Pages from the Philips

As you might have figured out from the lack of posts, the 2nd year of EM residency at UTSW is the hardest year and thus the multiple months away from the writing desk. But do not worry…I’ve been collecting up plenty of interesting stories over the past 7 months from my great patients and will have some good ones to share soon.

Let me at least try to get people the highlights over the past few months and as I get some more pictures edited there will hopefully be more details to go along with the bullet points.  Karuna is an almost newly minted 6 year old (she turns 6 on June 25th), Luke will be four in September and Vivek just crossed the 16 month mark.  The kids have been so much fun especially since Vivek figured out the walking gig about a month ago.  We lost our cat Cuddles a couple of weeks ago and so we have a new member to add to the family – her name is on any given day Pretty Girl/Cookie/Cuddles II.  Karuna still has not quite made up her mind.  In starting the process of getting ready to return back to India in the next few years we did find a new home for one of our dogs, Tony, the golden retriever we found on the street who now has a new family in Oklahoma.

Melissa is doing a phenomenal job as ever managing three kids, 1 dog, 1 cat and a soon to be third year ER resident.  She will soon be starting the third year of homeschooling with the kids – this year Luke has also joined in along with Karuna.  In about two weeks I’ll be transitioning to my new role as third year resident at Parkland and also starting off a new position as academic chief resident.

Since we last blogged here are the big highlights:

• Went to Nebraska to visit Melissa’s family
• We did a 7000 mile camping trip around the West and Northwest US visiting 10 national parks
• I went out for a week to Scottsdale, AZ for the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine conference
• We just returned from Los Angeles after going to the wedding of our dear friends Sujit and Tracy Itty
• Vivek turned one
• I started moonlighting at an urgent care facility called CareNow
• We undertook a major renovation of rehabilitating our backyard with a new patio, brick path, pergola and lots of new plants
• We decided to forgo going to New Zealand next year as part of my residency training and instead have decided on spending those two months in North India working at two hospitals we are interested in joining long term
• We were able to start off a new medical mission group that meets once a month to encourage other people in the same road as us with regard to pursing long term medical missions work abroad

So I think that is the highlights.  We’ll write more as I get more pictures done.  Check out the following pictures from the last year (click the link below to view the slideshow, otherwise just click the pictures below):

• Vivek’s Baby Pictures
• Nebraska Trip 2009
• Summer Party & Luke’s 3rd Birthday