Leaving Rexburg/Idaho Falls

So it has taken me a while, but I have finally gotten on and started a blog. While the appearance of it won’t necessarily be personalized until I figure out how the heck to use this blogspot stuff, hopefully you will enjoy the pics and stories. I hope that I will be good at updating it (yikes), and that it will in some way make us feel a little closer to our family and friends out there in the west.

Leaving the Idaho Falls/Rexburg area was a little harder than I was expecting it to be. I was ready and excited to get out of the frozen tundra of Rexburg and move on to something bigger and better. But when it came down to it, quitting my job at EIRMC was almost heartbreaking.

When I started as a student there, honestly, I hated a lot of it. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the people I worked with, they are all fabulous teachers, but I hated going at 6am to wake people up to draw their blood. I was discouraged trying to figure out what the heck I was doing there, who all these people were, and what they expected me to do. I was tired all the time, which only made me sick all the time (yeah, working in a hospital, that happens) and my brain hurt from thinking too much. As Justin can attest to, my most uttered phrase was “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time.”

When my internship was over there were no technologist positions open, so I accepted a job on the night shift as a phlebotomist and I hated it even more. My schedule was crazy, I wasn’t even doing what I had just trained the last 6 months to do, and I couldn’t draw blood from any vein smaller around than my thumb. But as I worked that shift, a swim-or-drown type of situation, I started getting the hang of things. I could actually draw blood out of the “water bags” on ICU (as Lisa S. would call them!) and I could actually hit a radial artery on a patient that only had a pulse because they were doing compressions, and I knew all the nurses in the ER and ICU. The night shift for me was, as Justin would say, “A million dollar experience I wouldn’t pay a dime to repeat.”

But I finally got a tech position on days working with the ER and I began to love working there. While I didn’t like getting yelled at, whined at, blamed at…the people really were fabulous, the job was great, (okay, so the job itself wasn’t that great…but I made it work for me, and it became perfect), and I became comfortable and found myself there. Of course, I didn’t realize any of this until it was time to leave. So, for any of you in the lab reading this, thank you for all you’ve taught me, and for all the friendships, kind words, and support. The lab really became my 2nd family, and I’m sure gonna miss seeing you all everyday.

EIRMC

Me in my spiffy lab coat

Miss Becky

The fabulous Lisa S.

Bruce and Marv:  Chemists in both the laboratory and the kitchen!





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