Welcome to Winnemucca, NV

Alright! I've made it to Winnemucca!

The drive was very long... 12 hours overall with some stops.  I was exhausted last night haha.  Getting up at 4AM and then driving on four hours of sleep is not the greatest.  We went through Wyoming which was very boring, and then through Utah and Nevada.  I had never been to Utah before, and I have to say I'm very impressed.

The landscape was so mountainous and green, and there was so much cool geology! Also if you've never seen it, the great salt lake is MASSIVE.  It was also really interesting driving by it, there were little messages and pictures traced out in the salt with rocks.  It was cute driving by and seeing "I love you" and peace signs and hearts.  I remember​ seeing something about Trump too.  Gave me something to look at besides just salt.

So far Nevada seems rather dull.  There aren't many trees around here, just dirt and scrubby bushes.  It is the desert after all. Winnemucca is a very, very small town with very little going on except puns and events that make fun of the town name.  You'd be surprised how many ways you can use the word Winnemucca.

When we got to where I'll be living it didn't seem like much, but aside from some minor maintenance fixes, the place where I'm living is pretty darn nice! :)

After unloading my stuff we went out to the Martin Hotel for dinner.  They served a variety of Basque foods and all of it was delicious.  They had the weirdest food combo I've ever tried: salad with beans on top and salt, garlic powder, and pepper on top of that.  It was sooooo good.  Like I would eat it again in a heartbeat.

I also discovered that Winnemucca has some funny street names... They have Melarkey Street, Potato Road, Potato Place, and West Potato Road. There is also Haskel Street for any programmers out there, haha.

I'm planning on meeting my boss for dinner tonight to meet him before the big day next Tuesday!

I am both terrified and excited for everything going on.   Now to unpack my life for the umpteenth time and get settled in.  I'll keep posting updates!

And They're Off!

Finally headed out to Nevada! I'll explain more about my internship in about 13 hours.

Latest Adventure: Barrick Internship

Hello everyone! I wanted to get back into the habit of making posts, so this is the start of many this summer.  

This year I was offered an internship with the world's top gold producer, Barrick Gold.  I will be in Nevada working on geology underground at the Turquoise Ridge mine! I'm very excited but also very nervous!  Having never been underground before, this will be a very new experience.  I will keep everyone posted on my adventures in this newest chapter of life. :)

Thrombosis Awareness Week

Alright guys... it's been quite a while since my last post.  Couldn't even tell you how long its been or which one was last.  However I have several things to update.

This week begins Thrombosis Awareness Week, May 1-6.  But why am I telling you this?

Here goes the story.

In April 2016 I was put on put on birth control for dealing with acne.  For several years prior to this I was told that it was the only way to deal with my horrible cystic acne.  Antibiotics were temporary, creams only worked for a while, but birth control was the way to go... Or so they said.  

Around the end of September and early October 2016, I started noticing that my stamina was decreasing very greatly.  I was finding it very difficult to make it up stairs without running out of breath, I was extremely tired, and overall just felt useless.  My first thought was: wow, this is awful but it must be because of how stressful school has been.  This was quite a reasonable assumption for me to make, as a couple weeks prior I had been pulling really late nights with a lot of stress and homework to get everything done.  I thought I was feeling the after effects of that hell week.  Boy was I wrong.  

At about the same period as this tiredness, I felt a pain in my left calf.  It was an unusual pain, something that felt close to the bone, like a tendon or something similar.  It somehow felt familiar too, like I had had the same kind of pain before, so I simply ignored it.  It usually went away with walking around anyway.

After about a week and a half, the pain in my leg got worse (though I could still walk it off), and so did my breathing.  It was to the point where after one flight of stairs I felt like I was going to pass out on the landing on my way to class.  I couldn't sing in the shower anymore because there simply was not enough oxygen in my lungs to do that and shower.  I was exhausted.  I had filled out WebMD tools and symptom checkers all over the place.  Most of them led to pretty scary conclusions such as stroke or pulmonary embolism.  "Surely it can't be that?" I thought.  After all, the symptoms for those that had been described by my gynecologist were very different.  She said to be wary of 'stabbing pains' and 'swelling' and things like that.  What I was experiencing was nothing of the sort.  I had a slight tickle in my lungs and the pain in my leg was dull.  "Definitely can't be that" I thought.  My mom told me to go to urgent care but I told her the pain wasn't that bad.  It really wasn't, I could deal with it.

I started taking my inhaler thinking maybe my lungs were reacting to something, but it never helped.  I thought it had expired so that was probable cause.

Eventually, on October 4th, I went to the school nurse, asking for an inhaler refill and something to help me breathe.  She talked to me for a while and I described everything that had been going on.  She thought it could either be pulmonary embolism or some kind of pneumonia.  She did her best not to alarm me with her suspicions but told me to go to the ER.  At this point I was like "Cool, ok thanks, I'll drive over there," but no, she wanted to have me driven over there.  She offered to call an ambulance for me.  At this point I started freaking out.  I declined and called my roommate to pick me up.  She drove me to the ER, doing her best to make light of the situation with me, promising that we'd be out of there after the X-Ray the nurse ordered in time to get pizza.

I was admitted pretty quickly because they had phoned ahead, and they started wiring me up.  At one point there were no fewer than 5 different nurses in the small ER room with me at once trying to figure out what was wrong.  They put me on an inhaler to try to open my lungs, they were drawing blood, running tests, trying to get information from me.  It was crazy.  Finally they discovered that my blood was positive for clotting factors and I likely had clots.  I started crying.  The doctor that had broken that news on me basically just left with no more than a pat on my knee.

They soon did a CT scan and found that I had many blood clots in my lungs (explaining my trouble breathing, haha).  They gave me a belly shot of blood thinners and admitted me for the night.  This whole time my roommate stayed by my side and I am forever grateful for this.  And she got other friends to come visit and bring me pizza!  I was not disappointed by that.  Afterward my other roommate came by with my stuff.

My parents drove six hours to make sure I was okay, arriving there at midnight.  Later that night they did an ultrasound and found the mother clot in my calf where the little ones had broken off of.  I was terrified.  I was diagnosed with Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) and multiple Pulmonary Embolisms (PEs).  After a terrifying and sleepless night in the hospital they ran another ultrasound on my heart to make sure it wasn't labored under the blood clots, and ran some more tests.  Eventually they found that I didn't have any genetic factors involved, it was only my birth control.

Funny isn't it? The one thing that was supposed to help solve unbalanced hormones and acne almost killed me?

This should not have happened.  For multiple reasons.  Just as a PSA, Gianvi is dangerous, so please consider it before accepting this prescription.  There is an open lawsuit against the maker of this product, it should not be on the shelf.  Secondly, the symptoms of a DVT and PEs are NOT always what they describe them as.  They can be different for everyone, so please be extremely careful of this.  This is an extremely dangerous condition, as it can lead to stroke, heart attack, and death.

Because of my close brush with death, I am now suffering several consequences.  There are certain medications that I will never be able to take.  In the future if I decide to have kids I have to be extremely careful.

Anyway, I've been harboring this story for a long time, and brewing over it.  There's still a lot I'm still dealing with, but I think it's good to get off my chest.

I hope this story is useful for somebody who might be experiencing the same things.  To a lot of the doctors I saw, I was a very unique case because my symptoms didn't match.  They are still amazed that this happened to someone who was only 19.  I hope this helps raise awareness about this very serious condition.  Please keep this in mind, and be safe.  

Happy New Year

Dear 2017,

Everybody has been ready for you since about September. Now you are finally here and I'm starting to feel like life is going too fast.  During you, I turn 20. I will have lived two decades. It probably doesn't seem like much, but from my perspective it does.  Right now, things should be picking up.  So much is already being expected of me, and there's more to come.  It is around this time that many things are supposed to happen, and life is supposed to follow a certain path.  My hope for you is that nothing veers too out of line, that new "firsts" will come my way and broaden my horizons.  I hope that you will be filled with good, and happy surprises and blessings.  Every year brings its own sorrows with it, but I hope you show me, and everyone, more love than hate, more good than bad, and always more happiness.

I pray that you will open my mind to greater possibilities, show me how to be more optimistic and positive, and reign in my reactions.  Please also show me how to be a better person, daughter, friend, girlfriend, geologist, granddaughter, and everything else that I am and want to be.

My only new year's resolution is to learn from you; about the world, about life, and about me.

Please teach me. I want to grow.

Open Letter to College Students

To all of my friends and acquaintances returning to or starting college:

This year is going to be great.  If you’re a freshman, moving in might seem kind of scary, being away from home can kind of suck, but you’ll survive.  You’re going to meet all types of new people, probably many that you won’t like.  But that’s okay, you don’t have to like everybody.  And the few you do find that are worth keeping will help you on your journey as much as you will help them. 

You will be stressed, you will fear tests and teachers and projects, but you will make it.  Sometimes you might feel stupid, like you shouldn’t be where you are.  I promise you, you are not stupid.  You took the same tests as everyone else to get to where you are, and you endured your own suffering, just like they did.  Everybody deals with stress and tiredness, its how we come out of it that determines who we are.  If we give in, we won’t get anywhere.  But if we keep going, do our best to accept the circumstances as what they are and work with them, we all have the potential to overcome all obstacles. You deserve your shot, and you have earned it.  Go make the most of it. 

But keep in mind it will not be easy.  Even so, always give everything you do 100%. Your homework, your classes, your friends, your relationships, and yes, even your fun. Especially your fun.  You may find yourself with less free time, so enjoy it to its fullest too.  And sometimes this will mean faking it.  It is not always possible to get enough sleep, or finish your homework on time, or make straight A’s.  But no matter what, never quit.  You can do this.  You have it in you to make it, and you will do it.

And even when it’s really hard and nothing is working the way it should, keep smiling.  Even when you’re feeling the worst, smiling will always make it better (even if it’s fake).  So take a second to smell the fresh air when you walk to class.  Really feel the sun on your skin or the cold wind in your lungs.  And smile. Because everything is going to be okay. 

Chips and Cracks

I realized something tonight while I was having a conversation with my boyfriend.  I know I've written similar things before about people being imperfect and unique, but this is a different perspective on that.

People are like old, worn, teacups. Each of us has a different set of cracks and chips from where we've fallen apart and been put back together.  Some of our rims might be thicker or more delicate, some of us might be pretty or simple.  Some of our cracks may run deeper than other cups.  But we are all subjected to changes.  We may be used for containing hot liquids or cold, or perhaps we get dropped too roughly in the sink.  But all of these changes affect the very material of who we are.  And, like a very loved and favorited teacup, each time we are dropped or start to crack, we are put back together by those who love us.  In the end each time we are dropped we do change some, and perhaps we don't retain our original character or luster.  And indeed we still carry sharp edges that may poke the ones who love us.  But in the end these chips and cracks do not matter because we are a favorite teacup of someone, and they will love us regardless.  Nobody enjoys being cut by a sharp piece of ceramic, but the cup contains more good qualities, memories, and personality than any of the others.  It is, after all, our favorite cup for a reason.