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.

Pati cakes

Hard to believe that Patagonia is one year old already. Pati is the first one of the kids to suck her thumb. She finds her blanket very comforting. She likes to snuggle and she likes Daddy best of anybody. All the older kids want to take care of her and carry her and make sure she is OK. Sometimes it bothers her and I think she learned to walk at 10 months out of self defense. If she wasn't so big I think Anne would carry her around just like Alec and Jan do.
She fell down the basement stairs in November. I was at the bottom and I heard a sound like a cat yowling and poor Pati was bouncing her way down. I stopped her a couple of steps from the bottom. She had bruises but that was all. Scared us both. David installed a hinge on the basement door that makes it close unless it is propped open by something heavy.
Pati is a good sleeper and has never been the demanding sort. She is patient and waits her turn without much fuss. She is stong willed in a quieter way, so that it is easier to miss. I was especially grateful for an easy going baby last year since we dealt with so much sickness.
She does her best to keep up with the older kids and even goes outside to play in the snow with them. They love her and try to take good care of her...although sometimes she would do better on her own!
Pati missed being a Christmas baby by just two days. My Grandpa and his Father were both born on Christmas, but we were happy with the 27th. David's Aunt Bee and another of my Great Grandfathers were born on the 27th. That day was the first day that month that David was available to be there for the birth, so I was happy that she came on the 27th. We missed having Heather Judson here for Christmas since she came last year for Pati's birth.
David got to be home this year too on Patagonia's birthday and we had a little tiny party.