First Car Accident

We got back to Pullman from Thanksgiving Break around 5 p.m. and decided that we should go grocery shopping at Winco since we had some time to kill, we had no food (milk, bread, cheese etc.) and it was a Saturday.  We got into the car and drove the back way on Airport road to Moscow.  Little did we know that the weather had changed in the ten minutes that we were driving.  The moisture on the road had quickly turned into black ice and we had no idea.  I told Megan to slow down just past the Pullman-Moscow Airport, I looked ahead and saw some lights…similar to road flares.  We crept forward to see that they were road flares and Megan hit the brakes too hard and we went out of control and into the ditch we went, hitting the back end of a truck that had already been in the ditch.  

Megan started hyperventilating and I was in too much pain to even move.  My seatbelt definitely saved my body from being hurt really bad.  I calmed Megan down as best as I could and a guy who ditched the truck came to our rescue.  He pulled Megan out and then he pulled me out, I had to climb out of the driver’s side.  The car was definitely on its side with the passenger side parallel with the ground.  We were not dressed for the occasion.  We had no idea we were going to spend the next hour outside in sandals and a thin layer of clothing...at least I was wearing a coat.  Megan called her dad and told him what had happened.  While we were calling parents and tow trucks, another car tried to make the corner and ended up in the ditch.  

 A few moments later a police officer came and told us that they blocked off the road so no more cars could come through.  The only other vehicle that came through was a gravel truck lining the road with sand and gravel.  He assured us that the tow truck was on its way.  While we waited, one of the friends of the guy with the truck was there to lend us their car for warmth, we climbed in and waited.  When the tow truck arrived, they got the car ahead of the truck out first, then the truck and then Megan’s car.  I went down into the ditch and grabbed the pieces that came off her car, just for souvenirs and to remember the occasion by.  Megan paid the tow truck guy and the car actually still drove. 

 We drove it to Dissmores because we needed milk, bread and some other things to get us by for the time being and then drove it home.  Megan was too afraid to drive it anywhere else.  She didn’t for a week, until it was time to take it in for repairs.  We also documented the damages just in case.    

The next morning I got up and I was really sore.  I even saw a light bruising on my upper body where the seat belt had pulled when we went into the ditch.

After the accident, every time I drive down that road, I remember the exact spot where we went into the ditch.

Yep, I Had a Kidney Stone

During the fall of my junior year, I woke up Thursday morning around 6:30 a.m. with a really bad side ache.  It was no ordinary side ache.  I got up to pee just to see if it would go away, it didn’t.  I lay back down in bed curled up to see if it would go away, it didn’t.  I continued to lay there until about seven.  I heard Megan get up because she gets up every morning early to take a shower and go into the training room.  At that time, Lauren was living with us on the couch.  I walked out there in excruciating pain in sweatpants, clinching my phone and my wallet.  Lauren looks at me frantically, “Val, you ok?”  I went and laid in front of the door curled up in a ball.  Lauren gets up asks me if she should call the hospital.  I tell her to see when they open and Megan can take us.  Megan comes out of the shower in a towel wondering why Lauren is freaking out and why I am up at 7 a.m. and lying in front of the door.  I couldn’t stand, sit or lay without it hurting so badly.  Lying, curled up was the only thing I could do.  “Megan, take me to the hospital…please…”  She agreed and ran into her bedroom and threw some clothes on.  She went outside got the car and I slowly walked down the stairs and curled up into the back seat of the Echo.
 
The ride to “student death” (student health/hospital) took soooo long for some reason, longer than usual.  I walked slowly up to the admission desk and gave the nurse my information.  They set me up with a room, I got a robe on and they started doing tests.  “Make it stop hurting!”  I said that over and over until I had a lot of morphine in me.  Lauren and Megan were in there with me.  I had Megan call my mom on my cell phone.  Megan was very vague when she was giving information to my mom.  My mom told Megan that she would come to Pullman as soon as she got off work.  At that point, we really couldn’t give my mom any information about my status because we did not know.  I remember puking on the floor because the pain was so bad.  I have never had pain that horrible before.  I even yelled out to people that I just wanted to die than live with the pain.  They took x-rays, a MRI and the other general tests that they do on patients.  They put me in a room and they hooked me up to more machines, then they started asking me questions.  Lauren and Megan decided to stay with me for a while.  They left around lunch time but Megan was the only one to come back and stay with me until my mom showed up around 11:00 that night.  Megan missed an exam to stay with me in the hospital.  She got it cleared with her professor.  I had her talk to my professors because I had a test the next day I was not going to make it to.  She got everything taken care of.  I slept most of the afternoon because I was not in pain anymore because of all the morphine that was pumped into me.  Megan is definitely a true friend

The doctor that was assigned to me came in with my x-ray and she showed me why I was in so much pain earlier that morning.  I had a kidney stone stuck in the tube between my kidney and my bladder.  The reason why it hurt so much was that the stone has little miniature barbs on the outside of it, so it scraping down every couple of minutes through my fleshy insides was indeed painful.  They told me the stone was not big enough for a surgery, it would have to come out on its own when I peed.  I slept most of the afternoon until the nurses came in to check my vitals.  Megan spent most of the day at my side until she left to go run some errands.  When she got back she brought me back a stuffed duck filled with those Styrofoam bead things.  My mom showed up to the hospital around 11 p.m. that night.  She told me about her drive.  She said it was the fastest drive over to Pullman she has ever driven.  This was due to no traffic and she was in a hurry to see how I was doing.  Once mom was there everything was okay.  The doctor explained it all to her as she got ready for bed.  The nurse said it would be okay for her to spend the night with me in one of the patient beds.  One of the other nurses wanted to know if I wanted any food or anti-nausea medicine to make my stomach feel better.  I told her I was not hungry and that I should try the anti-nausea medicine to make my stomach feel better.  Bad idea.  The anti-nausea medicine made me puke more than I had in years.  Every time I got up to pee (because of the IV), I came back and puked before I got into my bed.  It hurt so bad to puke since there wasn’t anything to puke up except the IV fluid.  During the night, the nurses came in every hour to check my vitals.  I didn’t get any sleep at all.  Not a wink. 

The next day I was feeling a little better than the day before so I ordered some wonderful hospital food and they checked me out.  I went and got a prescription of Oxycodine from the pharmacy and left that awful place.  We went to Safeway to pick up a few things and then we went home.  I took some medicine just to keep the pain from coming back.  We hung out most of the day on Friday, just kept it easy.  We tried some home made remedy to break up the kidney stone and I just ended up puking all over my bedroom wall.  We ended up going back to the hospital to see if there was anything else we could do.  The nurse just said to take the medicine to ease the pain and just wait until it comes out on its own.  We went home and watched TV.

On Saturday my dad called us with good news and bad news.  He wanted to talk to me first.  I wanted him to tell me the bad news first and then the good news.  He told me my cat Erving died and I just lost it…I never got to hear what the good news was.  Later on that day there was a football game against Stanford.  We walked over there from Boulder Creek and got there in time to get a good seat.  It was raining and miserable.  The game started and my pain came back.  I told my mom we had to go, I wouldn’t make it through the whole game.  So we left at the first quarter.  I felt bad for my mom because she has never been to a football game in Pullman and she still hasn’t.  We made the long walk back and it was indeed painful.  I walked hunched over pushing on my lower back to keep it from hurting a lot more.  We got back and I immediately took my pills.  Ten minutes later I felt like I was floating on clouds with no pain.  We watched the rest of the football game on FSN (Fox Sports Network).  We lost to Stanford 17-23.  The following day my mom packed up her stuff and got ready to go back home.  Two hours into her trip home, I went pee and out came the kidney stone.  I got some gloves and plucked it out of the toilet and saved it in a jar to show people.  Later on during the school year, my sister came to visit during her spring break and thought it was an empty jar and lost the kidney stone in the carpet.

Getting my Wisdom Teeth Out

While I worked at the dentist office with mom, the idea of getting my wisdom teeth out floated around the office.  They took the panoramic x-ray of my teeth and jaw and I even got to develop my own x-ray.  Dr. Kay examined it and he and mom decided that we should schedule the extraction appointment. 

On July 8^th, my wisdom teeth came out and it wasn’t pretty.  My mom went to the pharmacy for some anti-inflammatory for before and Vicodin for after the surgery.  Normally one would go to an oral surgeon and be put under while they did the surgery…not me.  I was in a dental chair, with nitrous gas mask strapped to my face and my entire mouth was numb.  I worried about swallowing my tongue.  As I sat in the chair, my body went into shock.  I got cold, so my mom got me a blanket.  They wrapped the bib around my neck and got the tools out.  My body shook even more.  I couldn’t control it.  As he cut open my gums and ripped the teeth from my jaw, he slipped and the tool he was using scraped the roof of my mouth, a part that wasn’t numb.  The uncontrollable shaking got even worse.  My mom came over and held my hand and told me it was okay.  I choked on my own blood and coughed up some of it all over me and Dr. Kay.  He had to go change his lab jacket.  The sucking tool wasn’t fast enough to suck up all the blood coming from the holes he had left.  All four wisdom teeth came out in about two hours of laying there in that chair.  I was truly thankful when it was all over.  They showed me my teeth they extracted, they did not look like normal teeth, and to tell you the truth I was really surprised.    

To my astonishment, I really wasn’t in that much pain nor did my cheeks swell up.  I really did not eat anything for about three days and the numbness in my mouth disappeared the next afternoon.  The worst part was squirting a syringe into the holes after I was done eating food to wash out the food particles.  I had to do that for about a month.

California Fastpitch Nationals

We were invited to play in the annual Club Softball Tournament hosted each year by last year’s winner, USC.  It took place in a town near Los Angeles at a field called Big League Dreams Sports Park.  Each field was designed after an MLB park such as Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Forbes Field.  They were exact replicas.  They even had fake painted-on fans in the one-dimensional bleachers. 

We spent the last five months of the year fundraising so we could go to the tournament in California.  It would cost each of us about $380.00 per person which included van rentals, hotel, the tournament fee and our plane tickets.  We decided to raise the money individually and for people who took care of their debt quickly, gave the extra amount to the people who were still in the hole.  I didn’t agree with this.  Since we were a team, we should raise it like a team.  All the money should go into a big pot and dispersed accordingly. People didn’t think that was fair since the money they raised should go to them and not anyone else.  The other problem with that was what happens if someone did all of the work to raise the money and those people who got the money didn’t do any of the work?  We had lots of arguments on this topic.  It didn’t end.  We had this argument every year when we had meetings about how to pay for nationals. 

To raise the money we did concession stands at basketball games, several car washes, sold Krispy Kreme donuts, wrote letters to businesses and even asked for money from our own families and friends.  Because we were a club, we even received money from the university recreation as a contingency fund.  That money took care of what we didn’t raise.   I ended up only paying $100.77 bucks so I could go.  I remember one of our meetings at practice.  It was bad.  The rule was that there was not going to be any drinking on the entire trip regardless if you were 21 or not.  A few people did not like the rule and argued it.  What happens if we want a drink during dinner….what happens if it’s just the 21-year-olds…why can’t we drink in our hotel rooms?  Our president Jen, told us no alcohol what so ever.  I understand why she made the rule because a while back the men’s rugby team got into a lot of trouble with alcohol and the team was suspended.  We didn’t want that to happen to our team.  The discussion got so heated; we ended it before it got even worse.  People ended up drinking anyway because the hotel had free alcohol.  The girls just kept it to themselves in their rooms and they didn’t get caught.

The night before we left to go to Los Angeles, Lauren Lawson, Lauren’s mom Sue, Melissa and I drove up to Spokane and stayed in a hotel near the airport.  We all stayed in a room and shared the two beds.  Melissa, Lauren and I went and used the pool and hot tub before we went to bed.  We talked to some guys who were also using the pool.  They were fire fighters for Spokane County.

We got up early, drove the short drive to Spokane International and found the rest of our team.  Got our luggage checked in, got our tickets, went through security and waited to board our plane to LAX.  I sat in between Nickey and Lauren because Jen made all of us sit in our seats in alphabetical order.  I’m not saying it was a bad thing, I just didn’t think Lauren or Nickey really liked me all that much.  I didn’t know them all that well so it was kind of an awkward plane trip ride there and back.

We got to Los Angeles, got our luggage and went to the rent-a-car.  We had to wait a long time at the car rental place to get our vans. We had a weird paperwork mess up.  Jen hit a car with the van in a parking lot while we were lost and trying to turn around.  We made it to our hotel and unpacked the vans.  We checked into the hotel.  We stayed at this really nice hotel called The Ayers Suites.  It had a pool, a hot tub and a sink and a mini fridge in the room. We decided were hungry so we went and found the nearest In and Out, which was a walk up and order and a drive thru only.  I remember bringing my food back with me to my room and Shauna was in there trying to find a decent channel to watch.  We ate our food and I recall being so tired I actually passed out on my bed without realizing it.  I have no idea how long I was out.

While we were at the hotel, I spend most of my time in the pool and hot tub talking to my mom and grandparents on my cell on our down time.

Another night after our games we all went out as a team to Applebee’s just to hang out, relax and eat some food after a long day in the sun.

We played very well in California.  Lots of sun and most of us got sun burnt.  Jess’s parents made the trip down to watch us play.  We played USC, went into the international tie breaker and lost, Miami Ohio (W), Ohio State (L), Air Force Academy (W), Weber State (W), Kansas St. (L).  The Weber State coach got mad and threw stuff and cussed at the umpire due to a drop dead rule that the score reverted back to the previous inning so we won the game even though we were losing.

One night after our first round of games, we went to dinner with Lauren Roamer’s parents at the El Torito Grill in Brea, California and they had the best homemade tortillas ever.  I took a bunch of them home with me and ate them for breakfast the next day.  While we waited for our food, Jackie pulled a few pranks on the girls (Jess and Jamie). If you dump salt on butter it will form a chemical reaction and you can feel the warmth, it really doesn’t, it just gets you to put your hand over the butter so she can slam your hand in the butter and you are left with a handful of butter.

After losing to Ohio State we were done.  We ended up getting 7^th place overall which isn’t bad considering it was our first time to this tournament.  For the remaining time we had in LA, we decided to go to Santa Monica and went to the pier.  I rode the rollercoaster with Melissa, Shauna and Jackie.  Later on that day we decided as a group that we wanted to go to Huntington Beach, lay out in the sun, walk the boardwalk and to hit up the shops.  A few of us including me, decided to go eat lunch at the Dairy Queen.  Very bad idea, I should have walked across the street to the Subway with the other girls.   With the long exposure to sun, being a bit dehydrated because of it and eating Dairy Queen, I did not feel too well after a while.  I tried desperately to find a bathroom.  I ventured off away from the group, I was too embarrassed to tell someone and I started feeling light headed and sick to my stomach.  I walked into the Wahoo’s Fish Taco restaurant and fainted hard on the floor.  All I remember was walking into a table, some lady who asked me if I was alright and hitting the cool floor as I fainted.  The weird thing was, was I could still hear what was happening but I couldn’t see anything as I laid on the floor.  It was the strangest feeling when you had no control over your eyes.  I tried again and again to open them.  The lady got up out of her seat and asked one of the workers to get her a towel and some water.  Some of the girls from my softball team came and found me because they saw I was missing.  I got up and went into the bathroom.  I knew the Dairy Queen I ate was the problem.  I had to get it out of my system.  Bri tried to come into the bathroom with me and I told her to stay out and that I was fine.  Someone called 911 and the Santa Monica Fire Department came.  I got out of the bathroom feeling better and I had to sign a release form just to show that they came to my rescue and they did not have to do any medical procedures on me.   It was embarrassing.  From time to time someone would tease me about it and it really didn’t faze me.

“Oh by the way Val…”

Of course there can’t be a trip without a little drama right?  Shauna went to Jen and they sat outside in the hallway and talked about some stuff that was bothering Shauna.  One of the things discussed was that Shauna was a lesbian and she was afraid of what the team would think of her being a lesbian.  There was even some talk of Shauna having a list of girls she liked on the team.  Everyone found out before I did and did not tell me until the last night we were there.  I shared a bed with her the entire trip and had no idea until Sarah, the other girl in our room, told me.  The worst part was being betrayed by my team.  They should have told me when they first found out just to be courteous.  I really had no problem with her being a lesbian; it was just an unusual way to find out. 

The next day before we went back to LAX, we all decided we wanted to go to Hollywood.  On the way there, we got lost driving to downtown Hollywood.  Jen was terrible with directions.  While we were there, we walked the Walk of Fame, went to various souvenir shops, got some drinks, took pictures and looked for a clear shot of the Hollywood sign.  We met Nickey and her sister Katie in the parking lot where we parked the vans.  Nickey went surfing with her sister Katie instead of going to Hollywood with us.

We found out where nationals were going to be held for the 2005 season and we were already excited to go to Maryland.  I have never been to the east coast and I sure hoped we got to do some sight seeing while we were there.  We started fundraising as soon as the next school year started.

When I got back to Pullman, it was past midnight, I went into my room and Megan and Angela pasted my room with “welcome back” signs…how nice of them.  I went into Megan’s room and jumped on her and she yelled at me but glad I was back.

Fastpitch Spring 2004

I really did not feel welcome on the softball team when I first joined, definitely felt like an outsider and I did not belong like the other new people did, they seemed to fit in fairly quickly. The team was very clicky after we got to know one another and I really didn’t seem to mesh with any of them.  There was some favoritism towards certain players playing more than others.  I sat on the bench a lot.  I felt like my talent was being wasted for a person who people didn’t like and a person who didn’t feel like they needed to show up to practice.  Team politics were involved and conflicted around the team as a whole. The one thing we did agree with was we didn’t like how the team was being run.  We needed a coach, just a coach, not a player on the team, not the president, not any of the officers but a person no one knew or has heard of.  That never happened until the fall of 2007 when a coach from Cheney came down and volunteered his time, he was also an alumnus of WSU.  He was in his mid-forties, coaches a youth softball team and he drove down to Pullman almost every day for practices and games.  He was then hired by Whitworth, a small division III college in Spokane.

When we came back from Christmas break, we started practicing in the field house.  Since we were the last priority being a club sport and all, we got the 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. shift to practice with.  It was very brutal for those with early class the next day.  I wasn’t one of them.  Some days it was very cold and other days it was very warm.  On occasion the fans would be going and we had to yell to each other for instructions and while we warmed up our arms you heard the missed balls slam up against the metal shelf doors.

Since I did not play a whole lot, nothing noteworthy really came out of any of these regular season games.

My First Time to Disneyland

“I’m twenty years old and I’m going to Disneyland for the first time!”
                   -Me, stepping off of the plane in Orange County.

Angela came up with this awesome idea of taking a spring break trip to either Disneyland or taking a cruise to Mexico with Izzy, Jimmy, me and Megan.  I really wanted to do the cruise but it didn’t work out because of Megan’s basketball schedule.  She was the trainer for the men’s team and she wasn’t sure if she was going with them down to the Pac-10 tournament in California.  She got back to us late telling us that she was not able to go down with them so we settled for Disneyland.   

Angela’s dad works for Alaskan Airlines as a pilot and got us really good discounts on our entire trip.  Her mom planned it all for us.  All we had to-do was show up.  We drove home for spring break and spent a day or two at home with our family.  We left March 15^th and Megan’s mom took Megan and me to Izzy’s house in Auburn.  Izzy’s mom took all of us to the Sea-Tac Airport and we were on our way to Disneyland:  the happiest place on earth.  As a result of the free flight there and back, we were asked to wear nice clothes because Angela’s parents asked us to, just a courteous thing to do.  This was my first time ever to California.  We arrived at the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, got off the plane, got the luggage and went outside into the sun.  The sun felt so good, especially after being in the frozen Palouse for about five months.  We stayed in a hotel right across the street from the Disneyland resort.  We spent two days at Disneyland/California Adventure and a day at Universal Studios. 

One not so eventful night, I called Lacey and we spent a couple hours hanging out.  We went to In and Out, Newport Beach and she showed me where she lived.  I visited with her mom and dad for awhile before she took me back to the hotel.  The next day, we packed up all of our stuff, boarded the plane and got back to Washington March 19^th.

It was definitely worth the money we owed Angela’s mom.  The trip that would have cost me at least $1000 only was $200 because of all of the discounts.  This vacation so far is one of my favorite plane trips.