From Nov Dec 08

Just four more days and David gets to come home for several days in a row. This will be the first Christmas since we moved to Akron he has had Christmas Day off. We are all pretty excited about it. He will have to pay for his days off after they are over and we will hardly see him at all for over a week, but we are all kind of ignoring that right now.
We have Christmas baking for neighbors (and for us!) and gift wrapping to do next week and the children are trying to organize a little Christmas play with some company that will be coming over for Christmas dinner.

My brother Titus made it out early in December and we had lots of good times with him, although we all got pretty sick while he was here (he did too).

From Nov Dec 08

We are enjoying being together for Advent every night, and tomorrow we get to light four candles.

From Nov Dec 08

A time for everything

Seems like several months since I have put anything down here. As I write this I am sitting at the kitchen table, a candle simmering in the center, one half is a class of phonics, with Alec attempting to sound out different words and forming sentences, trying to read my expressions as to whether he is correct or not in his guesses until I make him really read it by himself. Jan is on the opposite side, working on her pen-woman-ship, and completing riddles and sentences of her own. Anne is playing with cars, of course, in the living room below, with Pati doing her best to be annoying as she tries to play with Anne, and running to the bathroom every so often telling mom she has to go, which she does.
The other half of the table is occupied by me, my two laptops, and scattered recovery disks, windows reinstallation disks, and a screwdriver. The Hard Drive went out in one of the laptops (which are identical models, both gifts to us) and I know this because it started making loud scraping noises, followed by an error message and crashing of the computer. Being poor, and a man, I decided not to ask for help and found a new hard drive online and bought it. So, now I have removed the hard drive, replaced it with the new one, and was attempting to reboot the computer when I encountered all sorts of error messages. The other computer is used to search all sorts of help on how to go about navigating the error messages, and I am now waiting for the new hard drive to be formatted, so I am taking the moment to blog. Oh, this is about midnight for me, since I am on nights right now and have just come home from work (even though it is only 10:30 am).
Work has been frustrating for me lately. There have been days of sunshine, where the pager is mostly dormant, the patients are getting better, and everything goes our way in the OR. Mostly, however, lots of death, poor prognoses, and sharing bad news with family. This past three days, I have seen three people die, taken care of one guy who shot himself in the head, and then kept him alive enough so his organs could be retrieved (preferred to the word "harvested"), which took place about 3am this morning. Another lady I admitted as a trauma patient really had nothing wrong with her, and I was contemplating sending her home but decided on keeping her overnight since she was a kidney transplant patient, and I wanted to be sure. Well, apparently she was doing well that following morning, walking the halls, cheerful and then her nurse found her unresponsive in her room. Initially she was confused and then not very alert so the decision was made to intubate her to protect her airway, upon the completion of this she was noticed to be without any pulse and after 45minutes CPR was stopped, leaving everyone shocked and stunned, wondering what had happened. We have gone over the records of this 42yo woman, and meticulously examined the films in a vain attempt to identify some passed over clue, but will have to wait for the autopsy.
Then we have the lady who comes to the hospital because her life is unbearable, so we keep her until she decides to be healed and await her return. Next to her is the lady who likes to have problems, and injects herself with stuff to produce infections that need treatment, pain medications, and attention. Fortunately, there are the folks who are more "normal," and joke around with me about their symptoms, opinion of the food, various tubes coming out of their orifices, and remind me with their gratefulness why I am still putting up with the ridiculous hours, the criticism of the smallest mistake with the sledgehammer, and the expectation that I have no need of sleep, am sitting around waiting for work, and make lots of money.
Fortunately, the Lord knew what He was doing, and surrounded me with a loving family who support me and endure this with me. Honestly, I don't know how the single ones, or the ones with poor social dynamics survive.
The whole goal for me is to be open to serve wherever and however the Lord directs us, but with my experience here, coupled with the current political climate, I am feeling like getting out of the US, as I am concerned about the lack of good relationship between doctor and patient, undue expectations of patients, impending socialism, and decreased reimbursement coupled with higher taxes and cost of business to where the profession will be so undervalued that no-one will want to enter it, and for good reason. That being said, and quite gloomily at that, I know for sure I am where I am supposed to be, that the Lord will work it all out, and every once in a while the pat on the back, or the patient who says "thanks" seems to keep me going for at least another week or two.
Well, we are nearly 83% formatted, but I don't think I can remain conscious for the end of it, so I suppose I will be installing all the software tomorrow, or perhaps on my one day off this weekend.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I do appreciate hearing from anyone about how they are doing, what is new, etc.... If you want to go sledding on Thanksgiving, come on out, we have about 4 or 5 inches, and it is snowing now.

Dr. Meat

Snow this week

The forecast is snow for at least three days this week. Probably nothing much will stick, but the kids are excited and I am trying to forget that snow and snow clothes will be around through April and just be excited about it too.
We have all had a busy fall. David is back at Akron General working more than he ever has. We are lucky to see him at all. "They" hope that things will improve schedule wise some time in February, which is nice to try to look forward to, but we have been disappointed so many times (I think nearly every time) in promises of things getting better than I am feeling pretty cynical about this one. Somedays we handle it well and other days we don't.
The children are enjoying school time at home and learning some really fun things. Jan is reading pretty well and Alec is getting the hang of it too. We have gotten involved in a Christian homeschool co-op that meets on Fridays. It has been something fun to look forward to and a good learning time for all of the kids, but especially Jan and Alec. They are enrolled in a science class together and right now are studying insects and metamorphosis. Alec is in a Knights Class - he and a group of 10 other boys learn about daily life in the Middle Ages, training for knights, being gentlemen, having good manners, etc. Last week they made a battle ax out of cardboard and tinfoil and began tripping over themselves to open doors for "ladies". Jan has learned to knit and is trying to keep pace with the girls knitting class (she is too young to enroll in the class, but they share the patterns with her and she knits with the older girls at recess). She is in an Authors Class and has worked on and illustrated two different books during her class time on Fridays so far.
Anne enjoys her preschool class but forgets how much she likes it every week and always cries when she gets there. This last Friday they had a fireman come in teach about fire safety.
I really resisted the idea of getting involved in the co-op because I thought that it would be too much "running around", but it has turned out to be a great thing to be involved in.

My Mom came out to visit in September and we had so much fun with her. For the first few days of her visit she brought a friend from our church in Washington, Sieglinde Kolberg, so that she could run the Akron Marathon. We got to see Mrs. Kolberg finish the Marathon with a really good time. David and I both got to run the relay part of the marathon, I just ran with one team, but David figured out a way to be apart of two teams - I ran a 10k leg and David ran both a 10k and then a 5k leg, one them for my team, and one of them for a team from Akron General. My Mom probably ran a 5k that day too even though she didn't enter the race! She got the kids up and ready and rushed over to the kids run and made it work for them to be apart of that race which they look forward to all year.

Every day when Pati wakes up the first thing she says is "Dadee home?" Today the answer was "yes" (at least until 5:00 tonight when he leaves for work). So we are off to do something fun together for a few hours (it might just be grocery shopping...which is really just a stop at the restrooms with occasional ventures into the actual supermarket before heading back to the restrooms).

From September 2008

From September 2008

From September 2008

From September 2008

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Thinking of my Dad on his birthday. We all wish we could go out to his house and wish him a happy birthday.

From July 2008

last days of summer

Some of the trees on our street are already beginning to turn color. Such a change from last year when the leaves stayed green until late October. Most everyone here starts school tomorrow, but we won't start up our school until mid September. David has a week of vacation in September and the plan is to start when that is over.

From August 2008

We have done some more swimming out at the little neighborhood lake and Jan and Alec can hold their own now (I do make them wear life jackets when we swim in a lake, even though they can swim just fine without them. The dark water is what makes me nervous, once something sinks, you sure are not going to be able to find it so I want my kids to float!)

From August 2008

We have had cooler temperatures in the morning and evening so they have had opportunity to wear their new sweatshirts!

From August 2008

Jan and Alec are pleased about starting school. I am realizing that I need to have a schoolbook for Anne too. I tried to get her to use crayons and a coloring book one day last week when the older kids were writing in last years school books. She let me know that she was not fooled. She wasn't using crayons, she needed a pencil and a real paper. It should be a fun year of learning for all of us.

From August 2008

From August 2008

David managed to get a few hours of sleep last night so he took the kids to Alec's flag football practice tonight. Jan counted out .75 in pennies to spend at the concession stand. All three girls can get a treat for that much money and they feel pretty special sitting on the grass with their suckers.

From August 2008

Alec eats up the chance to play football. Several of the other boys just are not that interested and their attention span is gone after half of practice. I think that the coaches have an amazing amount of patience and do a good job of teaching them what to do and how to do it. We were at the concession stand just before leaving after practice last week when a boy came up with a ziplock bag of change and asked "Is this enough to buy a hot dog?" While he was waiting for it to come he high fived Alec and informed me that "Wow, Alec is tough! He is just a little guy, he is only five and I am six and he can knock me down!" He was a pretty little guy himself but he sure walked like he thought he was six feet tall. The girls and I have fun people watching while we wait for practice to be done. Lots of funny people out there. I bet we do our share of providing entertainment for the other people too.



I won't say what this is but it has been a common happening this summer and we hope that we see less and less of it.

The Pig Fairy

Well, it has been quite some time since I have been commenting here. The summer feels like it is on the downswing of things. Partly because it is getting dark sooner in the evenings, and partly because we have some weather that reminds me of fall in the northwest.




I have been able to spend some time doing transplant surgery up in Cleveland, which was a good experience, but one I have no intention of repeating. Lots of sick patients, and lots of incurable diseases or nearly incurable diseases (which may be worse, since we try to cure them).
Now I am nearly half done with a rotation at the local children's hospital doing pediatric surgery, as well as burn surgery. The days are quite busy, and I rarely have any spare time to sit down or study as I am one of 4 or 5 residents and we have between 40 and 70 patients we are responsible for, and if the pediatric surgery stuff doesn't keep us busy enough, we have the burn unit to deal with, which really sucks our time away. So far, I have been blessed with some good cases, and one night I stayed extra to operate on two kids who had injured their pancreases, so we operated on them.
My life is pretty much drainage of pus from all manner of wounds, usually involving the hind parts, fixing hernias, taking care of burn patients, and trauma patients. I have had several bad trauma patients, all involving ATV's. One girl is paralized from the shoulders down, a 16yo boy is paralized from the thighs down, and another girl is now intubated in the ICU for the past week or two after having her spleen and right kidney removed, her bowel repaired, and her liver packed and fixed, tubes in both sides of her chest, and two tubes in her abdomen.
As for the burns, I have had one man assaulted, left unconscious in a house, and then had the house set on fire on top of him.. He made it about a week before he died as he was severely burned. Another man got drunk and sat down in the middle of a campfire, and will never sit the same again. Various young people have played with matches and gasoline or lighter fluid, and I guess I may be biased because I only get to see the losers, but I suppose winning isn't worth the risk.
They say there are no normal burn patients, and this is pretty much the case as for some reason most of the burn patients seem to have some underlying psychiatric disorder as well. One exception is a guy I have taken care of for a month now, a semipro hockey player who was working with a landscaper and was riding a professional lawnmower that exploded underneath of him. He has had 7 surgeries so far, with many more on tap, and should be able to get his breathing tube out pretty soon. We expect him to make it out of the burn unit, but not for a while, and not without serious rehab, as he was burned everywhere except the small of his back, buttocks, and from his knees up to his waist and his feet.
So, rules I can pass on to you are that if your kid rides a bike, wear a stinking helmet, be careful with handlebars, they like to damage the liver, pancreas, and spleen when they wreck and hit them. Don't play with fire, it burns you. ATV's should be banned, or at least we should only let those with lots of insurance and no reason to live ride them.

I also have been able to work a bit with the little guys. I have taken out dead bowel and fixed abnormalities in guys weighing in at less than 1 kg. That is pretty small, and I find good use for my loops (eyeglasses with telescopic lenses on them) in these cases.

The family has been enjoying summer. Jan and Alec are swimming like fishes, we have enjoyed good visits and help from family, and we are somewhat sick, but are going up to Cedar Point, a large area with amusement parks and such to a large water park there tomorrow since the hospital was giving away free tickets, so I picked up $200 worth of them and we are going up there tomorrow to see if the children float.
Speaking of floating, Anne is now starting swim lessons thanks to Grandpa and Grandma Carne, and is incredibly excited about it.
Alec has started flag football about 30min south of here, and I think he feels there is nothing else better to live for at the moment. He was pretty excited because last practice they did drills for being on the line, and he was able to push the bigger kids around due to his attention to the coach on the technique and balance.

Well, we have been enjoying the bikes, and getting some runs in here and there. We most likely will join our church (finally) so Kristi can do some teaching with the kids, and we can have more input from the leadership and protection.
Oh, I suppose you are wondering what the deal with the pig fairy is. Perhaps I blogged about it a while ago, just one of those passing comments that Alec made at my dad's place when he had been playing with a little plastic pig of Jan's and had left it under his pillow when he went to sleep. The next morning Jan wanted it and he couldn't find it, and when asked about it replied, "I don't know, maybe the pig fairy took it." Well those comments and others seem to be more commonplace now... lately, seems you can send all the kids into fits of laughter by mentioning any of the top four: bottom, potty, poop, and haymay. Don't ask me what a haymay is, but Anne says Pati is one, and I can't tell her different.

Okay, I suppose that is enough to catch you up for now. Have fun during the rest of the summer, wear your helmets, don't play with flammable liquids, and if anyone suggests you ride one of those three lettered words with wheels on it, punch them in the nose and run as fast as you can in the other direction...

David

Damp

Akron receives the same amount of rain in a year that Seattle does. Cleveland receives more than Seattle. The wettest month of the year here is July. We are inside out. In the NW we were used to wet winters and dry summers. Here we have dry winters and wet summers. Our backyard is reverting back to its frog pond days (the man next door who has lived in the neighborhood since before most of the houses were built told us that it used to be a frog pond). It has rained nearly every day since June 1st.
There has been alot of rain in the last week, so much that our basement is taking in some water too, which is unusual. Usually the backyard is a pond, but the basement is dry.
Jan and Alec got to go camping this last week, in between rainstorms. They had really good weather and so much fun they will never stop talking about it. Steve and Heather, who work with David and go to our church, took them in their VW camper bus. They ate smores and fished (Alec caught 10) and swam and tubed behind a boat and hiked and ate hot dogs and lemonade and came home utterly exhausted. It has been fun to hear them tell stories about it.
Pati got sick while they were gone and last night Alec and Anne got it. They are spread out in the living room with fevers...but no throwing up...yet.
I think that when they all go down for naps Jan and I will put on some wading boots and try to help the backyard drains. We are growing some of the biggest mosquitos I have ever seen back there!

A Holiday

David had his first day of 3rd year on Tuesday. Two years down, three to go. He will be at Children's Hospital for the next three months. It looks as though it will be a very busy time.

The children have wanted to have a garage sale for a long time and we finally did it. It was a good way to meet some neighbors. The kids had a lemonade stand and sold (drank) all of it. Even the postman bought some. We didn't have enough merchandise left to open the garage sale the next day. The kids were disappointed but I wasn't.

Anne has wanted to ride a real bike for a couple of months now, but we did not have one that was her size. On our way home from a neighbors house two weeks ago a PINK bike with training wheels that was just her size was left out on the curb, with a bike helmet. (Leaving things out on the curb is the way to get rid of things here. Everyone seems to know that if it is out by the road it is free for the taking.) Anne was thrilled. She set her jaw and learned to ride it in a few days. The training wheels are still on and they will stay on until she learns to use her brakes. We just decorated all of their bikes for a little Fourth Of July Parade tomorrow morning.

We spent some time at Bluebird Lake this week. It is a private lake, you have to live in the neighborhood in order to have access to it. Someone in our church lives in the Bluebird Lake neighborhood and invited anyone in church who cared to come. We went early and left late. If we lived in that neighborhood we would probably go there nearly every day. Jan spent hours out on the dock jumping in. Alec has been waiting for a year now to use his little fishing pole, so he spent several hours hooking bait up, untangling his line, casting and reeling it back in. I was impressed with his patience. He didn't catch anything, but one of the older boys did. The little girls liked the sand and shallows the best. We came home sunburned and tired.

I forgot Pati's swimming suit but Anne had been wearing a skirt with a drawstring...and it was perfect to tie around Pati's neck. Everyone kept saying that they loved her suit and had no idea that it was her sisters skirt.
Tomorrow David will be home part of the day (and all of the night!)which we weren't expecting. That makes it a holiday aside from our country's birthday.

Feels Like Summer

Between thunderstorms we have had some hot weather and have used the slip and slide, sprinkler and the plastic pool. I am not sure of why Jan and Alec need goggles in the sprinkler, but they assure me that it's better that way.



Pati and Anne enjoy alot of the same things right now. Which pretty much means they play together and bicker a bit. Somehow Pati got into the drivers seat and there was no pushing her out. She is close to the same size as Anne so Anne doesn't have much of a chance.



Grandpa Carne and Grandmaria made it out to Ohio for our first real week of summer weather. It was fun to have them and the kids are already talking about next time. Growing up I always lived nearby my grandparents and I figured that I was the luckiest little girl in the world to be able to live within walking distance of them. It has been good to discover, though, that kids remember more than you give them credit for. Even though we do not get to see any set of grandparents or cousins or aunts and uncles on a daily or weekly basis, the kids remember them all with a fierce sense of family and ownership and it never seems as though it has been very long since we have seen them.


David is in the middle of a plastic surgery rotation. He is home more than he was last month,(hooray!) but the hours are unpredictable. He takes beeper call from home which means that he might get to sleep at home, but it also means that he might not. Last night it meant that he didn't. So he is spending his Father's Day trying to catch up on sleep since he is also on call today and tonight. The only really bad thing about home beeper call is that it does not actually count toward your hours, so even if you spend the night working at the hospital, you are required to function as though you didn't. At least it is the weekend and he just had to round this morning instead of staying until suppertime. He made it home for some lunch and I hope his beeper keeps quiet for a few more hours.

Today

From March 2008

From March 2008

Today David is on call at the hospital in Cleveland won't be home until sometime tomorrow. Often these days take forever to pass and so early this morning I decided to get some grocery shopping done up in Cleveland since I haven't done Costco and Trader Joe's for several months.
This morning at breakfast, for the first time in a loooong time we all had scrambled eggs. A year and a half ago I had Anne tested for IgE allergy to eggs and it came back negative. But a year ago her IgG allergy test came back positive for eggs so she has not had eggs for a year. We just got back the results from a restest of IgG allergies and it said that she could have eggs. So we had them scrambled. 15 minutes after breakfast Anne's eyes got really red and itchy. I gave her Benadryl and thought "Oh great." After about an hour it looked like that was all, red itchy eyes, so I loaded everyone in the car and we headed to Cleveland. At the first store she started to get red and blotchy. We were there too long because of bathroom stops and all the kids wanting to use the kids size carts, etc etc.
By the time we got to the second store Anne's nose was swelling and she had a bright red rash on her legs. It was Costco, but it isn't like Costco in the NW. Everything takes FOREVER. We stood in line at the food court for 30 minutes (I had promised the kids before we left home) and then realized that there was nothing that Pati could eat. I threw hot dogs and kids in the cart and tried to get my shopping done quickly while Anne kept getting worse and I worried. I opened a package of Benadryl from the pharmacy section and gave Anne a piece of an adults pill (the only children's Benadryl had red food coloring in it...I think that whoever thought of red food coloring in medicine for sick or allergic children is an idiot) and then headed to the checkout. It took a long time. Then the kids had to go to the bathroom. By the time I finally loaded Anne into the car I was crying because she looked so terrible, I was 45 minutes from home, had no way to reach David and didn't know what I should do. I really didn't want to call 911 - didn't know if I should. I decided to try and make it back to Akron Children's Hospital since I didn't know if insurance would cover anything at a Hospital out of network...and I didn't know where a hospital was anyway.
Anne's face was red and purple, her lip and nose were swollen and she had a rash all over. Her voice sounded different. But she wasn't wheezing and seemed to be breathing OK. I just didn't know how far or fast it would progress. I got a call from our friends who live down the street who are ER doctors (one of them is a pediatric doctor) and they helped me alot. They said if she was wheezing at all to pull over and call 911. Otherwise I should take her to Children's or to their house (they live about a mile from us), 20 minutes from where I was at that point. I got to their house and they had the right medicine, although Anne didn't like getting two shots. Then the big kids said their memory verses and everybody got prizes -
I was pretty grateful for friends like that. It sure beat spending a long time in the ER with four kids who hadn't had naps. Anne was back to a normal color and the swelling was gone. I went to the pharmacy to pick up my very own epi-pen.
Our doctor friends had given the big kids marigolds to plant and they promptly spilled them all over the back of the car.
Now it was after three and I had a VERY messy car, melting groceries to put away, Pati to feed and a horribly messy house.

From March April 2008

It is now almost 6:00 and I have stopped cleaning and picking up long enough to sit and type this out. I suppose I will rummage around for something that won't send anyone into an allergic reaction, feed them and maybe try to get everybody out for some exercise. Which really means getting on clothes and shoes, loading up a stroller and two bikes and bike helmets, driving somewhere, unloading aforementioned equipement and assembling it, adjusting bike helmets and strapping in babies before trying to run a few miles without having to stop at too many outhouses along the way. Then it will be back to the car and the whole process in reverse.
Then baths (sunday tomorrow) and hair dryers and pajamas and cream and stories and water bottles and prayer and bed. For me too I hope.
I am thankful for a little girl who can breathe. I won't be scrambling eggs any time soon.

The Haircut

From March April 2008

When I was six my Mom cut my hair off in one big (I thought) braid. I still have it, in my baby book. The kids have looked at it whenever I would let them get it out. Jan has been planning to do it when she turned six. She worked up her courage and had me cut her hair off in one big braid. My braid next to hers suddenly becomes an anemic little strand of white-green hair (my birthday is in the summer so mine was cut off after months of swimming in chlorine water). Not sure if Jan gets her beautiful hair from her Dad, her Aunt Robyn or my Grandma Copper, but it isn't from me!
Her hair was more difficult to cut off in a braid than I had anticipated. I hadn't realized quite how thick it was. The scissors moved and moved again. I think the picture shows the uneven cut across the top of the braid. Jan was looking in the mirror and could just see the front view. I had front and back views and the back looked terrible. Jan smiled and tucked hair behind her ears and laughed with excitement about how beautiful she looked with short hair while I smiled and nodded and tried not to panic about how to fix the shingly looking hair in the back.
It worked out alright with a few layers. It is easier for her to take care of herself which makes life easier for me. It makes her look so grown up.

From March April 2008

My Mom came and visited us for her birthday and we enjoyed her. I think that Anne thinks that she lives at the airport though.
Jan and Alec have been chipmunk trapping again which has been exciting. We haven't caught any chipmunks, just other things. The chipmunk population took a big hit last year when we caught and relocated 18 of the pesky things. There are three lists taped to the coat closet door. They are titled "Chipmunks" (that list has no marks) "Squirrels" (that list has a black mark...they caught a black squirrel) and "Poop" (There is one mark on that list too). I told them that they can't set the traps overnight anymore. It has been warm enough to sleep with our bedroom window open and David and I were up one night listening to a racoon wrestle the traps. He wouldn't leave it until he had eaten all of the peanut butter, but he was too big to fit inside. It was loud.
David has been commuting to Cleveland this month which has good things and bad things that go with it. He has to get up before 5:00 and often isn't home until 7:00 or 7:30 and then has work to do to get ready for the next day. He is learning good things and doesn't have so many overnight shifts this month though.
We are looking forward to June. David has a week of vacation and we are hoping for some good weather!

Our Weather Station

We are now finishing up our second year here in Akron, Ohio. Spring seems like it has finally arrived and I know this not because it was 75 degrees outside yesterday, but because we have been treating multiple motorcycle crash victims at the hospital.
The family went up to Cleveland last weekend to shop at a really neat marked called Westside Market. It is a two part market that is indoor and has a produce section and a larger section for meat vendors and dairy and bakery vendors, along with a few fish market types. It was very crowded and pushing the stroller with the two littles was an experience. I suppose the market would be reminding me of a more organized and permanent Farmer's Market in a way, with each vendor owning a tiny piece of real estate that is tastefully displaying their fresh edibles. It was all very pretty and done in cash, so you holler your selections across the produce and the owner puts them in a bag for you and at the end tells you how much.
The kids were impressed with the real pig head, the whole fish and skinned rabbits the most.
Jan and Alec are becoming quite the swimmers. They both can swim for quite some distance in the big pool, and Jan has even dared to take the plunge off the diving board. Jan has been trying the breast stroke, with Alec tackling the butterfly most recently. Anne wants desperately to try it out but with her skin we are going to wait for a while.
Pati is now a bit rashy as well, and seems to have set the record for consecutive weeks of teething, so that makes her congested and irritable. Maybe we will have to give her a flavored rock to knaw on or something.
I finished my time with the Cardiac Surgery rotations, and had a splendid time. I learned a ton, including that we will very likely experience a massive shortage in surgeons to do heart bypass surgery in the next 10 years or so, as well as the fact that they once were at the top of the food chain, but now are practically bottom feeders. Quite sad, actually. It seems like nobody appreciates them much anymore, and that is a shame given what they can and do perform every day.
I have been allowed to do more and more of the operations I am involved in at the hospital. Have completed several surgeries completely by myself, and have started getting more involved in others.
This month I am back on the Trauma service, and so far have been very busy. Next month I go up to University Hospital in Cleveland for a month on their transplant service. Not looking forward to this, the long hours and 45min commute each way, but at least I don't have to be gone to distant hospitals and cities for months at a time like most programs.
I finish out my year with a month of Plastic Surgery before I welcome the incoming new class of residents in July by being with them on the general surgery service. Then August---October finds me across the street at the Children's Hospital doing pediatric surgery for three months. That should be good and I am looking forward to it.
Well, we are trying to get back into shape here. I was sick for a good month and a half, and didn't get much of any exercise. Indoor soccer league is over, and Softball has started by not really due to bad weather last weekend. We should have a game tomorrow but it is supposed to rain again. Figures, both weekends I am off this month are cool and rainy (better days to be on call as less busy, typically). Oh well, just more experience for me.
Some time I should write about my Etrade experience, but I think I will spare you. To summarize, if you have three returned deposits from a bank you are trying to transfer funds into or from electronically, your account is automatically locked. This takes speaking with 5 or 6 different representatives over 2 months, a failed wire transfer, and submitting special requests to resolve. In the meantime, you most likely have bills the become due, delinquent, and the whole process costs you about 2 years worth of interest that you were hoping to earn above your local bank interest rate. I thought this was the new age of electronics and such, but I guess I was better off where I was, even if the grass was a bit more brown.

Okay, it is Saturday and I should be cleaning up all of my clutter from the past month or two that I have been busy and not around much.

As always, you can view any new pictures of us at our picasa web picture album site by clicking on most of the pictures that we have posted on this site.

David

cooking up a mess

I used to really like to cook. That was before I had to make two of everything, and nothing turns out good anymore. I can't even make one batch of tuna fish there is a batch for Anne (made with olive oil and salt and quinoa) and a batch for everybody else. Today I tried to make two batches of cookies, one for Anne and one for the other kids. I ended up discouraged, scraping cookies off of baking sheets into the trash, having used up my butter supply, my time supply and my patience supply and having nothing to show for it but a full garbage, a messy kitchen, and a bad attitude.

I took Anne to the dermatologist today to see if he would have help to offer that we have missed so far. It was a 15 minute appointment and I liked him. He was good with Anne, looked at her rash which covers her feet, her legs, her belly, her hands and her neck and said "I don't have any doubt that we can have this totally cleared up." Which would be great. Her rash is already SO much better than it used to be and she is actually sleeping through the night most nights. He didn't hear about any of her story. He didn't seem to think it had much to do with anything she eats (I understand his point of view, but I know what she looks like when I feed her normal food) although he didn't belittle me for thinking so. I do think that there is part of her rash which has nothing to do with what she eats. It is there no matter what we do. So we have another round of creams and lotions and soaps to try. I would be pleased if her rash would totally clear up. But I have no doubt that if I feed her the wrong things it will come back.

In early March Anne got a cookie, a regular, good cookie, like all of the other kids were eating. It was an accident and we paid for it. Her rash worsened and became sore and painful. She cried and whined all of the time. Her nose ran like a faucet and she was unhappy and disobedient. She coughed and whenever she took a sharp breath in it sounded funny. This lasted for about a week and a half. It doesn't sound too bad, but the reality of spending just one day with a little girl who cannot stop crying is the pits. A few days later I fed her some garbanzo beans. She has never been tested for those but I had not given them to her because she had an immune resonse to peas and they are in the same family. It took 12 - 24 hours for her to break out in red spots and begin uncontrollable itching. That one only lasted for two days and I am grateful.

It is more than just a rash. I am grateful that this last year she has gained weight and is growing. She is healthy in many ways and happy when she doesn't eat what she should't. Now that I have written it down I am a little ashamed about complaining about it when she can do so many things normally and just has to avoid some things to stay relatively healthy.

Who needs cookies anyway? There is alot to be said for apples and bananas and pears and grapes. No mess, no work, and they turn out good most every time.

Seven Years

Yesterday marked seven years of marriage with the most wonderful man in the world. Every day I am grateful for David, for his heart for the Lord, his desire to please Him, his care for me and our family, that he has followed God's leading when it would have been much easier to ignore it. I am really honored to get to be his wife and be apart of what the Lord is doing with his life. He gets this coming weekend off...the kids and I are so excited!

and the relatives came

The house seems pretty empty without them. We have been looking forward to Nate and Robyn visiting us with their children for months. It was every bit as fun as we thought it would be. Didn't get much sleep but we had alot of fun. Some of them were sick when they arrived, some of us were too. When they left some of them were sick and some of us were too. We hardly left the house. With nine children between us I think we have finally learned that home is a good place to stay. David and Nate had some vacation days so we had almost a week with the dads and then a week without them. The kids played and fought and really made friends with each other again (or enemies, as the case may be...Anne and Todd never learned to appreciate each other. On the way to the airport they sat next to each other and argued the whole way "you are bothering me" "no I am not"...I couldn't stop laughing).
Near the end of the second week Robyn and I decided that we should get everyone out of the house and headed into Amish Country. All nine of them lined up in the top row at the animal auction surrounded by Amish farmers was quite a sight. They behaved really well, but the auction left a mark on Halley. She fell and nearly broke her nose. Todd and Anne kept busy arguing about which cows were boys and which ones were girls. They finally figured it out "Oh, the FAT ONES are girls!"
We had a great snowstorm and played out in it a little, but the kids had coughs and the dry cold weather set them all off so we had no choice but to stay inside most of the time. I was pleased that so many little children could live together in a pretty orderly fashion. It is encouraging to see the work of the Holy Spirit in the older children who are Christians, and it is something to look forward to in the younger ones. Robyn made it down to the hospital for a couple of hours one night to walk the floors with David and be a mouse in the corner at a trauma.
I couldn't mention all of the ways that we were blessed by the Coppers while they were here. It doesn't seem real, even after nearly two years, that we don't live close enough to see them at least once a week.
Robyn flew home yesterday, her birthday, with all five children. The baby was sick to start with and two more got sick on the way home. Happy Birthday Robyn!
Jan had her 6th birthday this month and the kids and I got out today so she could spend a few birthday dollars. The store we went to gave her a crown and a balloon and announced her name and birthday over the loudspeaker while we shopped. It was pretty exciting.
It is nice to have Easter to look foward to this weekend. We don't have big plans, but the kids think they are big. Alec is going to chop our Christmas tree trunk in half and nail it into a cross and Jan is going to decorate it (it is snowing right now and is supposed to keep snowing for several days, so maybe we will dig out some fake flowers for decoration). We have eggs to boil and color, pictures to make for our walls, Sunday dinner to plan and the house to clean. David will be post call on Sunday so we will try to keep him awake for our Easter dinner celebration. It will be something to celebrate if we make it to church since we have been too sick to go for several weeks.

Rich

We have just made it through a week of some sort of stomach virus, some one up every night feeling miserable and making a mess from one end or the other. The laundry is nearly caught up for today and the kids and I are just enjoying how good it feels to not be sick. Pati has some teeth coming in so it might be awhile before she stops being a little on the cranky side. Tonight is David's last night of call this week and then he gets this weekend off. We are planning to really enjoy it since this will be the first weekend since the beginning of December that he has had off where someone hasn't been sick. He also took his yearly exam last weekend so he doesn't have to be studying in his "free" time for the first time in months.

When we moved into this house a pool table came with it. I think that the man who lived here before made it and he left it here along with all of the extras that go with a pool table (balls, cues, chalk, racks and pool table light). For a year and a half now the kids have had fun going to the basement to play pool - but it took up alot of room, pool balls are dangerous when thrown, cues are nearly equally as dangerous when wielded as a lance or spear, especially when someone is standing on the pool table, and the blue square chalks are toxic choking hazards. We found someone who wanted to buy it. Jan and Alec spent an afternoon watching and chatting with the couple who were trying to figure out how to get the table out of the basement without killing themselves (they did it!) and we now have a place to run and play in the basement. This has been a great thing for all of us since we just can't be outside very much.

The other change of note this month has been Anne Pilar doing away with diapers and using the toilet like a big girl. I just heard her run into the bathroom muttering "gotta go potty....hurry quick...don't go yet...wait wait...OK...I have dry pants Mom...I AM WONDERFUL...I have potty in the toilet... I am so proud of you...I am so impressed..." I love how she praises and affirms herself when there is no one else available to do it. She makes it without accidents a little more than half of the time, and I am proud of her and tell her I am impressed.

The kids Bible memory project right now is I Corinthians 13. It has been a good one for them and for me. Sometimes patience and kindness are in short supply here and it is good to be accountable to each other because of what we are all memorizing together. It has also sparked alot of interest in Saul/Paul and who he was and what he did which is something I didn't expect.

Alec and Jan wanted to know this week if we are rich. I said yes. They said, "What does it mean to be rich?" I said that to be rich meant that you had more than you need and then they agreed "Yeah, we ARE rich."

A Football Pwayer

It has been quite some time now since I have contributed to this blog. Mostly because I have been too busy at work, but also because I have been too busy at home sleeping in between being too busy at work.
December was pretty busy, and I am glad it is now January. The new year started off with me switching to the Cardiac Surgery service here, which is pretty new and exciting for me. I am the only resident on the service, and have some wonderful surgeons just itching to teach me lots of great things. So far I have done three surgeries, inculding taking a postage stamp sized hole out of the sac that contains the heart (I did the entire surgery), and my first bypass. There is just something about splitting open the chest, exposing the heart and then making the heart completely stop it's beating and put the patient on bypass for a couple of hours while you sew the patient's own veins and arteries to bypass the blocked ones, and then waking the heart back up again.
I have an amazing amount of respect for those surgeons, and feel like I am with a dying breed as they are more and more being pushed out of practice by low reimbursements, a dearth of replacements, and the distaste of the new generation for a field that requires the most challenging skills both mentally and physically. I admit I am one of them, and have no desire to put myself under that much stress on a daily basis (I will be much more relaxed cutting open the abdomen and fixing things, and leave the chest to someone else).
They really are the doctor's doctor in my opinion. They completely manage their patients, are ICU doctors and lung specialists as well as master surgeons. My hat is off to them, and I feel privileged to be able to stand next to them in the OR this month.
We are just finishing interviews for the incoming class of new residents that will start in July. Feels weird now that I am two years removed from their position, and I am starting to lose the feeling of how they felt and how intimidated I was. I am also realizing how much closer I am to being done with residency, and how much more I need to learn. Seems like I have made it to the point that some things are really starting to come together for me knowlege wise, and I am starting to have the foundation that I can build my knowlege upon. I only have 3.5 years left, which really is not all that much time to get the skills and knowlege I will need wherever the Lord has for me.
The rest of the year has me doing another month of Cardiac surgery, a month of Plastic surgery, a month of Transplant surgery up in Cleveland, and another few months of general surgery I think, or maybe ICU or something like that.
Last month seemed to be really strange. We had this guy come in that was similar to another patient we had earlier in the year. He was a young guy of 18 who actually came in one night as a trauma patient. He had been involved in a drunken car wreck where the vehicle he was in was stolen. He didn't have anything wrong and was a real jerk to the staff, spitting, swearing, swinging, etc... so we let him go home. He then showed up later that same night having been shot in a room with a girl, not his girlfriend, and when he came in he wasn't swearing or spitting, or fighting. He looked at me and with wide eyes asked me point blank if he was going to die. I answered back with the usual "well, we are trying to make sure you don't." as I looked at his chest x-ray the bullet wound on his left chest seemed to have a chest that was full of blood. We began pumping him full of blood and IV fluids, and I put a tube in between his ribs into his chest cavity under his armpit to evacuate the blood that has accumulated there, as well as re-expand his lung. Initially I watched just over 3 pints of blood come out of the tube. I secured the tube to his chest and then took another look and he had over a liter out. At this point we were able to roll him and found the exit wound in the small of his back and so we took him up to surgery. We placed him on the operating table and then he asked us again if he was going to die. I was praying again as I answered, "well, we sure hope not sir, we are doing our best to make sure you don't die okay." A few seconds later when we put him to sleep for the surgery we lost his pulse and blood pressure, so we started CPR and he had blood squirting out of his bullet holes with the compressions. The chest surgeon arrived and cracked his chest, to find his heart beating, but then it stopped. He had a bullet wound all the way through both segments of his left lung and the bullet had severed both the main artery and vein going to his lung, which is a fatal wound.
Well, we really have been doing okay as a family, with the children learning much more how to read, play football, build and create. I have someone I have to go see now, so I will end here. Some short moments of calm on call here at the hospital are the times I have to write here, so I guess that means it has to be interrupted like now. Take care.