The last three months . . .

The last three months have been life-defining.  I don't say that lightly either.  I have felt pretty much every emotion under the sun to the very extreme.  I have been extremely blessed and watched out for through this time, however.  You would think changing careers and moving to the big city would be enough of a change for me, but I never like to do things the easy way so I fractured my wrist (again) 2 weeks after beginning my job. For anybody who may be wondering what on earth I have been doing for the last 3 months, here's the scoop!

My Job
My job is awesome.  I feel so fortunate to have landed this job.  I love the people I work with and I am grateful for the opportunity to work in such a wonderful organization. I have wanted to work at Huntsman Cancer Institute since before I began my master's degree.  I thought it would take a while for it to happen for me, but the timing was right.  It's honestly a dream come true for me.

So what exactly do I do? My job is a Study Coordinator in the Clinical Trials Office of Huntsman Cancer Institute. The overall goal of a clinical trial is to bridge the gap between the lab discovery and the use of the medication to treat the disease.  My specific role is in the GI cancers. I also have some phase I studies that I am working on.  Phase I studies are the first time the medication has been studied in humans. The goal of the phase I study is to determine side effects and toxicities and the optimum dose. Phase I studies are usually done on patients with "solid tumors."  So these patients can have all different kinds of cancer (colon, ovarian, thyroid, etc.).  These patients are incredible to me.  To be involved in a clinical trial, they are going literally where no man has gone before and committing to giving a lot of their time and energy when they may not feel well from their cancer and/or the treatment.  It's a humbling experience to work with these people.  Some of them are very sick and I'm becoming much more acquainted with death. I mostly work with collecting the data and putting it into a format that can be analyzed.  I'm learning a lot and very happy to be where I'm at.  Here's an awesome video about our department.



My Wrist
My first day at  Huntsman was June 25.  The new job was overwhelming and moving and settling in on top of that was just plain hard.  I had completed my first 2 weeks and was finally feeling like I understood my job a little bit and was settled into my new home.  I had just come back after a weekend in Cache Valley and was walking into my house at about 8:45 at night.  It was starting to get dark.  As I was walking up the driveway, I tripped over the curb.  I fell onto my hands and knew immediately that I was injured pretty badly.  I was lightheaded and nauseous and in a lot of pain.  I made my way into the house and asked Paula (my roommate) to take me to the emergency room.  I fractured my left wrist in June of 2005 and had to have surgery to put it back together.  I had a problem with the plate and screws so they were removed in December of that same year and I've been fine ever since.  Until July 8.  After x-rays demonstrated a fracture that was displaced, it was apparent that I would need surgery.  The doctor did a hematoma block which made it feel a whole lot better.  Since I had some pain relief from that, she thought it would be a good idea to try to get my fracture into a better position.  Enter: Finger traps. She put these little yellow things on my fingers and hooked it up to an IV pole.  Then she added weight over my elbow.  If it sounds like a torture device, it kind of was.  Here's the photo evidence:

Needless to say, I missed a week of work.  Everybody was great to work with me and very understanding of the situation.  I met with the hand specialist on Tuesday and had surgery on Thursday.  I was in a cast for a month. Doing everything one handed was a challenge, but I got through it.  I have a nasty scar which is nothing new since I had a nasty scar from the first fracture. I'll probably always have some arthritis in it, but in general, I can't complain.  I'm very fortunate. Things could have been a lot worse than they were and for that I am grateful.  There is nothing quite like seeing people who have an illness that they will never recover from to put wearing a cast for a month into perspective. I felt pretty fortunate that I was dealing with a fracture and not the diagnosis that so many other people are dealing with.

The Big City
I miss Cache Valley and my friends up there.  I miss being close to my parents and sister.  Whenever I feel sad, I remind myself that I have a Target nearby.  I love where I'm living and who I live with.  My new ward is wonderful and I feel very blessed.  I know I am where I am supposed to be and that makes everything easier.

New Adventures

As I indicated in the last post, May 23 was when I made my blog private while I was in the job search process.  Things happened much more quickly than I thought they would because I begin my new position at the University of Utah on June 25.  This is a big change for me, but it is time and I feel very much at peace with where I have ended up.  So watch for new adventures and random musings coming at you from Salt Lake.  Thank you to all of my family and friends for the support and encouragement through this process.  It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a village to help Rachel get on a career path!  For those of you concerned that my new place of employment will change my allegiance to the Aggies, never fear.  This girl will always bleed Aggie blue.

Let the games begin!

I'm starting the daunting task of finding a new job! I don't think I have anything objectionable on this here blog, but I want to be safe so I'm changing the privacy settings.  I'll change the settings back once my employment future is secure!

Birthday Weekend 2012

Now that I've finally completed the blog posts about the ECV of A, I'm nearly current!  I've made it a tradition to go on a birthday trip every year for the last 7 years or so.  I carped the diem and scheduled a girls' weekend in Park City with some of my favorite people.  We hit the outlet stores and we wandered around Main Street, ate a yummy dinner, and then relaxed in the hotel pool and hot tub.

After breakfast, we were going to get pedicures at a spa in Park City, but due to a very annoying mixup, we ended up not getting them so we decided to head to Thanksgiving Point for the Tulip Festival.  I think this is going to be an annual thing for me.  It was such a beautiful day.  It was hot even and I got the sunburn to prove it.  I'm a blessed girl to have such great friends.  Here are the pictures from the festivities.

We scored some bling at the outlet stores! Katie showing her loot.

Jamie and her goods.

Lark liked it so she put a ring on it.

This "chocolat" bar at Harry and David was huge!

As we were walking by, I said that the clown bus was going to give me nightmares. I did actually think about it that night while trying to sleep!

Lark proving that we're always kids at heart.

Jamie and I pretending to be thugs.

It didn't last!



This is Franz the bear in Park City.

Katie and I with one of the "many much moosen" around Park City.

Tulip Festival 2012 - Beautiful!

The tulip posse: Jen, Lark, Jamie, Katie, and me.

Jamie, Katie, Lark, and Jen at the entrance to the Secret Garden.

Jamie and I had to try the stroopwafels.  Verdict: Delicious.

Epic Caribbean Vacation of Awesomeness, Part 6

This is the last installment in the vacation recap!  Our last stop was Nassau, Bahamas.  Jessie and I decided to go parasailing.  Mom and dad went on a glass-bottomed boat.  Craig terrorized Nassau on his own.  Larren and Amberly played with sea lions.  I think we all enjoyed the excursions at this last stop!

Pulling into Nassau

That is Atlantis in the distance and the newest Disney Cruise ship, the Dream.

A better shot of the Dream and our ship's pool deck.

So the Dream has a waterslide that goes out over the ocean. That would give me a heart attack!

The man in white on the left side of the picture was our ship's captain.  This is where we were meeting up to go on our excursion.

Jessie and I almost didn't get to parasail!  It was extremely windy that day.  We were very lucky that we chose the earlier excursion because we wouldn't have been able to go otherwise.  Because it was windy, we had to go up in groups of 3 instead of groups of 2.  Jessie and I went up with a very nice man from Buffalo, New York.  Our boat was called the Chute Faced and that was a little bit alarming, but we went with it!  I took my waterproof camera up with us and gave my regular camera to some of our shipmates to get other pictures of us while we were up there.  The views were incredible and the pictures do not do it justice.  It was very windy, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Jessie rocking the life vest on our way to the parasailing site.

An attempt at a self-portrait with the waterproof camera.

The Chute Faced!  You can get some idea of how high up we were since the waterproof camera had no zoom feature.

Nassau from the air

This is us getting ready to take off.  I'm in the middle, Jessie on the right, and our friend from Buffalo on the left.

We got dipped in the water!

Flying high!

I slipped down a little bit in my harness thing, but I like that in this picture, it looks like I'm ducking down so Jessie can talk to our Buffalo friend.

After parasailing, we went back to the ship to clean up and go shopping. Like all the other ports, there was souvenir shopping very close to where the ships were docked.

This guy was selling the star fish and conch shells that he had caught that day. That is our ship in the background.

Sunset in the Bahamas

 That night, we went to the magic/comedy show again because we enjoyed it so much the first night.  It was just as funny the second time.  We played games and just tried to savor the last moments of vacation.  We had to have our bags packed and placed outside of our stateroom by midnight.  We were in port by 8 a.m. ready to disembark!  Craig, Jessie, mom, dad, and I had the same flight back to Utah.  Our flight didn't leave until 6 p.m.  The ship offered a tour of Miami that would drop you off at the airport.  We thought this was a great way to kill some time and actually see a little of Miami.  These pictures were taken from the back of the tour bus.

This is the Park Central Hotel and that car is always parked there with a statue of Humphrey Bogart in it.  The two phrases that you hear all the time in Miami are "art deco" and "Gloria Estefan" because she owns most of it!

South Beach

This is the Biltmore Hotel. Not too shabby!

This vacation was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it was so wonderful to be able to spend time with my family.  I think we all had a great time.