Harvest

I was talking to one of our charge nurses earlier this week about how we get organs for our patients and how difficult it is to coordinate a "harvest" (that is what they call it when they take the organ out of the donor) because of all the people and all the steps involved and how you only have so many hours between taking a heart out of a donor and getting it into a recipient. She said that I should go watch one sometime, but then we talked about how hard that is to plan because you never really know when (or where) and organ is going to become available. I worked the day shift on Monday and then met up with dad and Julie (who are in town for New Years) for dinner. We were about halfway done when I got a call from our transplant fellow, Dave, asking if I wanted to come with him to harvest a heart in Reno that night! Who cares about sleep! I met him and a med student (Saba) at UCLA at 11:45pm where a limo picked us up to take us to a private jet. Apparently someone did the math and figured out it was cheaper (and more comfortable) for us to ride in a limo than an ambulance :) We then flew to Reno (about an hour) where another limo was waiting to take us to the donor hospital. We arrived around 2:00am, waited for the other surgical teams to arrive (who were coming in from all over the eastern US to harvest the other organs) and then began the surgery around 2:30am. We reversed our path and were back to LA around 6:30am. I opted out of watching the implant since I had been up for about 24 hours at this point and instead headed out to meet dad and Julie for breakfast... it was an AMAZING night!

Christmas Feast

The Thanksgiving Orphaned Feast was such a hit that we went ahead and had another one! Those of us who won't be able to make it home to our own families for the holidays (we are "orphans") got together to eat, drink and be merry... there are a couple new faces in the crowd, mostly they are people who were off for Thanksgiving (so they went home) but will be working Christmas (so now they are here):

Top Row L to R: Marissa, Kayla, Ashely, Kim, Paige

Bottom Row L to R: AP, Lilly, Duncan, Lyndsie, Lee, Omkar, Mike

The Nutcracker

Yes, we experienced the magic... but more importantly, we experienced the Rat King in the lobby afterwards.

L to R: Rat King, Paige

L to R: Jocelyn, Paige, Kris

Motorcycle Class

Kayla and I have been living in The 1606 for almost a year now which means that our lease is almost up! Over the course of this year we have discovered that while our current apartment is convenient when it comes to commuting to work, there are far cooler places to live in Los Angeles. With this in mind we are starting the apartment hunt down by the beach. The only problem is that if we do end up moving, it will mean a minimum hour-long commute to (or from) work, depending on what shift I am working. It is not like we are planning on moving that far from where we are now, it is just that LA traffic is ridiculous. Where else is traffic/congestion this bad? Europe. What do they do there? Ride scooters. Now hold on mom, I know you don't want me to get flattened like a bug so I am thoroughly researching my options (which still include my car) but just incase I decide to go the two wheel route I signed up for a Basic Rider Course at the Westside Motorcycle Academy this weekend... it is harder than I thought it would be but also about a million times more awesome than I had imagined. For anyone who is wondering, 'over the ankle shoes' were required and my knee high boots are the only shoes I own in that category (they were a hit with the other students).

Christmas Ornaments

The Frasers

Laura posted about her engagement...

This is the CTICU

I posted this video back in March right before I started officially working on the floor. I can't believe it has been eight months! I am reaching the point where I have learned enough to know just how much there is that I don't know... the studying continues :) Since starting on the unit I have joined our Spirit and Enrichment Committee. We have planned a Christmas party for tomorrow night and I volunteered to make this year's slideshow - I hope you like it! Over the course of the year we moved into a brand new (earthquake proof) hospital (the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA), that is what you are seeing at the beginning of the video - our "old" unit (in the other hospital) was called the 4 East ICU (4EICU).