Montana!
Folks ask "so, you from around here?" No. "Got family here?" No. "So...ever been here before at all?" Not really. Passed within a hundred miles of here on the highway a few years back, but the smoke from the wild fires was too thick to see anything and I didn't stop. "So, why are you here?"
And there is the real question. Usually I answer with a pat response: I (we) were looking for a cool mountain town in the west with a trauma center hospital, and ____ was on the short list.
This is true. What you see missing from the above statement however is the name of the town in question. Maybe it is Missoula. But maybe it is Kalispell. Ya see, Risa got a job in the ER of the hospital in Missoula. I had interviewed at the same hospital, and though it had gone well, they simply had no open nursing jobs (Risa took the very last one), and wouldn't for several months. Ok, thought I, I'll look elsewhere. And elsewhere I did look, for every concievable nurse gig within 100 miles, in prisions and jails and schools and retirement homes and clinics and hospitals and summer camps. Nothing...within 100 miles of Missoula.
So, in a moment of curiosity, I expanded my horizions to a town near the edge of Glacier National Park, north of the largest freshwater lake in the western USA, surrounded by mountains and only and hour south of Canadia: Kalispell. And there I found a job, not wiping butts in a nursing home, or bloody noses in a school, but in the ER. A busy, bumpin' ER that handles all the trauma of summer tourists falling of mountains and getting trampled by moose and eaten by grizzly bears. In fact, one of our docs wrote the protocol for post surgical grizzly bear treatment. (that is treatment of humans mauled by bears, we don't actually treat the bears in our hospital...too many uninsured in that population.)
So I get to do what I wanted to do, in a place I love, and so does Risa. The only catch is that those two places are 128 miles apart. So I drive north for my days on, spend 2 or 3 nights a week in Kalispell, and then drive home for my days off. Not the ideal situation, but so far seems quite do-able and not so bad.
By the way, if you are thinking of how you would love to come and visit, but gosh Montana is just so far away, consider that allegiant air has fights into missoula from mesa/phoenix, vegas, and LA for usually under $100 each way (sometimes under $60). So no excuses.
And there is the real question. Usually I answer with a pat response: I (we) were looking for a cool mountain town in the west with a trauma center hospital, and ____ was on the short list.
This is true. What you see missing from the above statement however is the name of the town in question. Maybe it is Missoula. But maybe it is Kalispell. Ya see, Risa got a job in the ER of the hospital in Missoula. I had interviewed at the same hospital, and though it had gone well, they simply had no open nursing jobs (Risa took the very last one), and wouldn't for several months. Ok, thought I, I'll look elsewhere. And elsewhere I did look, for every concievable nurse gig within 100 miles, in prisions and jails and schools and retirement homes and clinics and hospitals and summer camps. Nothing...within 100 miles of Missoula.
So, in a moment of curiosity, I expanded my horizions to a town near the edge of Glacier National Park, north of the largest freshwater lake in the western USA, surrounded by mountains and only and hour south of Canadia: Kalispell. And there I found a job, not wiping butts in a nursing home, or bloody noses in a school, but in the ER. A busy, bumpin' ER that handles all the trauma of summer tourists falling of mountains and getting trampled by moose and eaten by grizzly bears. In fact, one of our docs wrote the protocol for post surgical grizzly bear treatment. (that is treatment of humans mauled by bears, we don't actually treat the bears in our hospital...too many uninsured in that population.)
So I get to do what I wanted to do, in a place I love, and so does Risa. The only catch is that those two places are 128 miles apart. So I drive north for my days on, spend 2 or 3 nights a week in Kalispell, and then drive home for my days off. Not the ideal situation, but so far seems quite do-able and not so bad.
By the way, if you are thinking of how you would love to come and visit, but gosh Montana is just so far away, consider that allegiant air has fights into missoula from mesa/phoenix, vegas, and LA for usually under $100 each way (sometimes under $60). So no excuses.
posted by Jared | 9:17 AM
1 Comments:
Hay.... time to UPDATE this here blog... seems some rather good stuff has happened.... and we await your posting......
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