A Happy Thanksgiving

We had such a great time at Thanksgiving. My sister and her boyfriend flew out form Washington and My brother and his wife drove down from Milwaukee.

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Aspiring superhero/firefighter/docter.

Inspired by Chris's post I thought I would share a conversation I had with Steven this moring. We were eating breakfast and Steven randomly asks
" Mom when I"m a daddy will I get a diploma?"
I say " Well you will if you go to school. Daddy got one because he finished going to school to learn how to be a docter. You don't have to be a daddy to get a diploma.
Steven says " Well I think I will have a few babies before I get my diploma."
I say " So do you think you will learn how to be a docter too?"
Steven says " Oh yeah I think I will but first I want to be a superhero and then a firefighter."
I say "That should keep you pretty busy but it will look good on your application."
Steven says. "Do you think it will be okay if I go to the same school as daddy?"
I say " Yes that would be fine"
Steven say " Would it be okay it I worked at the same building as Daddy?"
I say " yes that would be okay as well."
Steven say. "would it be okay if I always live in the same house as daddy?"
I say " hmmm well that one might not work out."
Steven then asks " Mommy can I be done now?" He then flies off the table, because he is currently wearing his superman costume. He wears it to bed every night lately except when it is dirty, then he wears his batman costume.

I've been meaning to do this for months...

So, ever since I got this blog started for Natalie, I've been meaning to show my face on it, but never got around to it. Tonight, Natalie is sick and went to bed early and instead of reading on one of the innumerable topics I need to know more about, I thought I would write a few thing for all to read...

Well, I guess I've been a "doctor" now for a few months, and I've learned it is not a job for the light of heart. The hours are long, but that's not what I'm talking about. As the intern, I get paged somewhere between 40-100 times in a given day. Each of those pages involves me making a decision about the care of a patient which could affect their health. On top of that, I make many other decision on a daily basis for patient that could alter whether they look better or worse the next day when I see them. I'm not trying to sound like a hero, far from it. Many of these decisions are very minor things, but even the small things come back to haunt you some times.

Life is tenuous at times. 2 months ago I was in the NICU. Newborn babies are normally a joyous occaision, but when things go wrong, the tragedy is great. During my time there, one of my patients was a baby born at 22 weeks gestation. I had never heard of even trying to resucitate a baby at that age--I thought they were not viable and we let them die due to the futility of the situation, but that was not the decision that was made in this case. The baby did well for about 1 day, but then one organ system after another started to fail. For the 7 days that baby was alive, I practically lived at its bedside. I would leave for 10 or 15 minutes when I had to take care of something else, but always found myself next to her isolette as soon as I completed my task. I learned immeasurable amounts about the care of very sick neonates, but despite that, felt completely inadequate to answer the parent's questioning faces each time they visited. The baby's mom was an 18 year old girl who was overwhelmed by the weight of the decisions she had to make. There were differing oppinions among those involved in the baby's care about how aggressive to be in therapy. By day 4 of life, the situation seemed clearly hopeless to me, but we supported her life for several more days, advancing our care. Finally, on day 7 of life, the family requested withdrawl of care, and I stood in the background as the mother held her child for the first time as we turned off the medications and ventilator that were keeping her alive. When the monitors showed no heart beat, it fell upon me to place a stethscope on her chest and declare her dead. That moment will be with me as long as I live. I briefly spoke with the parents, but had nothing to say--what could I say? I didn't know how to deal with it either. Ultimately, I excused myself, filled out the necessary paperwork, then went to my call room where I dictated her death summary. At the time, I was confused because I didn't feel grief, but looking back, I realize I wasn't allowing myself to--I had distanced myself so as not to be hurt when she died. That night, sleep did not come easily.

Death is not the only thing that weighs heavily upon me. Sometimes things go wrong with patients, and you are never sure if it was something you did, or if it would have happened anyway. When we do procedures on patients, we always warn them of the risks of the procedure. A few weeks ago, I performed a thoracentesis (putting a needle into the chest cavity to collect fluid that has collected around the lung) on an elderly woman with many medical problems. It was the right thing to do for her, I had explained the procedure, why we were doing it, and the risks involved, and she had agreed to the procedure. The procedure itself went very smoothly, a "textbook" case. She seemed to respond well to it initially, but by the next day she was doing poorly, and ultimately she ended up in the ICU. It turned out she had bled into the chest cavity on the side I did the procedure. I have walked through the procedure I did to her in my head many times over, and I am confident I did it right, but there is a distinct possibilty what I did was the cause of her worsening status. The fact that I had warned her that she might bleed after the procedure did not comfort me in the least.

I am getting pretty long-winded. I don't want people to think I don't like my job. I love what I do, but am reminded daily of what I lack. I have also seen patients recover and benefit from my care and efforts. Those moments bring joy, but do not provoke thought and introspection the way the difficult cases do. I could continue for hours with stories of patients I have learned from. As a medical student, I saw similar cases, and I did learn from them and recognize how difficult they were, but as a medical student you are sheltered to some extent from this. Now, the prescriptions, the hospital orders, the daily notes, the discharge summaries, and so much of my patient's care proceeds with my name attached to it. I have spent many late night reading to try and bridge the many gaps I have in my knowledge base (something I should be doing now).

Anyway, overall I am enjoying residency. Not a day passes that I don't learn something (usually many things) new. I am inspired and impressed by my many colleagues who help me learn and develop the skills I need. I only wish I didn't need to learn and develop skills, I wish I had the complete package now.

On a closing note, I am so greatful for my wife and children. What a blessing it is to come home to them. I know it has been hard on all of them. Laura asks me every night if she will see me tomorrow, and sometimes the answer is "no", often it is "I hope so", rarely is it a confident "yes". Natalie is so supportive. By the time I get home, she is as exhausted from her 14 hour day of work as I am from mine, but she listens to me as I release my daily frustrations, and supports me in so many ways. I am certain that having a family to remind me of where my priorities need to be has been an essential part of my education. I only wish my kids didn't have to wonder when they would see thier dad again.

Back to Blogging

I have a variety of reasons as to why I have stopped updating my blog. The first one is that in August we went to Utah and while we were there we lost our camera in the Tetons. I'm sure the camera has a very good home now up in those beatutiful mountains but sadly I believe that it has taken it's last pictures because from what Chris said it is not likely anyone will find it. It has taken me awhile to decide on a new camera. I am very happy with the one we got it has been a lot of fun. The other reason I haven't updated the blog is that after we got back reality hit and Chris was really busy! He is gone all the time it seems. I was warned of this by many resident's wives back in Hershey and now I am gettin my turn. It has made me wish I had offered to help with kids or just drop dinner by once in awhile. So I also have been really busy trying to keep up with everything by myself. I go to bed a lot earlier these days and I find that I often just want to curl up and read a book instead of get on the computer. I have severly neglected my email as well. I am however really excited about what we have been doing lately and my pictures from my new camera. Really I can't complain to much because I feel I have been blessed in so many ways during this hard time. One of those many great blessings was my friend Caroline who came out with her son Owen and stayed with us. Caroline used to live in Hershey when we did. Caroline Heidi and I had such a great reunion. It felt like we were right back in Hershey together. To celebrate we spent the day at a place called Leed's farm and it's like no other farm I've ever seen. Caroline had some great pictures i wanted to post but I couldn't get my computer to work for some reason. Anyway here is what we did.



Own wanted to drive the Banana Bus so he chose the very front seat.



The Hamster wheel

The Banana Bus

Pumpkin Pillow

Heidi was really thinking ahead and she took out the back bench in her mini van so we could have a nice warm picnic. It was brilliant!

Heidi's Savanah snuggled up in the stoller. This little doll hardly made a peep all day.

Heidi's Maddie cruising around on the trike course
The corn box, a big hit with everyone

Maddie and laura in the Banana Bus


Heidi and Maddie emerging from the big tube slide. This was one of Steven's very favorite things.

More corn box fun

Weekend fun at Alum Creek State Park.

I got to enjoy another great weekend with Chris home. He has started his residency with some relatively light months. So for me true reality doesn't hit until September. I am not looking forward to that but I am enjoying all the time I have with him now. He has been on call two sundays but so far no Saturdays. Here is our little beach baby loving life in the Bumbo. For the first three months or so of Aaron's life he spent a lot of time strapped to me in a baby wrap, but alas I can no longer pack this 16lb monkey around for long periods of time. I came across the Bumbo at a consignment store a few weeks ago and it has totally been worth every penny. In the Bumbo he doesn't have to be laying on the floor acting as Steven's favorite jumping obstacle. He really loved it at the beach and sat happy for a long time. I only moved him because I was concerned about him being in the sun to long.

The kids could have stayed here all day. They were so sad when it was time to go. Chris and I just wore out long before they did.

This was really a nice place to play. We have been pleasantly surpised by the fun things to do in the flat tornado ridden plains of Ohio.

And one more of Aaron just because I think he is so cute.

Great Things Keep Happening!

Tonight as the day ends I am feeling so blessed.
Great thing 1- Yesterday morning Chris met with a group of guys from the ward and they went and biked 39 miles. He had such a great time and it was the farthest he has yet biked.

Great thing 2 -Then later that day we got to go on a date because my new companion called me and wanted to watch our kids while we went on a date. I am still in shock about that one. We had such a fun time. We went to COSI and watched a movie called "In To the Alps". It was a documentary about a man who climbed the Eiger, on a huge imax screen and it was incredible. We both are ready to go on a trip to Switzerland.

Great thing 3-We came home and I made hamburgers and we ate squash, lettuce, and cucumbers from our garden. I had our awesome new babysitting friends eat dinner with us, and then we went out to ice cream. It rained and the wind was blowing so hard that it broke our umbrella while Chris waited in line for our ice cream. (Very funny to watch from my dry spot with the kids.) It was so fun and we were happy to have made some great new friends.

Great thing 4-Today was Chris's second sunday that he was on call. I can't say that I love going to church with out him but I had a really great day. I made it to church on time this week.(i was five minutes last time I went by my self.) The kids were really good and I only had to leave sacrament once for a potty break. Then Laura went to Sunbeams and I went to nursery with STeven because I had been asked to sub. I took Aaron with me and hoped that he would sit happy in his car seat. I wasn't so lucky and he got fussy. It was of course really noisy and he was tired. I took him into sunday school while the kids were having snack time in hopes that I could find someone to pawn him off on. I spotted the couple who had volunteered to watch our kids the day before. I quietly handed him off and ran back to the nursery. I had left one lady to fend for herself in there, so I was trying to hurry. I had a really fun time being in nursery I brought lots of songs and activities and since it was the older nursery they loved it. It was a good reminder to me that I belong in primary. Later when the kids were occupied I snuck back into sunday school to make sure Aaron wasn't causing to much trouble. The brother who had taken him for me had him sound asleep in his arms. He kept him all through priesthood as well and I guess he stayed asleep the whole time.

Great thing 5- I spent most of Sunday playing games with my kids
Some funny things that the kids have done lately. Laura comes up stairs with a bloody nose. I ask her what happened she says "Steven stuck his finger up it and made it bleed."

Steven was asked what he wanted to be when he grows up he says " A superhero" Practical Laura says "Steven aren't you going to be a dad?" She is very literal about most things, not a lot of make believe in her.

Today Steven annouces to Laura with his pants already completely off "Laura I'm going potty now by myself and I want some privacy." Then he marches off to the bathroom. uh yeah I guess I need to work on that privacy concept a little more.

Camping at John Bryan State Park

One of the great things about Colombus is our new friends. We have made friends with a family that has kids the same ages as ours and that like the same things we do. July 18th we went camping with them. Saturday we went and ate breakfast at an actual flour mill.

The mill is famous for their pancakes and from the photo I think you can see why.

This is Laura and Chris in front of the water wheel. It is sadly not great for pictures because they keep Christmas lights on it. At Christmas time they have a light show that we will have to go back and see. I think then I will appreciate all the lights on the Mill.
Rock climbing is the reason we chose to camp here. It was the first time we have gone since Laura was a baby and we lived in Logan. So a first in over four years. It was so fun.

I have this same picture of all of my kids now about the same age in this pack. It has come in handy many times and this was one of them. Thank you Chris's parents! The big red mark on his forhead is a misquito bite. We all have had more misquito bites this summer then all the rest of them combined.

Here we are starting our kids young. Chris made a harness for the kids out of some webing. They thought it was great!

Reaching for that hold. Laura loved rock climbing.

Steven had some very interesting technique. We will have to work on his form some.

Here is Chris truly in his element. I like rock climbing but Chris LOVES rock climbing so this was an especially great trip for him. He was a bit rusty but still scrambled up to the top.


Here he is, his favorite place to be, on top of a rock. His favorite rocks to be on top of are of course much higher but this was still fun.


And last and also least is me trying to remember how to rock climb. Lets just say I didn't really remember but I had a wonderful time trying.

This gives a new meaning to "CHEESE". Our last picnic on a moss covered table. mmm.

So now for a little bit of history. Posting these pictures brought back memories. A good six and a half years ago Chris had me climb up this rock pinacle up Logan canyon. He climbed up first then he belayed me from the top while I climbed up after him. When I finally made it to the top he had sparkling cider and our song playing (John Denver's Annie's song). He also had flowers (some ended up blowing off but I was sitll impresssed). He then told me he loved me and asked me to marry him. I wish I could remember what he said exactly. I know I wrote it down but I'm not going to look it up right now. Anyway it was a special day that I will always remember and makes me fall in love with him all over just thinking about it.

A Happy 4th of July

We really had a fun 4th of July this year. We started the day with a rainy parade but we had a great time anyway. Steven and Laura enjoyed walking to the car splashing in the puddles. Then Chris got home and we went to a bbq. WE both met a few more new people. Then we went to a park and watched the fireworks. Someone there was playing music over a speaker and that provided for some good fun dancing. I spent some time reflecting about what a great blessing it is to live in America. When I was in Russia everything there was so uncertain. The best anyone did there was buy a two bedroom apartment and only a few people owned a car. The people that I knew in Perm would never be able to live in a house like I have and it is very small for American standard of living. Even though we live in a economically uncertain time I'm not worried about wether I will have enough food to feed my children. I have so many wonderful things because I live in America.

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Exploring Colombus

When we first found out that we were for sure moving to Colombus there were a few people in our ward who had lived there before and they told us we would love it. They were right! We are having a great time. I can't believe all the fun things that there are to do. This picture was taken at a park with fountains that squirt up and waterfalls. The ladies in the ward call it the Bunny fountain park because there are huge bunny statue's on top of this hill that the water park is by. It is free you just come with your toys and swimming suit and play.

We got zoo passes and we have gone a few times now. They really have a wonderful zoo here. The kangaroo's were especially fun to watch this particular day.

Lots of statues all over the zoo to climb on. And of course we had to stop and climb on all of them!

So much for looking at animals. Once the kids discovered this amazing playground it was hard to get them excited about anything else. Oh well it's great exercise for them and Chris and I just need to remember to bring a book.

Here is a picture of only half of what is there. It is quite the playground.
This little clip was taken at Fancyburg park in Upper Arlington. We went with our good friends from Hershey who also moved to Colombus for residency. It has been so fun having them here. It was a really nice park with an awesome playground. This clip doesn't really show it but I thought it was cute of mykids interacting. In this clip Steven says he is going to a music festival. We went to a jazz and blues music festival the night before with some new friends and had a great time dancing to the music with helium balloons. So that is what inspired his imaginative play.

Here is a video clip of the kids playing at the bunny fountain park. I'm not sure what the real name of the park is. I am sure we will be making lots of visits to this park this summer. We are having so much fun exploring and we also are having fun making new friends. Everyone here has been so friendly to us. We have been invited to lots of things and we feel very welcomed. There are so many young families like us in this ward and someone is always planning something. So if I get bored or lonely here it is my own falt!

Steven told us to!

I don't know which was funnier, finding these two cuties covered in stickers or their quick response when I walked in the room that Steven told them to do it.

These kids had so much fun playing together. These are our good friends in Hershey. laura and Steven went to pre-school at their house all last year and we also got together and let the kids play alot. For a long time almost everyday Laura would ask if her friend could come over. Steven also loved having them come over. My favorite was when they would all play hide and seek together. It was so funny to watch. This picture was taken while we were at their house waiting for our truck to be loaded the day we left to Colombus. We really miss them!

Our New Backyard Paradise

It all seems too good to be true. I can't believe I have this wonderful back yard. We were even able to put in a nice big garden. I bought the slip and slide and the kiddie pool for the kids to play in while we put in the garden. We planted the next day and the kids enjoyed helping put in the seeds. We put in cantalupe corn, beans pumpkins butternut squash, zuchinni, summer squash, potatoes, onions, green peppers, broccoli and some zinnia and sunflowers line the edges. Everything has already sprouted except the carrots. I hope they come up. Since we got here we have been working hard on the yard and also painting. We are done painting the rooms we are going to paint and now we are working on finishing up unpacking. I am hoping to be all done before Chris starts oriantation next week. We were so grateful for my parents who came and helped us for a week. Thank you mom and dad! The kids are absolutely loving the backyard as well as having stairs that is one of their favorite places to play. I am feeling very blessed!

The house has a really nice patio. We weren't eating on it though because it was too hot!

The only way to play in 90 degree weather!

Aaron loves our new backyard too!

Good -Bye Hershey

Today I went running on my favorite trail here in Hershey for the last time. It is so pretty here and I am really going to miss it. I have run this trail so many times running past the duck pond, and up through the nature trail past Shank park. This is my time to think and also to pray. It is running on this trail where my best ideas come. Running has always been an outlet for me and the pretty scenery was an added bonus. Yesterday was my last day at church. It was a really sad day for me. I did really well until relief society. I was standing in the back of the room holding Aaron and I looked around at all the women sitting in the room and I thought about how each of them had taught me, inspired me, helped me, and been my friend. Some of them I have come to love very much. I was grateful for the many hugs I recieved and for all the sweet sisters who cried with me as I said my good-byes. It is so hard to leave knowing that many of these people I won't see again. Yesterday I also spent a lot of time reflecting on the last four years here. So much has happend and we have changed and grown in so many different ways. When we moved here Laura was four months old. She is now four years old and Steven and Aaron were both born while we lived here. It has been a wonderful, difficult, trying, and fun four years. Hershey PA we will miss you.

Chris's graduation

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Yes it is another long slide show posted by me but I am having so much fun making them. We had a such a fun weekend with Chris's parents this weekend. They spoiled us as always. We really loved having them here.