My Memories of 9/11/01

I just thought since I am using my blog as my "journal" type thing, I would write about my memories of September 11th, 2001. A week before, my mom and I went on a trip to DC so I could interview for jobs at various hospitals. I had just graduated from nursing school in August and was at home in Rochester for a month. We almost went to DC the week of 9/11, but decided to go a week earlier. We stayed two days in DC and slept over night in a little town called Laurel, MD. We picked Laurel on the map b/c it was in between DC and Baltimore and one of the hospitals was in Baltimore. We actually stayed at a motel called "The Valencia Motel". Ironically, this motel is only about 5 or so minutes from where Dan and I live now....and was also the motel that some of the 9/11 terrorists stayed at....scary! So, I interviewed and was told that I needed to let them know if I would except the job by September 11th. I remember waking up the morning of the 11th and my mom telling me what was going on. One plane had struck a tower at that point. Of course we were glued to the TV and saw as the 2nd plane hit and then later the one in DC and Pennsylvania. It was unbelievable and very frightening as the events played out. Still on my mind though was accepting the job in the ER at George Washington University Hospital; a level 1 trauma center right on Washington Circle in downtown DC. I had decided that I wanted to work there, but after seeing what was going on, my mom wondered if I was sure I wanted to go there. I was definitely sure and called them to accept later that morning. They didn't answer the phone and I remember saying on the voicemail "I'm sure you are busy now, but I would like to come work for you". I'm not sure how busy the ER's really were that day since there didn't end up being as many survivors or even people to save and bring to the hospital. How sad. So, for the following days to come, I think most Americans were doing the same thing....watching the news. The news was the ONLY thing on for the next week, but it was hard not to watch. I can remember the images of the planes hitting the towers being shown over and over again and then the horrific pictures of what happened soon after....the towers collapsing, people running covered in gray dust...injured people...and most horrific to me at the time, people jumping from hundreds of feet high out of the buildings. Then soon after that came all the stories of peoples loved ones that were alive or those that were missing. There were pictures by the hundreds of those that hadn't been found yet. It was so sad to watch. A few weeks later I was off to DC to live and work. I jumped right into working at the ER right when the Anthrax thing happened. There was so much terrorism talk and everyone came in thinking they had been exposed to Anthrax. It was a pretty crazy time. It was also interesting to be so close to the Pentagon. I would drive by it on my way to work and there was always a army tank with a soldier in it with a machine gun. I remember thinking how weird that was. Anyway, 9/11 was such a sad and scary day. When I hear of such sad things, I always think "Can't we all just get along?". I guess that's not gonna happen anytime soon. But, there is still a lot of good and that's what I'll focus on. So, there you have it, my memories of 9/11/01.