Baby Names & Year to Date
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.
Reflections on Labor & Delivery and Starting Peds EM
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.
First Week of Labor & Delivery And Leaving For Michigan
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.
Toxicology & Step 3 Done…Birth Pains Next Week
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.
Hurricane Ike Update and New Pictures…
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.
Four Day Weekend…Kind of
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).
Baby News and Celebrations
Sorry about the lack of updates over the last couple of weeks. Even though trauma surgery is done and the schedule in emergency medicine for the last three weeks has been better it has still been a lot of hours away from home. Melissa and the kids returned safely from their trip to Nebraska along with a new kitten they acquired from the county fair while they were visiting family in Nebraska. Our new kitten is about 7 weeks old and right now we are deciding on a name for her between Cuddles and Roses...I think Karuna gets the final word on this since she and the kitten are glued together for most of the day. Yesterday we also added a new beta fish to the family and so we now have three new pets in the home with the puppy, the kitten, and the fish! Luke has been thrilled to have so many animals around and we get to hear his frequent screams of delight over something else one of our pets is doing throughout the day which definitely brings a smile to our faces.
Trauma Surgery is Done…
Only twelve more blocks to go in intern year! What a relief it has been to finish my month of trauma and to start back in the emergency room as of tomorrow. The last two weeks have been very difficult emotionally and have caused me to think again about the type of physician I want to be and to examine what our future life in medicine will look like.
First Two Weeks of Residency
Christo is just about half way done with his first rotation of his intern year, trauma surgery. It has been a long couple of weeks for our family as Christo has spent so much time at the hospital because of how busy the trauma service is at Parkland. It has felt like more than a month has passed by because Christo is routinely putting in 80 hours or more a week while on this service.
Birthdays and Some Final Pictures from India…
Good Saturday evening to all of you reading our blog. We just finished a day with lots of friends and family as we got together to celebrate Karuna's 4th birthday. Karuna had a Princess themed birthday party and she got to enjoy some great chocolate/peanut butter cupcakes that Melissa had made for her. By the time the party finally wound down tonight around 7 PM we had entertained almost 30 guests that had come to celebrate her birthday with her.
