Saturday, June 12, 2010

First On Call and White Water Rafting

I had my first OC (on call) at the hospital last night.  I got to the hospital around 4 p.m. and the other chaplains left around 4:30.  Apparently it had been an absolutely crazy day and I was preparing myself for a night of little sleep.

Right after everyone left, I headed up to one of the ICUs to touch base with the staff about a patient from earlier.  My clinical supervisor had gone to the gym and had come back to his office, so when I got back from the MICU I talked to him for a few minutes and we both wished each other restful evenings (me with the pager, him with his two year old).  I settled in on the couch of our lounge with some articles for my didactics next week and season 10 of Friends, hoping to relax and maybe even nap a little bit before the night got busy.

Funny story ... the night never got busy.

Actually, it wasn't so much funny as it was ... eery.  My pager never went off.  There were no code blues.  Not even a non-urgent voicemail asking for a chaplain to stop by.

Creepy.

Although - my theory with hospital chaplaincy is that if no one is calling me in the middle of the night, that's a good thing!

You would think that with no calls I got a good night's sleep, but it actually took me awhile to fall asleep.  I was convinced that as soon as I fell asleep I would get called out.  Then I woke up every hour and obsessively checked my pager.  I finally just got up at 6.  The chaplain OC today didn't believe me when he came in this morning and I told him how quiet my night was!

I got home around 9:15, quickly changed and Bruce and I headed up to Duckville, TN to go white water rafting with some friends from church!  (We did this last year too!)  Let me tell you - as I was frantically paddling through class three and four rapids down the Ocoee River - I was happy to have gotten ANY sleep at all last night!  The cool thing about this year was that Bruce bought an underwater case for our flip camera!  I literally just hooked the camera into my PFD (personal flotation device - apparently they are no longer called life jackets) and we were good to go!  Bruce actually took the flip at one point while we were relaxing on the calm part of the river and jumped into the water with it!  And the camera is completely dry - I would recommend anyone with a flip who spend time near water getting a case like this.

Oh - so the point of that story was to tell you that we took some video and I'll try to get it uploaded soon!  I wasn't filming while we were going through the rapids (I was trying to stay in the raft help my team members get through the rapid safely), but hopefully I got some fun footage.

We got home around 5:30, took a looooooong nap and now are just hanging out and nursing our rafting wounds.  The day was totally worth every sore muscle, twisted knee and bruised leg (and yes, I'm almost ashamed to admit I am nursing all three of those, ha).

Tomorrow is our anniversary - I can't believe it's already been a year!

This time last year we were saying good bye for the night ...


The next time I saw him I was walking down the aisle!

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad your first OC was so quiet! I have my first tomorrow...from 8pm to am. I am also going to take some Friends (season 4 I think) and a book - and I expect to get little to no sleep!

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  2. Glad the prayers worked! Your rafting trip sounds like it was fun! I am a big chicken and would never ever considering rafting although my Hubby's gone on a rafting trip before with his coworkers.

    Hope you have an awesome day celebrating your anniversary!!!

    P.S. I ended up getting the Rebel T1i and love it! Still need to figure out what all it does, but so far so good!

    P.S.S. Alivia has been using your blanket at night for the last few nights and she's been loving it. She looks so cute all nice and cozy with her new blankie! Thanks so much again!!!

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