No we have not disappeared to the ends of the earth or gone missing. It has been many months since we updated the blog mainly because of the demands of residency and taking care of three very active children but don’t worry we’re doing well…maybe I should rephrase that…surviving my second month of all night shifts in the ED.
A quick overview of the last few months:
- Vivek is now 9 months old, we cannot believe how interactive he has become
- Karuna and Luke started their second year of homeschooling and are loving every minute of it
- I finished one month of night shifts in the ER, a month of day shifts in the ER, a month in the ER at Baylor Dallas and am now on a second month of nights at Parkland/Childrens
- Melissa helped to start up a Side by Side chapter in Dallas three weeks ago and they are going through the book Sacred Marriage
- We harvested our crops from the past year incluiding 4 honey dew melons, lots of raspberries (they are still bearing for us) and strawberries, and ate our first pomegranate from our tree
- I traveled to Boston for a week to attend the annual American College of Emergency Medicine conference
- We traveled to Nebraska for a week to visit Melissa’s family
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Daily Living, Family, Medicine, Missions, Pictures, Residency
Warning: medically intense post ahead! The last few months have involved a lot of one on one patient care and I wanted to take some time to share the stories of some of my patients and I’m hoping it will be somewhat cathartic for me while at the same time allowing those that follow our blog some insight into the lives and issues raised by the people that I care for. To protect my patients’ privacy I’ve changed some of their identifying details.
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Medicine
Clearly we have not done the greatest job keeping the blog updated over the last two months or so. Hopefully I’ll be able to remedy part of that this evening. Since our last update, I’ve finished two more rotations of intern year, Vivek has gotten to 3 months, we made a 4500 mile road trip to North Carolina, Florida & Alabama, made another road trip to San Antonio and have spent lots of time in our garden. Read more…
Daily Living, Family, Food, Medicine, Pictures, Residency, Travel
Greetings! We are enjoying a great weekend of just hanging out together especially after my busy three weeks on internal medicine. I finished my internal medicine rotation last week and started anesthesiology on Monday…what a relief it has been to be on a normal schedule where I get home by early afternoon, am not on call and have my weekends off! Anesthesia has gotten off to a great start and I’ve done almost 20 intubations (for those not in the medical field it is process of putting someone off to sleep when they get to the operating room and then putting a tube into their trachea to help them breathe). The ability to intubate a patient and provide an airway is one of the most important skills that I need to master as an emergency physician because that is often the first thing that must be dealt with in order to help someone that is critically ill.
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Daily Living, Family, Medicine, Pictures, Residency
Merry Christmas wishes to everyone early since I’m not sure if I’ll get another opportunity to post another message before Christmas because I’m on call the night before. I’ve been busy at work the last few weeks and thus very little time to devote to working on pictures or posting an update. I finished another rotation in the ER (my second month there this year) and have started three weeks of internal medicine. Read more…
Daily Living, Family, Medicine, Pictures, Travel
It has been a busy first week on pediatric emergency medicine for me as I’ve just finished a stretch of 7 overnight shifts in the pediatric ER at Children’s hospital. Thankfully I get a couple of days off before I do my last overnight shift for this block on Friday (Halloween…should be an interesting night) before switching to two weeks of day shifts. I have absolutely loved my time at Children’s so far. It has been a great place to work primarily because the staffing and resources are adequate to meet the needs of the patients that are seen there. While many of the nurses in the Parkland ER are stuck caring for 5-10 patients at a time, the nurses at Children’s are assigned no more than three rooms at a time and thus patients can be cared for a lot more expediently. In fact I’ve found that the number of patients that I can see in a shift has almost doubled with the extra staffing and efficiency of the system at Children’s. Read more…
Medicine, Pictures, Residency
We’re all packed up to leave for Michigan this morning to visit Christo’s sister, Chrisly, who works for Kellogg in Battle Creek, Michigan. We’re so glad that I’ve got a week off during my labor & delivery month so that we can have time together as a family and to enjoy time with Chrisly in Michigan as we explore the Lake Michigan area along with visiting Kellogg where rumor has it that the kiddos will get to see Tony the Tiger. Please keep us in your prayers as we travel because Luke has been sick with some type of viral gastroenteritis and he was throwing up all last night and we are praying that we can make it through this trip without others in our family getting sick. Read more…
Daily Living, Family, Medicine, Pictures, Residency, Travel
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. Read more…
Daily Living, Family, Food, Medicine, Pictures, Residency
Greetings from the home of hurricane Ike in about two days. We’ve been following this hurricane closely in the news over the last couple of weeks and it looks like it will be coming ashore right by Galveston and then on to Houston before coming to the North Texas area as a tropical storm. Right now we are forecast to receive about 2-4 inches of rain and tropical storm winds but it looks like it will all depend on when the hurricane turns to a northeast direction. Read more…
Daily Living, Family, Medicine, Pictures, Residency
Happy Labor Day weekend to our faithful blog readers. We are excited about getting to spend a couple of days at home all together with the family since my schedule has become much more palatable since starting my new rotation in toxicology. We have been so blessed to have a lighter schedule this month so that I could have some time to decompress after an intense first two months of residency and so that I could have a few weeks to study before I take take the last of of my board certification exams (the Step III which is a two day exam that I have in about three weeks). Read more…
Daily Living, Family, Food, Medicine, Pictures, Residency