Well duh....

This week we learned about alcohol abuse. It just seems obvious, of course alcohol is bad for your body…it’s alcohol, but apparently not everyone in the class understood that principle or maybe they just didn’t realize HOW awful it is for you.

So here it is…what can alcohol due for you...? Keep in mind, these are the permanent affects of chronic alcohol use.

Acute pancreatitis, irritates the stomach, slowly kill the liver, cause protein malnutrition and vitamin malabsorption.

It is toxic to nerves, so it causes ataxia (drunk walking) that can be permanent as well as causes numbness of hands and feet.

It also kills heart cells which leads to arrhythmias and Congestive heart failure plus it adds to high blood pressure and coronary artery disease.

Along with all that, it kills your bone marrow, so you have low platelets (meaning you can’t clot), low White blood cells (immune system) and you have anemia.

Doesn’t that sound great??? Well besides all the obvious cell death that occurs with alcohol there were a couple facts that I thought were interesting.

-On an empty stomach it takes about 30 minutes to get the ‘high’ from alcohol. IF there is food in the stomach, it delays the high, but doesn’t decrease it at all…it will eventually get to your blood and then brain…you just have to wait a little longer.

-Women really can’t drink as much as guys and it has nothing to do with the size of the woman. Just the fact that she is female means she has more fat and less total body water than men, so that means the alcohol is going to be more concentrated.

-If someone is ‘hung over’ it means they are going through withdrawal. My naïve moment- you don’t get this reaction every time you drink, only when you have more than a couple drinks (depending on the person)

Well...all i can say is I'm so glad that I don't drink alcohol!

As a quick review of the past couple weeks- Life has been pretty low key. On Friday I did my first clinical experience. I shadowed a trauma PA in the hospital, which turned out to be less exciting than it sounds. The only neat thing that happened is we checked up on a gun shot wound patient. I didn't get to see the wound or anything...bummer. Maybe next time!

Today was the most gorgeous weather. It was in the 60's all day today! It was perfect...all i needed was a light jacket (hopefully you all got that movie reference). I'm definitely feeling very grateful to be living in Virginia today.

One more thing...I just love Kenny G. The other night as I was trying to fall asleep I decided to listen to some music and I turned on the song 'by the time this night is over' and I could just see the family at dinner time- eating California Citrus Salad in our backyard with the waterfall going and mom swaying and doing her snap dance thing she does. Anyway, It reminded me of what a wonderful family I have. I truly have one of the best families ever (which definitely includes all the in-laws)!

Where are you Christmas?

Well, I finished my finals!!!! I can’t believe that I finished my first semester of PA school. The sad part is that I feel like I haven’t learned enough. I guess I'll find out pretty soon how much I really know/ don't know. We start doing clinicals in a couple weeks...AHHHH! It's crazy how fast everything goes.

The sum of the last couple weeks before Christmas is studying studying and more studying. I did take a couple breaks though. One weekend I did a service activity with the ward. It was really an event put on by GE, but we helped out. We assembled a bunch or red wagons…it was actually kind of fun! I even got to ride in one while Danny pulled me. While I was in the wagon we happened to be following a little boy and his mom. He looked at me probably because I was so big and I was in this tiny little red wagon but while he was staring at me I yelled out let’s get them…and the little boy started to smile and then looked up at his mom and said ‘mom, mom…go faster!’ The closer we got the louder his little belly laugh was. The cherry on top was that he had this little lisp. Oh it just made my night.

Finals week…the only surprise was that they moved up my Pharm final because of this big snow storm. I thought it was a lame reason bump up the test, but I found out today that driving in Roanoke snow is very different than driving in Utah or Idaho. First, the snow melts and turns into ice here almost instantly. Second they aren’t very good at clearing the roads. Third, Roanoke is basically a bunch of hills. The whole city is one hill after another. Now when you combine all three- you can see why they shut everything down when there is a snow storm. Well I had the unfortunate experience of having a run in (literally) with the snow. It's all good now. The car is fixed and all is well.

Christmas break was wonderful. It really was so fun to be with Joe and Naomi and Mom and Dad and Becca. We went caroling to the hospital and Layton was adorable. Whenever we left a room he would wave and say, ‘merry chrithmas’. He has the most adorable lisp. I don’t know why lisps are so cute, but they really are.

We also went bowling...surprise, surprise :) and I actually bowled pretty well…112. Woot for me! Mostly, I just relaxed.Christmas eve we went Caroling to the neighbors. We had some funny experiences that day. At one of the houses while mom was talking to the lady (after we had sung) Layton was sucking on a round mint and I guess it got stuck in his throat to he stuck his finger down his throat to get it and he made himself throw up. After he threw up Naomi said, ‘hey Layton look, your mint came out. Good job buddy.’ Layton’s response was, ‘My that. My that. I want my that.’ And his mom said, ‘Nope. All done candy.’ Haha. It was just funny that all of this happened while we were caroling at someone’s house. A couple houses later Dad was struggling to find his note. He seriously was all over the place. It sounded like he was doing scales. Of course the rest of us had no idea what he was doing and so finally dad said, 'stop stop, we are all way off. Let’s start over.' HAhaha. The funny part is I thought most of us were on except for him. Poor poor family that we were singing to and Oh what a cute daddy we have.

That next week, Joe and Naomi had invited their best friends from Arizona to come spend the week with us. They had 5 kids and they were really cute kids. I liked all of them, but they had an 8 and a 9 year old boy and they were just adorable. I don’t know what it is about little boys, but I think they are just much cuter than girls (that’s probably a good thing because we have an overwhelming number of nephews in my family). Not that I don’t like little girls, I mean, I’m a girl…but there is just something about nice little boys. It's probably because when I was growing up, most of the girls I knew were all conniving and very mischievous. Anyway, both of these boys that visited thought I was cool- for obvious reasons…I mean, what’s not to like? (right dad?) They would always want to sit by me at dinner or during games. There was one night when Kayden (8yo) asked if he could sit next to me during the family game and I had said yes. So we were sitting there listening to the instructions and he leaned forward to look at something and in the few seconds that he was gone, his older brother, Camden slid right into his spot. It was super sly and super funny. I just kept thinking to myself, too bad this doesn’t happen with guys my age. Maybe, someday!

We also went skiing. Well Mom and Dad and I went skiing up at Kelly’s. I hadn’t been skiing in years and it was surprising how quickly I remembered how to do everything.

Probably one of the biggest things that I did over Christmas break was I cut my hair. Naomi came with me and I chopped it off. Okay, so she didn’t really chop it off, but this is the shortest I’ve ever had it. It took a little time to get used to, but I really like it now.

That’s pretty much it. I’ve had a wonderful last month of my life and I know most of that is because of my amazing family. The seriously are so awesome.