January

From January 07

January was busy.

Starting off we had vacation the first week of January, where my dad and Maria came out for two weeks and were a tremendous asset to us with a new baby and three other children. God knew we needed them here, because one of the first days back to work, my dad came and told me at about 6am that the basement was flooded. Seems the roots are growing into our sewer and with the extra rain we had, our drain couldn't keep up and we backed up. Had to tear out half of the carpet, rip up the pad and then my dad bleached everything and we set it out to dry.
Insurance had a carpet guy come out and he sprayed some cleaner into everything and then re-laid the carpet. Next, a cleaner service comes to actually clean the stuff, and then I have to figure out what to do in the office as we threw that carpet out and are not sure what to replace it with...

So, I have no office to work from or be inspired to blog from, which is fine because we have been busy this month with work (I have been on Urology) and sickness. All of the kids have been sick this month, Kristi included. Mary Beth is now out here with us for two weeks and she is sick too. She was well on her way to recovering from a nasty bug when she arrived and I think that we have succeded in giving her a little too much to do. More than we intended, anyway. Last weekend we were in the Children's Hospital for Friday night through Sunday afternoon with Pati, who had RSV bronchiolitis and was having a very difficult time managing secretions. Mary Beth held down the fort with the three sick bigger kids for the whole weekend while we parents were at the hospital. We don't know what we would have done without her.

All is now well, and we even have our recycling trash bin here. The city just distributed new trash cans to us, well, about 4 months ago, and we finally have the special one for recycling so we can save the planet. Phew! sure feels better now.

Urology has been pretty fun. If you like genitals and their pathology. Actually, I like the bladder scopes, and after the second week I was doing scoping people's bladders and shooting dye in their ureters and laser blasting kidney stones with a vengence. Pretty fun, and they make a killing and have a good life, to boot, but there is something that tells me I would grow to hate it, and being so focused on a single organ system would drive me nuts and make me wonder why in the world I got into medicine, anyway. Nice to know that.

Actually, one of the residents a year ahead of me just switched to Urology, so next year he will be an intern again and start all over. Good for him, but bad for us because he is such a good surgeon and guy. Oh well, I hope they find a good replacement, since he and I were supposed to be senior and chief residents together. I am just trusting God for the replacement.

No new pictures at the moment, since my hard drive is tucked away out of water's reach and all of my pictures are on that drive... .Also because I just finished taking my annual American Board of Surgery In Training Examination today. This is a yearly exam we take which is sort of like a "see where you compare with all of the other surgery residents in the country" as well as a "better study more or else we won't let you pass on to the next level" whip.

I will see if I get a chance to throw some pictures up for you all. Since it has been colder and snowy lately, we have not been taking that many pictures, but we will see what we can do.

Hope all is well with you and the new year brings closeness with Him.

David