Baltimore and CSTARS

About a month ago I was tasked to attend CSTARS (Center for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills) in Baltimore, MD.  Why Baltimore, you ask, well it happens to be the home of the largest Shock Trauma Center in the United States and the place where more shootings happen per capita than any other state.  I arrived on Sunday night and made my way to the Holiday Inn at the Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  I met my roommate  an Air Force PA stationed at Vandenburg AFB, CA.  Monday morning we took a tour of the hospital which is really more like a small city and covers an entire city block.  

The hospital is part of the University of Maryland Medical Center but  the Shock Trauma Center is its own entity.  The hospital is enormous and is comprised of several huge buildings that at one time were independent freestanding buildings but were later covered with a huge glass roof  making it into one giant building.  On the inside you can still see the original buildings standing there.  Above is a picture of one such building complete with window planter boxes, it is hard to appreciate the glass ceiling in the photo but it is there.

One unfortunate thing about the Shock Trauma Center is that  everyone that works there has to wear pastel pink scrubs. It is uber manly.

Me hanging on my bed in my pick scrubs.

Sweet!

This is Davidge Hall and is right across the street from the hospital.  It is the oldest medical school building still in use in the US.   

This is the Chemistry Hall.  Since 1812 it has been the site of many famous medical discoveries.   

The physicians had tunnels constructed connecting this building to the cemetery where they would rob graves and cut the bodies up for anatomy lectures.  There were multiple anesthesia discoveries that occurred in this room including the use of paralytic medications.

A clipper ship in the inner harbor.

This is a 15 star flag on top of Federal Hill

This is Federal Hill off in the distance.

More Baltimore photos. 

This street is one block from my hotel. 

This is a picture of me in my pink uniform waiting for a case.  

These are the blood products we used on one trauma case, there are over twenty bags.  This case was a vehicle ejection where the patient had massive internal injuries and mangled right arm.  Later on that night I also responded to a stabbing case that came in at about one in the morning.  A young waiter had just gotten off of work and was mugged and stabbed under the right clavicle severing his subclavian artery and vein.  He bled to death in just a few minutes.  The EMS team was doing CPR on him when he arrived and I quickly intubated him but he was declared dead about a minute later.  This was my first real fatality and it shook me up pretty good.  It is hard to imagine what God thinks about the violence His children commit against each other.  On a more miraculous note, the night before a 17 year old kid was coming out of his house when a van pulled up and the door opened. A gunman shot the kid four times and speed away.  None of the bullets caused any serious damage. The first passed through the center of his palm missing all tendons, bones and vessels.  The second passed through the muscle on the side of his neck without any significant damage . The third and fourth bullets hit a love handle and the side of his calf muscle which were rinsed out and sewed closed and he was sent to the police station.  Pretty amazing. 

My roomate and I traveled to Little Italy for some Italian food one night.  It was a refreshing nice side of town but the food was mediocre.  Nothing like Little Italy in Boston, now that was tasty but they only take cash if you ever go there.

This is a shot down on of the streets in Little Italy, very clean and nice unlike pretty much all of the rest of Baltimore. 

This is the stadium for the Baltimore Orioles it is three blocks from our hotel.  Opening game was last Friday.

I had a day off today (Tuesday) and so decided to take the train into Washington DC.  I have been there two other times but had heard that the cherry blossoms were out and thought I would go and have a look see.  It was nice to go there and be able to spend as long or as little as I wanted looking at museums and monuments.  This is in the Air and Space museum.

So is this.

I looked out the window and what did I see!  These cherry trees are everywhere.  It was worth the trip, they smelled incredible. 

These are huge magnolia trees, they also smelled incredible. 

This quote is on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial.  I wonder when we as a people stopped think like this.

Thomas Jefferson

Blossoms everywhere, people were everywhere too. 

There is scaffolding half way up the Washington Monument in the background.

The trees surround the Tidal Basin of the Potomac. 

Me and honest Abe.  The little girl over my shoulder is reaching for some juice her mom was handing her.  She started to shake it up before she realized the cap was not on.  I shudder to think what my reaction would have been if it were one of my kids.  Her mom did not handle it very well either.

It was a beautiful day at our nation's capital.

Today I went out to Fort McHenry.  When I went to Washington DC I saw the actual flag that was flying at the fort when Francis Scott Key penned those famous lines.  It was enormous more than 40 feet long.  

This is a look at the fort.  It is surrounded by huge mounds of earth with  huge brick  tunnels underneath. 

Much of the fort is original structure.

This is one of the underground shelters.

This is the officer's barracks.  It was originally a single level structure.  

A much smaller version of the 15 star flag that flew over the fort. 

Chesapeake Bay and big cannons.  

What you lookin' at?

A bit of sunshine in Utah

I went to Utah for a conference and Jeff and I went down to St George for a ride in near 60 degree weather.

The day we arrived we went out for a quick ride to the Church Rocks as the sun was setting. 

It was incredibly beautiful. 

The next morning we went to ride Bearclaw Poppy which is one  of our favorites.

Jeff took a spectacular spill flipping right over his handle bars.

We decided to ride down the trail and then back up instead of riding on the street like we normally do.
It was definitely the way to go. 

Things you should know about San Antonio

Before you come to San Antonio for a visit you should know a couple of things.  First you need to know that grass is for show here.  It is not the kind of grass that you run barefoot in unless you have feet like my dad.  The grass has thick leaves and is pretty ridged, not remotely soft.  The worst part though is not the grass but what lives in the grass.  Some places in Texas have problems with chiggers but we have Fire Ants. These little beauties are aptly named for when they bit you the inject flaming venom into your body, or so it feels.  After you have been bitten you have about two ours before a white headed pustule forms.  For the first 24 hours it doesn't matter how many times you pop it it will just reform.  The next day they become very itchy raised red masses similar to mosquito bites x 100.   

The other day I was out in the yard fixing some of the slats in the fence.  I made the mistake of standing in one place for more than a minute and before I knew what was happening my leg began to burn.  I looked down and my foot and lower leg were covered in ants.  Luckily I had pants on but many found their way to my skin and began chewing mercilessly on it.  The top picture is about two hours after the incident and the second picture is two days later.  Pretty awesome.  Consider yourselves warned.

Another thing you should know is that San Antonio sits atop an enormous limestone shelf.  This shelf makes it virtually impossible to dig a hole in your yard or to plant a garden without raised beds.  You have to carve your way through the limestone to do pretty much anything.  The picture above is at our local Target.  In order to flatten out the hilltop to build a parking lot they had to carve out the limestone shelf.  It is not uncommon to see thing like this extending 15 feet into the air with Oak trees growing out of them

Lady and Lost Maples

If you want to see Fall colors in San Antonio you have to travel about two hours to a place called Lost Maples State Natural Park.  There you will see as much Fall foliage as you will get in these parts.

We made the trek on Saturday with our new dog Lady and the kids.  After getting pulled over in one of the many small towns on the way for speeding and getting a warning, we arrived. The trail was about a 4 mile loop but we only made it about 1/2 way because it was just too much fun to climb on the big boulders and play around.

Cami has talked about how much she misses the Autumn chill in the air and the colors so even if the color was brown it seemed different and beautiful to us.

Lady, is the newest member of our family.  We rescued her from a shelter out in the country about a week ago.  She is a bit timid about some things but loved the water and chasing the little fish that were in it.

Orange leaves, WOW!

Mom and her Lady.

This was a place called Monkey Rock for some weird reason.  Makenna and Connor can't see something like this without trying to climb it.

Another of my little monkeys. 

Trying to show off but lacking the ability.

Playing in the honeycomb of rock.  There were tons of fossilized sea shells in this rock.

Hanging in the fields of gold.

More posing with the colors.

Just a boy and his Tootsie Pop.

Lady is black lab and something else with big ears.

Cheeeeeese.

The dry creek bed.

Mom and McKay as we were leaving the park.

Texas has the market cornered on creepy crawlys.  They have scorpions, biting fire ants and tarantulas. In church yesterday Connor was sitting in his classroom listening to the teacher, or so he says, when he put his hand under the chair rail that extends around the room and received his first scorpion sting.  I hope the offending scorpion was not part of the Geneva Convention seeking sanctuary in the church because it was soon just a smear on the floor.  Connor said that it was like a bee sting that lasted 8 hours.