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.