctors in training to be anesthesiologists) and there is only one other SRNA so there isn't too much competition for cases.  This means that if there is a cool case or a case I need for my numbers I have a pretty good chance of getting it!  The downside to LIJ is that there is no easy way to get there from my apartment...

LIJ (the "B" label) is really less than 15 miles from my apartment (the "A" label) but, as you can see, there is no direct route.  It takes me about 30 minutes to drive there in the morning and then anywhere from one to two hours to drive home, depending on traffic.  Also when I rented a car for Westchester I was sharing it with another Columbia SRNA and when I needed a car for Danbury I borrowed one from Dad and Julie.  I am the only Columbia SRNA at this site which means I was shelling out about $400 a week to rent a ZipCar Tuesday - Friday.  I did the math and realized that was ridiculous.  Since I was planning to start a car search for after graduation soon anyway I (when I say "I" I mean "Dad" - thanks for all of your help finding the car Dad!) just sped up the process a bit and I am happy to report that I am now the proud owner of a Subaru Outback!

I am loving it! One step closer to graduating an living in the real world!  PS: please disregard my glasses in the ID picture - no, I do not suddenly require glasses.  Many of our clinical sites require us to wear eye protection in the operating room.  I find that the disposable ones they provide are both too big for my face and tend to fog up when I tuck them into my mask (too keep them from falling down) so I decided to go the stylish route and just buy regular glasses and leave the plastic display lenses in! Problem solved!  They pulled me out of the OR to take this picture and it was easier to just leave the gasses on then go through explaining why I was wearing them...

Lobbying in Washington

CRNAs (and SRNAs!) from all over the country descended on DC a couple weekends ago to lobby on behalf of our national professional organization - the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (aka the AANA).  You may remember Chuck and his dad lobbying on behalf of the Connecticut Food Association last year (they went again this year).  It was a crazy experience - I don't think I would ever want to run for an elected office after just one afternoon of lobbying!