Wake Up Call

We've all been there...Something wakes you up before you intended on waking up and it just goes down hill from there...

This is my story.

A physical therapy clinic that I had interviewed with two weeks earlier flew me back down for a clinic visit and had put me up in a hotel for the weekend. I set my alarm for 8am Friday to get up and go for a run and get ready for my day in the clinic...

RING RING RING RING RING!!

What the heck!? What time is it? Who the heck is calling me at 6:45am?? What is going on? So I crawl out of bed and stumble over to the desk and pick up the phone to hear "Goodmorning, this is your wake up call" I DIDN'T ASK FOR A WAKE UP CALL AT 6:45 IN THE A-M!! Grrrrr!!!! Ok...1:15 left to sleep before I have to get up and get ready. I'm going back to sleep. WRONG! I crawl back into bed and finally get comfortable and I have to pee. That might be one of the worst things ever...when you have to get up and go to the bathroom when you are all comfy in bed. Ok, get up. Take care of business. Get back to bed. Sleep...Wrong again. Now I have hunger pains shooting through my poor little tummy. GOSH! So I toss and turn for a while and finally get the pain to subside. Ok. 50 minutes left to sleep. Sleep...Are you kidding me? The drapes are just far enough apart that the wonderful Arizona sunshine is shining in on my not so smiling face. Get up again. Close the drapes. Crawl back into bed. Toss and turn for a little bit. Re-adjust the five pillows surrounding my head for the 8th time. Sleep.

30 minutes later... Beep Beep Beep Beep.

I hate it when that happens.

First Class Experience

This is a great story, just under rotten circumstances. Easter weekend my sister and I took last minute flights to Washington because my grandma was close to passing away and we wanted to have a chance to say goodbye. I'm not going to go into any more detail than that right now other than she past away a week later. But no more tears and on to the good stuff.
So my sister and I bought these last minute flights and rushed off to the airport. This was my sister's first time flying with assigned seats (we're generally Southwest girls) and I was being the helpful big sister that I am and taking the lead onto the plane. Well, I went to turn right and find my seat, 3C, and found myself in for a surprise. I looked up at the seat numbers and the first number I saw was 20C. 20C? What the heck happened to 3C? I stood there for a second or two longer and finally had to ask the flight attendant what happened to 3C? She politely pointed and directed me to the left. That's right...to the left. When I looked up and saw first class I thought there was some big mistake...How on earth did I end up with a first class ticket? I checked the name...yep, Alison Merritt. I checked the seat number again...yep, 3C. That was me! So I sit down and my sister sits down behind me. Oddly enough, I just couldn't get comfortable. Not because the seat wasn't nice and big and plush, but because I still didn't think I belonged up there. I didn't know what to do with myself honestly. :) My sister ended up sitting next to this cute, 29 year old military guy and just got her flirt on all the way to Seattle. I on the other hand ended up with this spoiled rotten, teenage boy next to me who had the audacity to wake me up to point out the train we were flying over, read over my shoulder out of my National Physical Therapy Exam prep book...aloud, and climb all over me to get out of his seat and to the bathroom. The flight is only 1:45 long! HOLD IT!
Anyways, besides that little blemish, my first class experience was a hoot! Did you know they actually serve your drinks in real glasses in first class?? Its nice. And that beverages are ENDLESS! And the snacks are endless too! And I'm not talking about packages of peanuts either...I had an entire Twix bar and a BANANA! Yes, a banana, and I was sooooo excited about it! And it just kept getting better because they played an episode of The Office too!! Which worked out perfectly because I just put in the FREE earphones, turned up the volume, and drowned out the unappreciated noise coming from the seat next to me. I had to be careful not to laugh out too loudly :) . The pillow and blanket were a nice touch too. I would have cuddled up and slept, like I always tend to do on my flights, but I didn't want to waste a minute of my first class experience once I figured out how everything worked.
So that was my little taste of what first class feels like and I think I could get very used to that :)
Don't get me wrong, I love the coach experience...crowded walkways, jam packed overhead bins, the infamous "middle seat", the guy whose body flows out of the middle seat and into yours, the package of stale peanuts and the plastic cup so full of ice you only get two sips of sprite out of it, and the bump I get on my head everytime I attempt to stand up and exit the plane from the overhead storage bin. I mean honestly, who doesn't love all of that!

Proof Katie and I sat up in first class: Check out the REAL glass and FREE earphones!

Stairs, Stairs, and More Stairs

My last internship is at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah. It's the new hospital that was opened a year or two ago and is lovingly referred to as "the Death Star". Inpatient rehab is up on the 12th floor of the hospital and is where I spend my final days as a graduate student. Well, one of the rehab docs apparently had this brilliant idea to create teams and race up and down the 24 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS from the main level up to the 12th floor. That's right...there are 24 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS...not 12...don't let that fool you as it did me.... Well, there are enough crazy people who work on the 12th floor that there were 5 teams of 4 people each who participated in this ridiculous challenge. I was lucky enough to be recruited to one of the teams which included Adam, the PT manager; Kasey, one of the OTs; Courtney, one of the PT aides; and myself. Adam tends to underestimate me on occasion and that's how I got myself recruited to his team...to prove myself (what's new? haha). I had no idea what I got myself into...
Ask me when the last time I walked up more than one flight of stairs was before I did the challenge? Yeah, I don't know either. So needless to say I went in a little untrained after returning from Arizona two days before. Not the smartest thing I've ever done. Adam and Kasey took the 2 downstairs legs which left Courtney and I with the 2 upstairs legs. Their reasoning was that they had more weight to help gravity get them downstairs faster. HA! I suckered Courtney into going first so I had more time to freak out and wonder what the heck I had gotten myself into...
Adam came racing down the stairs and tagged my hand and off I went...
The first adventure I ran into was the mysterious 3rd floor. You can't get to the 3rd floor from the public elevators or the staff elevators so I just thought it didn't exist. Oh but it does and that added 2 flights of stairs to my ascent that I wasn't prepared for. I had to run down this little hallway and up a different flight of stairs on the 3rd floor. As silly as it sounds, I was afraid I was going to get lost and let my team down. But I managed and now know that there IS a third floor that you can't get to from the elevators (the number 3 isn't even on one of the buttons...). Then things were going pretty well until I hit the 8th floor. Almost wanted to die, but I still had 4 floors left to go...which translates into 8 more flights of stairs. I decided I would take the 2 flights up to the ninth floor walking up while still skipping steps with the idea that it would be a little rest break and I could bust out the remaining 6 flights of stairs up to the top. WRONG!! Once my legs stopped...they stopped. It was like running through quick sand to get them to move again. I was so mad at myself for stopping! And thinking about how I was going to be the slow putzy one on my team...the intern who couldn't make the cut. Fabulous. I finally made it up to my last flight of stairs, where I officially wanted to just keel over and die, and I literally had to swing my legs around from my hips to get up the stairs and tag Kasey's hand because they just wouldn't move. My legs were done. And that was that.
Our team ended up coming in 2nd only to the other therapy team, so I guess that's ok. But the best part was my time for going up. I honestly thought I had blown it for my team and that my time would be horrible. Believe it or not, its really easy to lose track of time when you just keep going up and up and up and up and up and up and...I'm sure you get the point. Anyway, I ended up racing up 24 flights of stairs in 95 seconds!! That's pretty much AMAZING! My time was the fastest "up" split for the girls and the 3rd best time overall. I was only behind 2 of the OTs who both ended up throwing up at the top, one of whom missed work for the next 2 days and the other who needed supplemental oxygen to recover. Racing up that many stairs tears you up! It took me a good 30 minutes to get it all back together, but I neither got sick, nor needed O2 for my recovery. So really...who's the tough one here? : )
Moral of the story...I'm going to take the elevator next time : )