Many, many thanks to all of you who contributed to our charity walk!

Linus and I walked the 1-mile Bay to Barkers walk today in Albany. We had a great time, and raised $250 to help homeless pets. The walk was a blast. Earl came to cheer us on (he’s still on crutches, so no walking for him for a few more months- uck), and we even met some fellow corgi owners during the walk.

As my computer is still broken (I’ve actually bit the bullet and decided to just get a new Mac in a few weeks once school starts), I am hogging Earl’s laptop right now to write a quick update while he takes a snooze. Here’s a quick Race Report:

We got a little lost on the way there, so were running late. We arrived and it was right to registration and the walk was starting right away!
Also, my phone was somehow set on “black and white” mode for a bit without me noticing… hope you don’t mind the lack of color:
OFF WE GO!

The walk went along the Bay and was a really gorgeous route. It was at Golden Gate Fields, which was a pretty cool park! Would be fun to come back and check it out solo. There were lots of people just enjoying the park not affiliated with the Humane Society walk. Runners, people walking dogs, hikers…

About a half mile in, lo and behold Linus met a new corgi friend. I swear, corgis flock to one another!

This little guy was Max. He is 2 years old. His momma and I walked together for the rest of the walk and chatted.

When we were done with the walk, they had lots of fun games and activities for Dogs and Humans. There were various stations set up where you could play games with your dogs. One of them was “nose hunting.” Basically, they would hide hot dogs under various boxes after the dog had a chance to get a good sniff in, and then gave him a “FIND IT” command and let him go to to work. Linus surprised me and displayed a really natural affinity for this! I never knew he was much of a scent hound. He found the hotdogs in three progressively harder set ups, all on his first try. The lady running the booth was so impressed she was trying to recruit him into a tracking class. I might try and look one up near us- seems like a fun, relatively low impact activity that he might really enjoy.

They also had a Rally setup where you could try out an obstacle course with your dog, although we skipped that one because it seemed a bit high-impact for our fragile woof. Linus, did, however, thoroughly enjoy playing “Bobbing for Hotdogs.” He hunted for a submerged hot dog bit a bunch of different depths of dog dishes. He loved it! He made it all the way to the deepest dish and got his whole head underwater to get the hotdog.

Finally, we did PAINTING!!!! This was super fun! Basically, you put your dog’s paws in the different colors of paint, and let him walk through a “canvas” poster to make a work of art. So cute

Linus wasn’t very excited about putting his paws in the paint (as soon as a sniff revealed the paint not to be edible, he wasn’t interested anymore), although with some treat utilization, we were able to create the following, which is now proudly hanging up on our fridge (so dorky, ha ha):

Check out those painted paws:

Some other dogs really got messy with the paint! A few of them we completely covered in paint head to toe. Some had it over their entire rear ends from sitting down in the paint trays. heh heh When we got home, I gave Linus a full bath and got most of the paint out, although one paw is still slightly pink.

Here’s Larry. He won the Dog/Owner Look-a-Like Contest. We’ll just say his owner… had hair like Larry. Hopefully she styled it specifically for the occasion

All in all, it was a wonderful event for a great cause. A very big, sincere thanks to our wonderful and generous donors who chipped in to sponsor our walk! The dogs and cats of the Berkeley Humane Society- as well as Linus and I- give you our deep gratitude and many tail wags of appreciation.

Cheers,
Courtney and Linus the Corgi

Last week, I had the privilege of teaching Bystander CPR with other instructors and volunteers from the San Francisco Paramedic Association. We split up and covered a wide area all over the city. There were demos out on the streets, inside City Hall, in firehouses, and classrooms. I spent the day at SFFD Station 51 teaching CPR to the Visitacion Valley Boys and Girls Club.

It was a great day- we taught about 25 middle schoolers Bystander CPR.

I have to say, it was harder than you’d think! Teaching how to give compressions to kids… not as straight forward as you’d imagine, but everyone gave it a shot and got the hang of it.

Funniest quote of the day:
Me: “Okay guys, this is an AED. [holds up AED] Can anyone tell me what AED stands for?”
Kid: “ANTIBIOTICS!!”

The firehouse itself was the biggest hit. Everyone wanted to see the trucks, the PA and dispatch system, and of course the poles!
There was a Q&A session which mostly consisted of “How do you become a firefighter?” and “What’s the biggest fire you’ve ever put out?” Note: no one was really interested in how to work on an ambulance haha….

Everyone watched in awe as two firefighters did a pole demo:

Here’s all the kids at the end of the day. What a fantastic group!

Reading the Chronicle today while sipping a coffee with Linus at my feet, I was inspired by this article about a Grandmother who cooks meals for the homeless despite having lost her apartment and also this letter to the editor by a 12 year old detailing all the ways she has given back- collecting old coats, raising $$ for foster kids and putting up decorations. In fact, here’s the letter in its entirety:

What the holidays mean

In response to the editorial “Attention, shoppers” (Dec. 1), I was glad to read the last paragraph “and don’t forget about others this season.”

This season I have helped out by collecting coats for the needy at One Warm Coat, helped stock the San Francisco Food Bank, raised money by selling nuts for my Girl Scout troop that enabled us to buy toys for kids in foster care for Christmas, and this weekend I will be decorating Ocean Avenue with ribbons on the parking meters.

Please tell all your readers that some people really need their help this season, and don’t take everything for granted. This holiday season is not only about gifts and shopping.

DOREEN PACINI, age 12, 7th grade

So, when it comes to the spirit of the holidays and helping my fellow man, I’m getting schooled by an evicted Granny and a 7th grader.  Time to fix that.  “We should really do something,” I thought.  Yes, I volunteer at in the Emergency Department once a week at the SFGH Trauma Center, however that is relatively self-serving as it directly relates to my career and possibly future med school applications.

And the very nature of my job nowadays is helping others, but come on… I get PAID for that! I want to do more.

So- what should we do? What can I do? We could take a cue from Granny, and cook a bunch of meals and bring them to the homeless. But to be honest, after getting assaulted and almost stabbed by a crazy guy in the Tenderloin last week, I am not very inclined to be out interacting with a bunch of possibly crazy junkies. Perhaps a touch of PTSD in that, but… :shudder: I am not really up for it right now.

My friend Elaine carries around Cliff bars in her purse at all times and distributes them whenever she walks by a homeless person. Maybe I could do something like that- get a couple of boxes of Cliff bars and dole them out. I’d rather do something more, and as I said, I’m not very down to be initiating interactions with random homeless people.

I could go through all my old clothes and bring them to the Salvation Army. But I do that almost once a year already, so things are pretty weeded out at this point- especially because for the while I wasn’t working we were too broke to buy any new clothes!

Hmm, hmm…

Well, a few minutes of google searching led me to this site, which lists volunteer opportunities in various cities, and has some specific holiday volunteer opportunities. As a certified health care worker, looks like I could dole out swine flu shots to the needy.  And this place looks great, however they need people on Fridays, and I work all day on Fridays. Argh, work schedule rules out a bunch of stuff because I just had to bypass about 5 other things that wanted people on weekends.

Ooh! I found something- wrapping gifts for needy kids. I love wrapping. And they need people on MTW right before Christmas. This could be good.

Oh and here’s another- bringing meals to lonely elderly on Christmas Day. That works as well.

Alright- I just called both those last two places and signed up!   The nerd begrudgingly agreed to deliver meals with me on Christmas morning as well.  (He balks, however I suspect under that indifferent interior he is a big softie).

me: oh hey how about doing this? delivering meals to lonely elderly on christmas morning?

Earl: if you want

me: dont be so enthusiastic

Hurrah!   This is gonna be great.  What about you?  Any ideas for helping others this holiday season?  Are you inspired to do something?

Well, this moved along quickly (Much faster than I thought it would- TB test, background check, orientation & interview all completed in under a month)!

Today was my training day as a volunteer at the new ER. It seems a bit more… strict than the last Emergency Department where I used to volunteer. Because it’s a higher volume, higher level trauma center teaching hospital, it makes sense that they have to keep a tighter reign on the volunteers. This could be a bummer, because it means I’ll get to do less stuff (no more helping nurses take samples, put in IVs and foleys), however they do have ER Technicians, which I’m hoping to become… Hopefully I can befriend a few of the ER Techs, learn those ropes and perhaps even network my way in eventually.

The vibe I got was you basically go in, put your face down and do the work for about two or three months and not really bother anyone, and then once they get a feel for you, you can start kind of asking questions, making yourself a bit more known, observing treatments and doing a bit more. It seems like they get a lot of volunteers who just come in, do it for two or five months, and then leave… so I could see why the high turnover is a big disincentive for the nurses and physicians to want to make an investment in getting to know the volunteers. Hopefully after a while if I make it known that I’m a student, relatively intelligent and hardworking, and eager to learn I can find someone willing to take me under their wing and get some exposure. I *did* recognize one doctor already who I know already from volunteering in the ED at St. Lukes- crazy what a small city this is!

As for right now, it looks like my duties are going to consist mainly of cleaning and changing beds, restocking room supplies, liaising with patients and generally helping nurses and physicians with whatever else they need. I think I’m going to put together a giant fruit plate (or cookies? On the fence about this… it seemed like the last ER where I volunteered used to get so many freaking trays of sweets all the time that I bet they would be dying for some healthy stuff) and bring it in for all the nurses next week for my first shift as a way to get started on the right foot.

There were so many beds! I feel like I barely oriented myself!! My training was about two hours long. I was trained by a person in a very similar situation as myself- he is a career changer as well. Formerly an IT executive, he’s now going to nursing school. Not only was he a great trainer, but super helpful telling me about some colleges around here to be doing post-bacc classes. He currently volunteers in the ICU at the same hospital, so perhaps we’ll run into each other again.

Oh my gosh- you know what else?? The uniforms we get to wear as volunteers are FREAKING ADORABLE!!! They consist of a scrub “seersucker” blazer and khaki cargo scrub pants. Instant love. I have to say, very very cute… I loved my old volunteer uniform as well. What can I say, I guess scrubs suit me. I’ll post up some photos of the uniform soon- right now I am heating up the iron to iron-on the Emergency Department patch they gave me. Lol- iron on patches. How old school is that? We don’t even own an iron, I had to borrow one from our neighbors.

So as it stands right now, I’ll be volunteering every Wednesday for a five-hour block. Once I’ve done that for a few months or so, and learned the ropes a little, I think I am going to try and get in on an “exciting” shift… maybe Friday or Saturday late nights. My trainer told me to expect to see a lot of ETOH and otherwise altered patients.

All in all, really psyched! Here’s to another step in the right direction towards future goals.