Chicago

Well, I'm back from Chicago! I had an AMAZING week.

The ABA conference was great. I really truly learned a lot, and picked up a lot of great tips of the trade for treating burns. And it was great to network with other burn therapists. I met one PT from Shriners Children's Hospital in Boston. For those of you who don't know, Shriners is a burns only children's hospital with locations in Boston, Northern CA, Galveston TX, and Cincinnati. They receive children from all over the world with pretty significant burns. They are top of the line in general burn care, even though they specialize for children. We send a lot of our involved pedi burns there. They'll get better care than we can provide them, and it's so close. ANYWAY, so I met a therapist from Shriners in Boston and we got to talking, and she invited me to spend time up there with some of the therapists to learn more. YAY! That's SO exciting! :) So the conference aspect was great, I learned a lot, I got a lot out of it, I met people, it was truly a great experience.

It was also great to spend social time with my co-workers. It was really cool to interact with them on a different level, I haven't done that with a lot of the burn team. Especially with the MD's. We all had a lot of fun. We were taken out to dinner a couple of times, by a wound care company and also by the CT Burn Foundation. Where else in Chicgao but a Steakhouse. What's a veggie to do at a steakhouse!?!?!?! I had a lot of side vegetables for supper. But OH MY GOSH, do CHICAGOANS LIKE TO EAT!!! First of all, regular portion sizes in Chicago are what I've always considered LARGE portions. So large portions in Chicago are GIGUNDO! My asparagus must have grown up near a nuclear power plant they were so huge. You ask for broccoli, you get a WHOLE HEAD of broccoli. The mashed potatoes must have been 4 potatoes in the dish. And the cake... It kept getting bigger every night! It was totally nuts. They were serving 40 and 50 oz steaks. You could have gotten smaller ones but the waiters were waving raw meat at the table, "We don't serve none of that froufrou stuff in NY, this is Chicago and we serve RED MEAT and LOTS OF IT!!!!" I was afraid to ask him what I should order as a vegetarian... When I get my pictures back I'll post them, we took a lot of pics of the huge food. :)

We all had a great time, there was a dance club in the hotel lobby so we were dancing every night, and going out and having fun, never mind that there was a 6:30 AM lecture the next morning... I think I rolled into bed every night from eating so much. It was nuts. But a lot of fun.

As for the pizza, I don't like deep dish. Too heavy, too greasy, and well I got nauseas and threw up that night in the middle of the night after my pizza. So that sealed the deal for me. I like good ole thin crust.

Chicago is a really nice city though. I got to see a good bit of it on my time off. I went to an AMAZING exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry called Body Worlds. All these cadevars preserved using a method called plastification, and WOW, it was truly amazing to see all the details and it was an AWESOME exhibit. If you like dead bodies. Or even if you don't you can truly appreciate the wonders of human anatomy.

I also got to got of he Art Institute which was great. I spent a ton of time staring at all the paintings they had. And I walked around the loop area downtown for awhile and saw some of the sculptures exhibited. I was shocked though, it was Saturday and everything was closed! It took me over an hour to find somewhere to eat. Everything was open Monday-Friday. I was in shock that so little was open on the weekends. And in the theatre district too!

After I found some lunch, I went on a boat tour of the Chicago River and out into Lake Michigan. It was really nice really pretty and really informative. Very cool. Then I walked around Michigan Avenue for awhile and that was my sightseeing day. Pretty good for one day. I loved all the flower gardens in the middle of the streets and sidewalks. It was really nice. The city seemed so clean and large and wide open even downtown. I liked it. Though the wind hurts my ears. And I don't know if I could stand a winter there.

Anyway, it was a great trip. So that's some tidbits of the vacation/conference. I'll get some more specifics when I get my pictures up. But I think that's enough to go on for now. Next year, off to Vegas I go!!! :)