I got to go on a helicopter ride today!  SO NEAT!!

First time in a helicopter!
 
Herbert Glacier rifts

A deep hole in the glacier filled with water.

Looking out at the glacier.  It was a fairly typical cloudy grey Juneau day!  
These are the helicopters we came in on.

Pretty good self-portrait if I do say so myself!
 

Again!

I'm too lazy to write much right now . . .

Being on-call is such a bittersweet thing.

The pros are that:
- it is extra money each paycheck that I definitely like.
- the more people who do on-call on the evenings and weekends means the less time each person needs to be on call overall, so I'm glad to help out, especially since I don't do on-call during the work day.
- some nights you don't get any calls!

The cons are most definitely that:
- sometimes you go in for one person and get to stay for two. (sort of a pro in a way).
- sometimes you really don't get a lot of sleep (last night I got to sleep between 11PM and 12AM and then again from 2:30 AM to 5:30AM
- you feel like a slave to the pager and you can't get too far out of range of the hospital and jail and most definitely not out of cell phone range.
- it can make you feel really inadequate when you are the "professional" who is supposed to have all the answers and you don't.
- being a mental health professional on-call means you have to make judgments about whether to pursue involuntary mental health commitments and that is no easy job.
- sometimes you get bitter about what you're doing when you get called for false alarms (like someone is suicidal but drunk; they don't need me at that point and sometimes the docs will have me called before a BAC is done - NOT COOL)
- you realize how many people here have serious issues.  It is so sad how much medication-seeking/doctor-shopping and substance use goes on here.  Heroin is on the rise because it is cheaper than Oxycontin on the street.  At least no one injects Oxy.

Sigh.  No real point to this entry other than just to vent.  I was on-call yesterday, from 8PM to 8AM today.  I agreed to take the evening half of today's shift from the guy who'd already signed up for it but needed to give up the evening shift.  I told myself I wouldn't take two days in a row on the weekend again -- but here I am exhausted from the lack of sleep last night and it's only an hour til I have to turn on the pager again.  Here's to hoping tonight is calm.  (BTW, this is exactly what our pagers look like)

News (yessiree) and pictures!