Tired and sad. Two words to describe how I feel right now. What a wonderful month of learning and adventure. So many amazing things and people. How cool it was to discover so many individual with similar interests. I'll be posting more tomorrow from the hike, but I'll post a few photos from the hikes right now.
Day 19 --
Everyone split-up today and went different directions enjoying the beautiful weather. Some went bordering, others hung-out at camp and enjoyed the sunshine while others went for a hike on Rainbow Trail almost getting to Mt. LeConte. The snow became knee deep and thus they had to turn around but they really enjoyed the beautiful views.
I on the other-hand went home to do laundry and rested for most of the day.
Day 20 -
Today we went to The Lost Sea and did the wild cave tour. It was great fun. Our guide, Shane, was really enjoyable and really tailored the tour for our group. It was funny to hear him really enjoy having a tour of adults rather then children. The lake in the cave is huge. In the 70's they went diving with sonar and couldn't identify any walls or floor. Thus the floor is deeper then 3500 ft and the back wall is farther then 3500 ft. That is a huge cavern.
After finishing we went to a place call Joe's for the best burgers in Sweatwater, TN. The burgers were really good. They were really good.
Well that's all for now, enjoy the pics.
All good things must come to an end and certainly the lectures went out with a bang. We had 3 lectures spanning from 8am to 4:30 pm with 3 breaks (one for lunch). It was a marathon session but very interesting. The lectures were over Space Medicine, Toxicology (i.e. venomous and poisonous animals) and making a Wilderness Medical Kit. It became one of our first beautifully sunny days and during our few breaks we made sure to enjoy it. All the pictures of us today were on the front porch of Tipton Lodge where we had all our lectures and was the headquarters of all our scenarios.
Day 16 was a day full of lectures as will be day 18. Day 17 was our final day of scenarios. The posts are a day late and a bit short in content because as a camp we exceeded the daily bandwidth allotment and I didn't take time yesterday to write. Yep, no internet yesterday so I couldn't post anything about Day 16 or 17. It made me lazy :).
On day 16 we had lectures for a bunch of different topics. We learned about Dive Medicine, a recent medical trip to Haiti, preparing to lead a wilderness expedition, making a medical kit and lots of random facts. Some of the most intriguing were from the dive medicine lectures. Did you know:
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Almost a day of rest with no scenarios - but a day of constant activity. We left camp at 8 am and drove to the University of Tennessee (UT) Medical Center in Knoxville (UTMCK). We spent the morning in the Graduate School of Medicine Family Medicine conference room treated to donuts, orange juice and coffee. We had three short lectures regarding group travel and emergency medicine finishing off with a visit to UT Lifestar helicopter.
Finally about half of us went over to my parents house for some good home cooking and to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Another good day and looking forward to our days off.
Tired. I think that word describes everyone tonight. We were on four scenarios today of increasing difficulty. I now understand why were are at UT tomorrow and have Saturday and Sunday off. I'm sorta wondering about next week given we have three days off.
Our day started at 8am after breakfast with a small incline scenario of some individuals injured in a hunting accident. These first extractions were difficult and required some thought but were nothing when compared to the later ones.
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Quick plug for the official WMS Elective Blog for anyone interested in reading an official version of our daily activities. Only thing I have on it is the pictures. :) Mainly because I'm here and collecting all the photos for the elective DVD and not being able to send many due to limited internet connectivity.
For the first time since the elective started, my brain isn't really ready to write anything. I have this interesting collage of thoughts floating in my mind but refusing to come to any semblance of order.
I will, however, make a shout out to my cousin in Philly, already has 27" of snow and expecting 12-22" more. That is crazy. I'm glad we only got the little bit (about 1 inch) this morning. It made our afternoon scenarios much more interesting. Oh, I forgot to mention we were able to do two scenarios this afternoon. It was quite the learning experience. Many problem-solving skills in use to perform the packaging and extrication.
read moreFrom my years of practice I have discovered testosterone and alcohol are a failed combination. - TK
I think this quote is a great summary of our day. It was a day of many lectures imparting lots of wisdom, some student lectures and a little hands on demonstrations. Our day consisted of lectures about High Altitude illnesses, Cold injuries, Facial Trauma, a talk from a Chiropractor and ending with a lecture about orbital injuries.
