Seattle to Denver and National Jewish

I am going to Denver to study at National Jewish Health Center for lung disease and in January 2010 I will go to Philadelphia to study at the Penn Center for Biomedical Ethics. This blog will bring you the highlights of my travels and my work with doctors internationally known in their specialties. I want to make this a travel log and a description of medicine as a nurse or intelligent lay person might understand it. I am dedicated to all the nurses that I have worked with through my life. Generally, they take care of the patient as doctors take care of the disease.

I left Seattle on Thursday, Oct 8, 2009 at about 3PM and made it to Spokane for the night. I stayed in a Red Lion in that smelled like a new car but the bed was firm. I ate a steak, a common theme on my trip through Montana and Wyoming, and went to bed. If too excited by now you may want to take a break.

Spokane is the home of the basketball power Gonzaga and Scott Bonvallet, a friend and former colleague. His dad is a thoracic surgeon there.

The next morning I hit Idaho and decided to use my new hands free, stereo Blue tooth system in the new Acura MDX that I bought last week. It smells like a new car too, since it is a new car. Anyway, I called Fox Talk Radio since my new car has XM radio. They were blathering on about how Barack Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, announce that morning, and asked for callers to state why he deserved this prize. Well...it's not like he applied for it and in fact he stated that he didn't think he deserved it but got it and that's that. I was calling to say that he may have been the only one in the world that deserved it this year. Certainly the Dali Lama has won enough and Ahmanidijadh(sp?)isn't quite ready yet. So that was my argument and the pre-screeners bought it so I was waiting to get on the air when I hit a mountain pass and lost contact with civilization and with FOX news.

I looked forward to getting to Montana. While going through Idaho I almost hit a big-horned sheep that was grazing on the grass in the meridian. A Dodge pick-up had to swerve out of its way as well proving that it was not willing to take one of those things on face to face. Along the way I also saw many hawks, roadkill and of course cattle in Wyoming. I also saw aluminum animals on the roadside in parking lots and yards.

Last night I stayed in Bozeman, MT and enjoyed it. Montana State was celebrating their homecoming so there were about 50 people on Main St. at a pep rally. The cheerleaders were wearing snowmobile suits since it was 22 degrees F and snowing. The PA system was giving feedback and generally it didn't seem that successful. The Bobcats played Northern Arizona today but I don't know the score. I hung out in a cool place called, I think, Buffalo Jim's. After a drink I had a great bison steak...tender and juicy. It reminded me of a fun fact I used to bring up on rounds at Overlake. Bison, or buffalo, only have a solitary chest cavity so if you shoot an arrow into one side both lungs go down and the animal drops like a sack of flour. The plains Indians took great advantage of this with arrow technology.

Along the way I listened to an array of music including artists like Radiohead, Marcy Playground, the Ramones, Keith Urban and Kenny Chesney. Since I had XM radio I listened to the Twins lose as well as the Cardinals and I heard Eric Gottesman's (friend and former partner) wife Jessica DJ a country western channel. Hear "Jessica Wade" on channel 16 and 17 on the XM country western dial. I called her, actually I called Eric but she was carrying his cell phone, to say that I heard her on the radio in Montana. She seemed humbled by the fame and told me that she had to put her kids down for a nap because they had a birthday party to attend later that day. Barack Obama would have said the same.

While in Bozeman I picked up a paper with some articles on wolves in the West. Apparently the government introduced grey wolves into Yellowstone and Eastern Idaho in 1998. Wolves have also migrated from Canada into Glacier Park. The hunters and farmers are pissed because these wolves don't stay put and sometimes roam into areas where they are not wanted. In 1998 there were approximately 50 in the region and now there are 500. They have ravenous appetites and are thought to eat 20 Elk a year, or 30-40 deer a piece. Note, it's my understanding that fur can be constipating. Why, I don't know. Now wolves are off the endangered species list and the farmers and hunters can have at 'em. There are 3,000 wolves in Northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and UP Michigan. There families there are asked not to leave their older relatives out overnight (Okay, if you can't take a joke stop reading).

The most depressed towns I saw were Butte, MT and Billings. I am wrestling with the pronunciation of Butte since phonically it should be...you know...two consonants soften the ending vowel and make the "ew" an"u". I don't know how they got the accepted pronunciation.

Next I landed at the Little Big Horn, just southeast of Billings about 50 miles. What a disaster for the United States military in 1876. General Custer, under the command of the Northwest regimen under General Terry was sent to put the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne down, or at least to ask them to return to their reservation. Under a previous treaty made between the greater Sioux nation and the United States government under President Grant they were all to be place on reservations. The Lakota Sioux under the command of Sitting Bull had about 2000 warriors and Custer had 600. The Lakota and the Cheyenne were not interested in living on reservations and took it to Custer's command. On Last Stand Hill Custer and his men were eventually slaughtered. Custer was buried there but later exhumed and buried at West Point. The battlefield cite was chilling to experience. I couldn't help but wonder what some of the enlisted men were thinking as they were being led to battle in this barren and cold place. Most were poorly educated and some didn't even speak English as they were recent immigrants. What a terrible way to die so far from home, but so goes war.

I'm now in Casper, WY, a little place in the middle of cattle, buttes and rolling hills. It's snowing on Oct. 10 and the temperature is 20 degrees F. Tomorrow I'll be in Denver and ready to go to work with the doctors of National Jewish Health Center.