USA update

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I probably won't be blogging every day over break, since there really just isn't that much interesting to say. But, I will keep blogging, so people don't think i've disappeared. Mostly, I've just been enjoying the delicious food that I've missed while in St. Maarten, the technology which is non-existent there, and the amazing roads which do not age your car 10 years in 2. When I see things like the brand new Whole Foods market and Bed Bath and Beyond which were just built by my house, along with all the additions to the already very nice Annapolis Mall and all the other construction that's been going on, I really don't know what I did with myself for nearly 2 years. It's very easy to take for granted how great things are here, until you see how things are somewhere else.

In any case, I spent the other day (and night) back at the firehouse. I'm trying to remember what calls I ran, but there really wasn't anything that exciting. I did treat one rather intoxicated man with chest pain. The alcoholics are always tricky because it's sometimes difficult to tell if they actually have something going on, or if they're just suffering the side effects of being an alcoholic, or both. This particular guy had a normal 12-lead EKG and seemed in a much better mood than most people having an MI, but he also had anywhere from 2 to 6 stents put in anywhere from many years ago to a month ago. I know that sounds awfully vague, but he was a pretty lousy historian. He was also taking some medications which led me to believe that he had more of a history than he was aware of. So, I just did the safest thing I could and treated him as though he were having an MI. If he was, then I may have saved his life. If he wasn't, then he still had improved blood flow to his heart, which is rarely a bad thing.

Oh...and my luggage finally came, at some ungodly hour of the morning. It actually did make it on a flight the day after I left, which is what they said would happen. But, since flights from St. Maarten typically don't get in to Baltimore until late at night, it seemed like it took 2 days to get here. After a very long day yesterday of emptying 5 overstuffed bags of luggage, my room is finally back together and actually is looking like a decent place to live.