Factoid #1495

Recent reseach has shown that playing your music real loud in your car with the windows down DOESN'T, in actuality, make you cool.

Invite to Joost

Can anyone send me an invitiation to Joost? It looks great and I'd like to test out the Beta version, but I need an invite to Joost to be able to test it out. Can anyone help me with this? You can email it to arizonadb2005@yahoo.com.

Thanks guys!

Cars...Who needs 'em? Unfortunately, I do!

Well, I think my car is finally starting to die. It only has about 115,000 miles on it, but about 45,000 of those have been put on in the last 8 months. I guess it has held up for me pretty well up to this point, but I was hoping it would last until I was done with school and actually had a job and could afford to buy a nice new one.

I'm trying to figure out a time I can get it into the shop without severely restricting my mobility for clinicals. I have to drive about 65 miles to clinicals each day and 150 miles to class in Phx on Mondays, so I rely on it a lot.

The place I take it to here in Flagstaff is one of the few places that don't screw you, so needless to say they are usually pretty busy. Which means I have to call ahead of time and make an appointment to get in. Crazy huh? Anyway, the logistics of it are a real pain in my arse, and I always dread trying to get my car in when its most convenient for my wife and I.

Anyway, that's what's going on with me. On a radiography note, I have been on the other side of the hospital all this week in the Out-patient dept, which has been a nice change. It gives me a break from all the stupid drama of the in-patient rad dept. Tomorrow I hope to get a chance to work in CT for a few hours. The CT tech who works on Fridays is a great teacher, not to mention a cool guy and he usually doesn't mind explaining things to me and taking the time to teach. We'll see how it goes. Fridays are usually especiallly busy in CT, so I better start lacing up my running shoes now. Have a great Friday everyone.

Changes

You may have noticed the new title and banner for my blog. I have changed the title from Desert Imaging to Mountain Imaging, since I'm not down in Phoenix any more. The banner photo is of the San Francisco peaks which is a small mountain range just north of Flagstaff, Arizona, which is where I live, will be doing my last clinical rotation and hopefully get a job once I'm done with school.

Anyway, I hope you like the new look.

Clinical Challenges

You would think that the hardest and most challenging part of a clinical experience would be learning new skills, interacting with patients and following hospital policy. But, as it turns out at least for me, the most challenging part is getting along with my coworkers.

All modesty aside, I would say that I'm a pretty smart person and can acquire new skills rather quickly if given the chance, and so the "skills" part of clinicals has not been especially challenging for me. And in general I almost always develop a good rapport with my patients, assuming of course, that they are not delirious or unconscious or something. But, for the first time in my life, I am having a hard time getting along with my coworkers.

I have been told that radiography generally attracts people with strong personalities, but it seems that my clinical site has taken that theme and run with it. I am, at least in my opinion, a pretty amiable person; I like to go with the flow and can make friends quickly, but I have had the hardest time fitting in with the other techs at my site. I try not to take it personally and tell myself it's because I'm a student and at the bottom of the heirarchy that no one asks my opinion or listens to my suggestions, but that will only take you so far, you know. Maybe I'm being too sensitive, maybe I should suck it up and stop caring what people think about me. This idea is all good in theory, but putting it into practice is another story.

I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. I will be leaving that hospital in a few weeks and never plan to return to it, but at the same time I do value peoples opinions of me and find it hard not to be taken seriously. I really hope, though, that it just happens to be this group of people and that at my next site and eventually where I work will have a more supportive, positive atmosphere. I guess in a few weeks, I'll find out.

Anyway, I'd like to hear from some other x-ray tech students or techs out there who have also had this problem. How did you get around it? All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Plateau

January 3rd! I can't believe it's been since January 3rd that I have updated this blog. What a slacker I have become. But I have an excuse. 850 miles and 16 hours in the car a week, PLUS 32 hours at clinicals and 4 hours a class really cuts into your blogging time, you know. But alas that is no excuse to neglect my readers.......if I even have any left.

The last couple months have been rather "blah" for me. I guess I had hit a slump. I had kind of plateaued in my learning. I had learned enough to get by and, for whatever reason, I stopped challenging myself, stopped stepping out of my comfort zone. Call it the Winter Lazies. Anyway, Spring has sprung here in northern Arizona and I have begun to take a more proactive stance at clinicals.

During the last few months things had not been going well for me at my clinical site. My Clinical Instructor (CI) dumped me in February, so I had to scramble to find a new one to take me on, with no help from my school. Several people left the department whose positions had to be filled by some rather surly travel techs. And I had gotten pretty fed up with spending a good chunk of my day stuck in the car.

But luckily things have turned around. I have a new CI who is a great teacher and very patient with my questions and problems. I had worked with her before and was very glad that she agreed to be my new CI. Some of the travelers have left and the ones who have stayed I have started to get along with a little better. And I finally found out where I will be for my next clinical rotation and I was fortunate enough to get my first choice. It's a hospital in the town I live in and my 75 minute commute will turn into a 7 minute commute in approximately 36 days and 15 hours........not that I'm counting or anything. So, in a nutshell, things are starting to lookup.

I have to admit that I have gained a good base of knowledge at this first clinical site, but I am ready to move on and work with some new people and experience new challenges. My next clinical site will offer a lot more in the way of trauma imaging and OR experience, two of my more weak areas, so it will be good for the "learning process". I hope to update this blog more frequently in the next couple months, too, so check back often.

I hope everyone else who reads this blog is doing well in their classes/clinicals/jobs and please feel free to leave questions, comments or suggestions.

Good luck and be safe out there!

The Young Couple

They came into the ED early in the morning. Before most of us have had our first cup of coffee. Their SUV had traveled at least 500 yards off the freeway by the EMT's estimate, rolling countless times. Neither had been thrown from the vehicle, although no one knew how, since the couple reported that seat belts were a distant afterthought for them. 22 and 23 years old, too young to spend a sunny January morning being extricated from a severely crippled automobile.

"I don't know how it happened," she told me. A typical response after a violent car accident. It usually takes time to process what happened. The EMTs and firefights who brought them in had some idea of what caused the crash. "See that bruising on her mid-thigh," an EMT said to me, "that's not from her seatbelt, that's from her jeans. They were halfway down when we found them in the car." "Seriously!?" I replied. "Yup, and her boyfriend here either forgot to get dressed before he left the house this morning, or some serious hanky-panky was going on in that SUV when they lost control, because he was totally naked when we arrived on-scene."

I tried to control my laughter, but it was a losing battle. Just moments before I had felt the unfairness of the situation; a young couple injured in a terrible auto accident. But as the real reason for the crash sunk in, the humor of the situation hit me and I had to leave the room so that the patients didn't see me laughing. Had their injuries been more severe, I would have felt guilty about my laughing at their situation. Inexplicably they sustained only minor cuts and abrasions, but left the hospital that day with severe bruising to their egos.

Top 10 Reasons to Date an X-ray Tech

1. We do our best work in the dark

2. We can see through your clothes

3. We know all the positions

4. We are well developed

5. The chemistry is always right

6. We know what buttons to push

7. We have all the right techniques

8. We know how to warm up a tube

9. We know how to get the best penetration

10. When you need it now, we make it wet.

Thanks to Kristen from Kristen's Chronicles for the list.

New Rad Links

Hi Folks! I've recently been alerted to some really useful websites relating to radiography and radiology. Links to these sites are below and have also been added to the side bar.




Radiology Ramblings

Dave's Places in Radiology

Dave's Radiology Student's Page

Please take a minute to check these sites out. They have tons of useful information for Rad Techs, Rad Tech students and Rad Tech students-to-be!

Happy TG

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday weekend with friends and family. Eat some extra turkey and cranberries for me! :-)

Office Politics

Office Politics! Man, I hate that sh!t! Even though we don't work in an office, per se, the politics are there, none the less.

Generally, I try to stay out of office politics. People playing each other off each other, mini vendettas, gossip, grudges; they all seem to get in the way of actually working and doing a good job, but always seem to worm their way in anyway.

Since I've been at clinicals for almost 3 months now at 32 hours per week, people are starting to see me as a coworker rather than a lowly student. So as a consequence, I'm starting to get included in conversations about how so-and-so is a lazy worker and should be fired or how such-and-such is her fault. I prefer to work in a team-oriented atmosphere and I'm starting to realize that that idea might be a little naive, at least at my clinical site.

For the most part everyone puts on a happy face and works efficiently together, if not completely amicably. But once a person leaves the group, they usually start talking about him or her and how they would have done such-and-such differently. I quietly listen and keep my mouth shut. People have a right to vent, but when things get personal thats when I draw the line. I am not there to bad mouth people or talk about how the director sucks, I am there to learn and be taught so I stay as far away from the gossip circle as possible.

The thing that really bothers me is that they usually talk bad about a person who is just having a bad day or even someone who has screwed up just once and had to repeat an exam. So that starts me thinking, "My god, I repeat stuff all the time. What must they say about me, the idiot newbie student." But at the same time I tell myself "Hey I'm allowed to screw up from time to time. Thats why I'm here, to learn. Even if that means learning from my mistakes." So in short, I try not to include myself when the group starts gossiping, and just hope that whatever goes around about me is minimal in its personal attacks on my character. What else can I do, right?

Retirement Plans

Rumsfeld's plans for retirement.

Café

If you're a coffee-aholic like I am, these cartoons will brighten your day. If not, you still might like 'em! :-)

Coffee Cartoons

Change of Color

The fall colors are just about at their peak right now in Flagstaff and the city and mountain are gorgeous.

Because of our local climate (i.e. high elevation and very little precipitation), there are very few deciduous type trees that thrive here. Pondarosa pine is the most common type of tree, but the next most common is the aspen.

I love aspens. Not only are they very aesthetically pleasing (at least in my opinion), they also make a wonderful quaking sound when the wind rustles the leaves. Hence the name "quaking aspen", I guess. In the fall, the green leaves turn to a bright yellow color that, as the fall light filters through them, fills the forest floor with a warm, buttery light that keeps you warm even when the air is cool.

Unfortunately it won't be long until the wind and snows come, knocking the foliage to the forest floor. Luckily, we took a hike last weekend and were able to get some great pictures of the leaves. So I'll shut up now and post some pretty pictures. I hope you enjoy them.

Wet Roads, Traumas Arrive

I saw and participated in one of my first major traumas today. It was not a very uplifting experience.

The hospital I'm at for my clinicals is pretty small and most major traumas are automatically sent to Flagstaff or Phoenix since both cities have hospitals that are rated Trauma 1. But today they sent us one for reasons unknown to me.

It was an 18 year old man who had been in an MVA. The poor kid had hydroplaned on some wet asphalt slid off the road and was ejected from the car. He had head, neck and abdominal trauma and was in pretty bad shape. They called us for a stat portable chest and pelvis x-ray and would later do a CT scan of the head and neck areas.

It was amazing to watch the docs and nurses swarm around him, all of them doing their jobs with infinite efficiency. I attempted to do my part, namely x-raying the patient's chest and pelvis, in as timely manner as possible.

Upon visual inspection it was clear the kid was in pretty bad shape and once we got the CT scan there was no denying his condition. The head trauma he had sustained had caused a massive bleed in his brain and he was more than likely brain dead already.

At this point they transfered him to Flagstaff since my hospital doesn't have a very advanced neurology dept. The news of his condition hit me harder than I would have expected. I thought about how his family's life would be forever changed by the events of that day. I did my best to continue on during the day, x-raying patients and keeping a cheery demeanor with them. But I kept thinking about when the doctor would finally have to break the news to the kid's family that he was almost certainly brain dead and would most likely not survive for many more hours. How would I react if I were given the same news about my brother, mother or wife? There is no way to know how one will react until one is put into that situation and with any luck I will never have to find out how I would respond.