Track select and "Ice Storm 2010"

On January 19th I went through my track select for pilot training. This event signifies the completion of phase two and the beginning of phase three, the final one. I am all done flying the T-6 and the track select night is when they assign you to one of four possible follow-on trainers. The two main aircraft we can go to are the T-38 and the T-1, both of which are here at Vance AFB. The T-38 is the track you go down if you are going to fly a fighter or a bomber while the T-1 is the track for the heavies, cargo planes, and re-fuelers.

The two other less common options are the T-44 and UH-1. The T-44 is a multi-engine prop aircraft owned by the Navy that is used to train Air Force pilots specifically for the C-130. So going to fly T-44's means you also know what your final aircraft will be. If you get selected for T-44's then you have to move to Corpus Christi, TX since that is where the training is. The UH-1 is the least common of all and that is a helicopter to train pilots for that route. That training is done with the Army at Fort Rucker, AL.

Usually how it works is that in a class of about 30 students, 1 or 2 will want to fly helicopters and they can get those spots pretty easy. As for everyone else, most people want to fly a fighter or a bomber so they fight for the 4 to 6 T-38 slots that are given to each class. Then about 3-4 T-44's are given to the next bunch of people who want to fly the C-130 while the rest of the class fly the T-1. As strange as it sounds, I went against the grain and I put T-1's as my first choice so it was pretty obvious that I was going to get it. I like the mission of the cargo planes more than the rest so I think I will be happy with that! Nevertheless the track select night was filled with enjoyment and it was pretty neat getting my assignment.

The way they run the ceremony is they have each student come up one at a time, they make fun of you for a few minutes and then they put up on the screen what you were selected for. They said that I would be "most likely to find a spelling error in the bible" since I was always finding errors in our flight publications that needed to be fixed. In the end I did get selected to fly T-1’s so the good news is I won’t have to move. I started academics for the T-1 the very next day and I should have my first flight in mid February.

Now on to “Ice Storm 2010.” I’ve found that down here they like to name their storms by the year they occur…like “Blizzard ‘09” that hit Oklahoma city in December. That concept right there is pretty funny and should tell you right away how often they get snow. The weather guys had been predicting this recent storm several days in advance and I’ll explain the humorous chain of events which lead up to Thursday’s storm.

On Monday, well in advance, we were already under a winter storm watch. The weather on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday was a clear blue sky and 65 degrees…I was wearing shorts. By Wednesday afternoon they declared a winter storm warning (while it was 65 degrees) and by Wednesday afternoon the Oklahoma governor declared a “preemptive state of emergency” which had me rolling on the floor laughing when I heard about it. Thursday morning rolls around and the only thing that changed was an overcast sky and temps in the 30’s…no precipitation yet. But to stay on the safe side Vance AFB closed down and we had a “snow” day due to the weather on it’s way. So I had the whole day off and then snow didn’t even start to fall until 4:00 PM.

The snow then continued all the way through Friday evening with breaks here and there, so we got Friday off too. All in all it did end up snowing quite a bit, especially for around here but boy do they freak out when a storm is coming! All of the pictures were taken on Friday after it had been snowing for a while and my car was covered pretty well.

The end of one chapter and the beginning of another

Time sure does fly! I am done with my second clinical rotation and Christmas is coming in a few days! I have been working on last minute presents, trying to relax and spend time with my family before I leave Idaho. My cousin Josiah came in on Friday, my parents, Shelly, and my cousins Zach and Sam fly in tonight and Brett comes in tomorrow night. Everyone except for my cousin Nick and his wife Sara will be here for Christmas! We have not been able to have a big family Christmas like this for at least 5 years!

Before my classmates left for home we went out to eat with our clinical instructors at a place called Donnie Mac's Trailer Park Cuisine, it was a neat restaurant in a garage like looking building, with very good food! The picture above is of my classmates Erin and Jamie, Eddie (A rehab tech at St. Lukes where Jamie and I were for our clinicals) and Jamie's CI Brett. There is actually a table inside of that car and people eat in there! It was a fun place! The picture below is of my CI Lynae and I.

Brett and I will start driving back to Oklahoma on the 28th and then I will be able to spend time there with him until the 9th of January.

I am also very excited that my friend Cassie is possibly coming to visit from Philadelphia! I have not seen her since our friend Savanna's wedding in August and it will be fun to show her Oklahoma!

We are also planning to go down to Dallas to visit Denny and Bev (Brett's great aunt and uncle that I stayed with during my first clinical rotation) and Brett's great grandma is visiting with them for awhile also, so we will get to see her as well.

We are so excited to have time to spend together even if we are busy with visiting and traveling- things just don't seem to slow down- but we are enjoying all of our adventures!

I got a call from my CI Rudy from Texas yesterday and he updated me about a patient that I had done my case study on from there. He had an amputation and we were preparing him for a prosthesis, but I had to leave before he was able to get one. Rudy said that he has his new prosthesis and now only has to walk with a cane and is independent in his daily activities! I was so happy for him and sad that I wasn't there to see the whole process through- but Rudy is sending me a picture from him and the power point presentation that the next student put together about him. I am excited to be able to learn about prostheses, I haven't had the chance to, so hopefully I will have more of a chance to follow a patient through at a later time! It is just so rewarding to hear the stories of people that you were able to help become more independent- I think we take for granted little things like being able to walk- and go to the bathroom ourselves. I hope someday to have a chance to go back and see him walking around with his new leg- maybe I will make it down there sometime to do that!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope you take this time to reflect on all God has blessed you with this year! We are truly blessed to have friends and family like you!

Love,

Emily (and Brett)

Thanksgiving Weekend

Hello everyone! it has been awhile since we have given you an update! Time is flying by so fast! I am in the last full week of my second clinical! I cannot believe that it is December already! It has been so great to spend more time with my extended family! Brett came out to Idaho for Thanksgiving and it was so great to spend time together and for him to get to know my family better. We had a great Thanksgiving, we were over at my aunt Kristi and uncle Jerry's house. It was a great time to just talk about what we are thankful for and chat and play games.

The picture here is of my cousin's daughter Jeya, she is such a cutie. It has been fun to be able to be a part of her life and watch her grow up, it is amazing how fast kids learn and change! She is talking a lot now and can understand a lot so that is fun. We read lots of books and play games, and of course I try to teach her more advanced anatomy than most 1 1/2 year olds know!

We had Thanksgiving on Thursday and then Brett and I went up to McCall Idaho on Friday and stayed the night and came back on Saturday. It is such a pretty drive up there into the mountains, so it was a lot of fun especially since Brett had never been to Idaho before. We walked around at the state park up there and by the lake. It was cold and they had snow so it was really pretty! We also walked around and looked at all the little shops in town.

When we got back on Saturday my cousin Holly and her husband Jon took us to The Melting Pot (a fondue restaurant) for our wedding present. It was so much fun! You have two burners on your table and get to choose your sauces to dip. We had a whole four course meal with cheese first and bread, apples, and veggies to dip in it, salad next (no dipping there), meats of all kinds with two different sauces to cook in and lastly dessert which was amazing we had a turtle dip and white chocolate and they brought strawberries, bananas, brownie bites, cheesecake, pound cake and marshmallows to dip! It was so fun a brand new dining experience!

Idaho Adventures

I have made my way to Idaho now! I am so blessed to have had my mom and sister with me for the trip to help drive and keep me company :) We had a fun time together and enjoyed the scenery.

The picture to the right is Brett and I before we left on the trip. It was so nice to have so much time together and be able to spend every weekend together for a couple of months! But it was on to the next big adventure for me.

The pictures below are one of the scenery and on e of my mom, sister and I before we left on the trip. It sure was a pretty drive and the weather

was great too!

I am in Meridian Idaho staying with my aunt and uncle, my cousin and her husband and their daughter. It has been so nice to be able to spend more time with them, I usually only get to see them once a year at most when there is a cousins graduation or wedding. It has been fun to see Jeya (Holly my cousin's daughter) more often she has gotten so much more grown up since our wedding.

My clinical is at St. Luke's Elks Rehab and it is an Outpatient setting, I see a lot of shoulder and knee surgery patients, as well as low back pain and some pre-bariatric surgery patients. I am enjoying being in a different setting. My CI is very nice and is a UND graduate so she knows a lot about the program. It has been a good first week and I am looking forward to learning more!

I hope you are all staying healthy! I have been trying to get used to sleeping and eating at different times now that I am in a different time zone! I am so blessed to have such great family that I can stay with and a great clinical site!
I will keep you updated.
Love,
Emily

Changing seasons....

I am coming to the end of my clinical in Texas and will soon be headed to Idaho for my next one! I am done at Kindred Hospital in Arlington on Oct 14th and on the 15th my mom and sister fly in to drive with me to Idaho. We will leave OK on Friday the 16th and head off on our journey. I am sad to be leaving Brett because it has been so great to spend more time with him, but I am ready to move on and keep going with school. I keep reminding myself that the sooner I keep going the sooner I will be done with school. I am also very excited to spend time with my extended family out in Idaho! The other student that was with Rudy (my CI) left this week, her name is Lauren, and I was sad to see her go, it was nice to have someone to talk to about the differences in our schooling and in ways she had learned to do things. The picture above is of us on her last day! Rudy tried to get us standing so you could see the Dallas Cowboys stadium in the background (which is right down the street from the hospital) but I don't think it worked too well!


To the left is a picture of the daisies that Brett sent me at the hospital on my birthday and the roses that Denny and Bev (Brett's great aunt and uncle who I am staying with here in TX) got for me for my birthday. It was such a special day for me, I was sad because it was the first birthday ever that I wouldn't be spending with my family, friends or Brett, but when I came back to the house for the night Tracey and the boys (Denny and Bev's daughter and grandkids) were at the house and Tony (a good friend of Den and Bev's that I have gotten to know pretty well since I came here) and his son came over and had supper with us and it was so special for me. Bev made a special dinner and we had a great time! I am so blessed to have great family and friends that make me feel at home even when I am far from my immediate family and friends. Brett came down the weekend before my birthday and we went to downtown Dallas and went out to eat and walked around. We also went to IKEA and found 2 dressers for our bedroom and we also went mini-golfing. So it turned out to be a very special birthday!



This past week my friend Maureen came through Fort Worth on her way to MN for a wedding so she stopped and had supper with me! I was so excited to see her, we were RA's together in Noren my sophomore year of college and have remained friends ever since. Maureen just graduated this past year from graduate school for Speech-Language Pathology and now lives in Del Rio, TX with her husband who is also a pilot in the Air Force. It is so great to talk with her because we have so many similar experiences, she also lived away from her husband while she went to graduate school so she is a great encouragement to me. We chatted for almost 3 hours and it was a great end to the week!
-Emily

Last Days of Summer

Brett and I decided that we had too many pictures and stories about all of the scary and gross animals and not enough of the fun things we have been doing. This first picture is of Brett and I swimming in the pool the last day it was open, Labor Day. Down south they still close the pool at the same time they do up north even though there are still 90 degree days. Silly...I know. So we made use of the time the pool was open and went swimming twice on Labor Day weekend!

I have been driving up to Enid every weekend that I have been here in Texas for my clinical. It has been great to be able to spend so much time together! I use the drive to keep caught up on my phone calls with my hands free set. I take I-35 up pretty much all the way so it is a pretty easy drive. I have really been enjoying my clinical. We are so busy running between the hospital and outpatient that I have had the chance to see many patients with a variety of diagnoses. I have a few patients right now that I have been able to see on my own and I really enjoy it a lot. I am challenged every day and learning so much!

Brett and I have been visiting Government Springs Park almost every weekend. It is a very nice park with places to walk around and a waterfall and fountain. We also found there is a really nice flower garden across the street that I took lots of pictures in and Brett searched for bugs and took pictures of them. We went to the park 2 weekends ago and were walking along the pond by the ducks, and Brett said "wouldn't it be nice if we had bread to feed the ducks?" and not really liking birds or ducks I responded "No, then they would come close to us!" just as Brett was pulling bread out of his pocket that he had taken from home without me knowing. So we fed the ducks and it was a good time, Brett kept the ducks away from me and I enjoyed it. I mostly fed the ducks that were in the water so they stayed away from me and in the water:)

A few pictures from the park where we have spent sweet summer weekends enjoying each others company- something we will never take for granted after we spent (and continue to spend) so much time apart:)

Good thing Emily wasn't here...

A couple of nights ago when one of my classmates came over to study he came across this little fella on the steps to the apartment. When he came in he told me about it and of course I had to go check it out. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but it was pretty big, I would guess about 3-4 ft long. At first we thought it was a copperhead which is a venomous snake but it turns our that it was a harmless black ratsnake. Apparently they eat Cicadas which would be a blessing since the trees across the parking lot are full of them and they sure are loud...especially at night. I'm just glad Emily wasn't here to see it because she was terrified enough after the whole spider escapade!

On a little scarier note, this black widow spider in the next picture was found under the porch of the apartment right next to ours. I had never seen a black widow before but the red hourglass symbol on it's abdomen is an obvious clue to what it is. I did a little research and I guess that even though they are venomous, they usually won't kill you unless you have a weak immune system. They usually only cause nausea, vomiting, fainting, dizziness, chest pain, and respiratory difficulties. The last picture shows a nice view of it's red hourglass after I flipped it over with a stick and shortly before I killed it.

-Brett