Pages from the Philips

No, Melissa is not going to have a baby next week…but I am starting labor & delivery on Monday.  What a beautiful week it has been in Texas.  We have been so blessed this last week with temperatures in the 70s and low 80s and so we have tried to spend as much time outside as possible.  Last weekend we spent most of Friday and Saturday working to finish painting the upstairs of our house (we promise to put up pictures of the house soon) and so now that project is finally finished and Melissa can rest well at nights.  We also celebrated Luke’s 2nd birthday on Friday by taking him to Chuck E Cheese, a pizza place with lots of games for kids.  Luke must have driven the car and truck rides two to three times each!  Karuna enjoyed the games as well and I couldn’t say no to the fun and so I spent some time playing on the flight simulators which allowed me to experience once again my childhood dream of becoming a fighter pilot.

Last Saturday our dog, Daisy, manged to run away.  We’re not sure if it is from Luke pretending that Daisy is his horse or because our dog got bored and found a piece of our fence that was missing and managed to get out.  We didn’t find out our dog was missing until that evening when some people from our neighborhood about three blocks away found her running around and brought her back to our house at which point we realized that she was no longer in our backyard.  Since then we have managed to patch that one hole she found although it appears that she is patrolling the fence vigiliantly to find any possible areas of weakness!

On Saturday I also spent the afternoon & evening volunteering at the Dallas Convention Center taking care of the medical problems of the evacuees from Hurricane Ike.  At that point we had about a thousand people at the make shift shelter (they converted the basement parking garage into a large shelter).  It was amazing to see how well the Red Cross and other city agencies had worked together to get things organized for all the people there.  There were areas for kids to do crafts so that they wouldn’t go stir crazy, a makeshift basketball area and of course plenty of beds for all the people to sleep on.  The people that came to the medical booth were very manageable on Saturday night although on Friday they were apparently completely overwhelmed since so many people came to see a physician since most of the patients had just gotten into Dallas.  Most of the patients that I took care of needed prescriptions since many had forgotten their medicines back in Houston and the remaining just needed checkups for various acute and chronic conditions.  Since we were quite limited in the supplies we had available there a big part of our job was to figure out if a patient was sick enough to need transfer to an emergency room or whether we could just manage them there.  I think that helped quite a few emergency departments in the area from not having to deal with a huge influx of patients that didn’t need to be at the hospital.  I didn’t get much time to take pictures at the shelter but here are a few below that I was able to take.

Hurricane Ike Refugees at the Dallas Convention Center

Sleeping Areas on the Left for Hurricane Ike Evacuvees

On Sunday last week was our church’s annual picnic.  We had a great time eating some Texas Barbeque and getting to meet many of the teachers from West Dallas Community School.  Each year the church invites all the teachers and their families from the school to come to a worship service so that we can pray for them as they start their school year.  It was good to be able to encourage them and to see the work that God is doing through them to reach the hearts of so many under-served kids from our neighborhood.

This week we also got to hang out with my cousins’ Stephen and Benjamin and their families as we all got together to continue a tradition that has gone on for 16 years in our family since we came to Dallas…watching our beloved Cowboys play.  What a phenomenal Monday night game!  I’m glad Melissa has allowed me to indulge in watching the Cowboys since that is something my family has done since the hay-day of Cowboy greatness in the early 90s when they won three Superbowls.  On that note, since one of the perks of our emergency medicine residency is that we get to staff the games of the Cowboys, Dallas Stars and Mavericks to provide on-site medical care, I think there is going to be a big rush to see who will get to be at the Superbowl in 2011 when it will be held in Dallas and I’ll be in my third year of residency.  The new stadium will open next year and like most things in Texas it will be big…it fact I believe it is the most expensive NFL stadium in the country costing about 1.3 billion dollars (Story about the new stadium on ESPN).

Melissa and the kids got to enjoy a wonderful day at the Fort Worth Zoo during the middle of the week with my cousins.  Benjamin and his family (my cousins who live in Beaumont) are still in Dallas because they are still without power in many parts of that city and so it looks like the earliest they will be able to go home will be in about another week.  Fort Worth has a fabulous zoo so we are planning a return family with all of us in the future.  While the kiddos and Melissa enjoyed the zoo I got to have my fun with the third part of my medical board exams.  Step 3 is a two day, 16 hour exam with 480 multiple choice questions and nine case simulations.  Thankfully I was able to finish my second day about three hours early since it was computer case scenarios that stop you once you have done enough for a virtual patient and so it didn’t end my being too bad.  Now I wait about 4-6 weeks to find out my results before I get ready to do a couple more tests this year to get my Texas permit so that I can moonlight during residency next year.

Yesterday after I finished my tests we celebrated by going to Green Papaya, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Midtown area of Dallas.  If any of you are looking for a good Vietnamese restaurant in Dallas we would highly recommend it.  They have great Vietnamese egg rolls, good Pho, and Bun Bo Xao (vermicelli with sauteed beef) and Bun Thit Nuong (vermicelli with charbroiled pork).

Today marked the end of my four weeks on toxicology which is a sad day for all of us since it was such a great rotation with a good schedule.  Tomorrow we’re off to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth to see the Impressionist Painting Collection from the Art Institute of Chicago before I get to watch my beloved Aggies play against Miami tomorrow night.  I start labor and delivery at Parkland on Monday starting with two night shifts.  I think it will be a good month to learn as much as possible about labor and delivery since I will have to do quite a bit of that as a doctor in India.  Did you know that Parkland Hospital delivers about 16,000 babies a year?  It should be a busy month…

Finally some new pictures from when we celebrated my dad’s 56th birthday & from when our friends G.W. and Amy visitied us and from our Labor Day weekend celebrations.  As always just click the links below to watch the slideshow or you can click on individual pictures below to view them one by one and just use your arrow to key to navigate between the pictures.   View slideshow of Appachan’s 56th Birthday and the Fuquas.  View slideshow of Labor Day Weekend Celebrations.