Travels with Ale: There's a whole lotta shakin' going on! (Part II)

Here are some other thoughts that were inspired by the earthquake and subsequent tremors:

My career in emergency medicine began in 1987 with an emergency medicine rotation at Los Angeles county hospital, which is the largest ER in the country.

I showed up the night before my rotation was to begin and moved into the nurse's residence.

I got up early in the morning and was making my tie in front of a mirror when I heard the rumbling.

My first thought was that a train was passing by when I suddenly realized that there were no trains in Los Angeles! The rumbling morphed into violent shaking, the mirror that was on the wall fell & shattered, and I was thrown onto the floor.

I then heard loud and hysterical screams in the hallway commanding everyone to stand under the door frames. Having grown up in New York City & never having experienced an earthquake, I had no idea why that would make sense, so I ran down nine flights of stairs.

My first thought when I got out of the building was to hail a taxi back to New York City! They were no available taxis so I went to the ER where I experienced the havoc of my first mass casualty incident. I already knew that a career in emergency medicine was exactly for me, but this experience consummated my love affair with this specialty.

So my career began with an earthquake and having just retired from the practice of emergency medicine, my career ended with an earthquake. How auspicious!