Literally Dying

Literally Dying

                I asked my boss today if I could get paid overtime, because last night I had vivid dreams that I was frantically working in a one of the I-feel-like-I’m-standing-under-a-waterfall situation of the ED. Picture my dream: The patient board scrolling with so many sick patients we’re in code black; I’m already six hours past the end of my shift, but can’t leave because there is too much to do. I am very dramatic in my dream, intermittently stopping dead in my tracks by the nursing station and yelling “If I don’t get a break soon, I will LITERALLY DIE!!” before going back to the drowning-effect of taking care of the patients. In real life, we are short on a number of medications due to severe national shortages and production delays; in my dream, my coworker Steve checked in for severe nausea and vomiting. I looked desperately through our Omnicell but we were out of all the ondansetron, except for in “raw form” which essentially meant I was scooping stir-fry out of the Omnicell with a spoon and serving it to Steve with several bay leaves on top, which I advised “I probably wouldn’t eat the bay leaves, if I were you.”

                Last Saturday, Matt Bricka and I took the boys up to Twin Lakes to see how the wilderness fared last year in the wildfires. I think we were probably the first up the trail in a while, since there weren’t any tracks through the snow on the road. I had to use my tow straps to yank Matt’s truck out of one area when he got mired in the snow, and we did have to park about 500 yards downhill from the trailhead due to snow impeding our access with the trucks.

                While we drove up there, Emerson piped up with some questions.

“How high in elevation are we?” He asked.

“About 4200 ft above sea level,” I responded.

He deliberated that for a moment, before inquiring “Well, how high aboveground level are we?”

I chuckled, and we discussed it for a few minutes before arriving to the conclusion that we were still 4200 ft above sea level. He did not take this news well. He proceeded to reprimand me:

“DAD! REMEMBER?! I’m afraid of heights!”

                The rest of the hike was fairly uneventful, until we attempted to cross over to the eastern lake. There was quite a bit of snow left over from winter, hollowed out around the spruce and fir trees, and the trail was difficulty to follow. Matt was in the lead, with Braeden and Emerson following; I was off to the left, searching for the continuation of the trail. We were very careful to instruct the boys to walk directly in Matt’s footprints, because of the post-holing risks of walking in the snow drifts covering the trees. Braeden listened closely to our instructions, then promptly veered a couple of feet to the right. The next thing we heard was Emerson yelling “Braeden fell! Braeden fell!”

                When I looked over, Braeden had essentially disappeared. As I approached, I could see an 18-in diameter hole in the snow; he’d fallen straight through two feet of snow, then falling another four or five feet down into the small river of glacier water beneath us. He was shocked speechless by the cold; the poor bedraggled kid then spent the next ten minutes trying to stop hyperventilating over his slightly-broken fingernail as he sloshed his wet boots back to an area where we could build a fire and take three hours to grill the water out of his clothing. The boys lived on a log the whole time, practicing their casting skills with a pinecone that I tied onto the end of the line.

                Frankly, it was the best fishing expedition I’ve ever been on with the boys. I didn’t have to constantly untangle lines, I got to do a bunch of survivalist stuff like help build a fire and chop pieces of wood with my axe.

                Driving home later, Emerson suddenly exclaimed “It’s a good thing I yelled, otherwise Braeden would still be down in that hole!”

                On another note, Emerson told a friend that all he and his brother do is “we mostly just play video games.” Braeden gave Stephanie a Mother’s Day card that read “I love you because you let me watch TV all day” and “I love you because you let me watch Kid’s YouTube.” Stephanie was very displeased, and told me she was never letting them watch TV again because “Apparently, that’s the ONLY thing they love about me….and it was just one dayof TV and YouTube!”