Meatballs in the Morning

Has it only been 11 days since we got back from Bonaire? It seems like months ago. But, we're on to new and exciting things in the Glassman household.

John Glassman hit a big milestone last week--the big 6-0! We joined the family for a celebration that we hoped would be made sweeter by a Seahawks victory. Alas, we had to console ourselves with cake and ice cream. I'll blame my lack of good snapshots from the fun day together on our mourning the playoff loss...

Tom is settling in at the 9th circuit court in Judge Tallman's chambers and making great strides on some projects. Did he tell you by the way that the clerks are composed of a navy seal and 4 intelligent women that the security guards have dubbed "Tallman's angels"? It's like he should be on a sitcom or something.

This week he also got a special experience by being involved in an active shooter training drill. His office (I guess you'd say court) building is shared with the FBI so there's always intense security to get in. But this week, they were training FBI agents, local police, and building security on what to do if there were a shooter in the house. I will say, I am quite pleased that I was NOT there for the training, it was all too realistic. They had four volunteers from his office (I'll give you one guess which of those five co-workers was first to volunteer **cough** navy seal **cough**) to be the shooters. So they paraded around the office with a gun loaded with blanks while the rest of the crew tried to hold down the fort.

Tom's assigned job was to barricade the doors to the justice's chamber to keep the shooter out. Well, it turns out he did such a good job barricading them that not only was the "shooter" unable to enter, neither was the FBI! They actually had to announce over the intercom "Can the members of Judge Tallman's chambers please un-barricade the doors." So, Tom exits to un-barricade the doors and all of a sudden he's asked to "STOP! PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR" by a whole crew of fully suited up (and armed), FBI agents with guns pointed at him. I imagine it looked something like this:

His being in the hallway was not part of the script, so they had to presume that he was the suspect shooter. They proceeded to ask a security officer if they recognized Tom. Being that Tom has only been working for a week and a half, the security officer said "no". So, Tom ended up being asked to walk backwards down the hallway towards them with his hands behind his back and get hand-cuffed! He remained in cuffs

 until the drill was over and then all the FBI agents started packing up to leave. If it wasn't for judge Tallman's exiting words, he may never have been released: "Uh, can someone un-cuff my extern please?" Not your typical day at the office!

My day-job (fortunately) hasn't been quite that exciting but I've seen and done some interesting things. You know all those skills that you all probably presume I have because I'm a fourth year medical student? Well, until this week, I didn't have a lot of them! For example, we were never taught as med students how to start an IV, what the different caps of the blood tubes signify when you are drawing labs on someone or how to make a plaster splint for a bone fracture.

I got to practice all this as well as suturing and laceration repairs during the first few days of the week at the simulation center on the Harborview campus (a much larger and prettier version of the simulation center where I did my robotics research).

It was so refreshing to finally be learning some hands on skills that go with all of that book-learning I've been doing. Now, it's not to say I don't already have some hands on skills, but I for one thought that by the time I was 5 months from graduation I would know how to start an IV! Well, I guess now I do.

I'm on night shifts in the ER now and I'm enjoying my time thus far. It's amazing the variety of problems and people that show up between 2-6 AM. It brings me right back to my scribing days at Tacoma General, and in a sort of odd way it makes me feel at home. Last night I got to rule out a miscarriage in a woman who was 16 weeks pregnant, fish around for a glass shard in a young guy's hand from his broken iPhone screen, irrigate and clean out a gnarly finger laceration and start an IV in an actual patient instead of a classmate (small potatoes for most probably, but for me it was a first). It's fun to be hands-on, especially when being led by the low key personality types that generally staff an ER.

I wish I had had microscope lenses like these to fish out that tiny piece of glass!

However, it's really a bummer being on a totally different schedule than your hubby! In other mundane ways it's difficult too--like, it's hard to know what to eat, and when. I come home around 7:30 AM and I can't decide if I should eat oatmeal like typical 7:30 AM fare or go with dinner food. So, here it is 8 AM on Friday and I'm eating meatballs! :)

I think I said this last time, but rank lists are "due" until February 24th so I'm still ping-ponging the programs around in different spots in my head. It's almost a set list, but with some changes. I don't feel comfortable posting my list on here...and I have to leave a little suspense don't I?