Our third little guy decided to make an early appearance when Melissa went into labor on Sunday. Melissa woke up Sunday morning not feeling very good and thought she had caught the stomach flu because she felt sick to her stomach. We decided to not go to church that morning because she was feeling so crummy and by later that morning she began to have full strength contractions that started off about 5 minutes apart and then progressed to about three minutes apart.
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Daily Living, Family, Pictures
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
We had our third ultrasound of the pregnancy to find out why Melissa was measuring weeks behind and by the grace of God the ultrasound was completely normal!! By ultrasound our baby is measuring about 31-32 weeks and that is just about where we should be based on dates (32 weeks and 4 days). When you measure Melissa’s belly she still measures several weeks behind but its is wonderful to know that the ultrasound shows that the baby is growing well. Right now our baby is 3 lbs 14 oz! We got to see our baby’s feet, hands and face to give us another preview of who will be joining us on February 19th, 2009. Thank you for all your prayers…we felt them when we got to the appointment because we knew that whatever we found out God was in control and orchestrating everything.
Family
We’ve gotten to enjoy our first Christmas as a family with me away at work…not the most fun way to spend Christmas but Melissa and the kids were super flexible to accomidate my schedule. I’m now half way done with my internal medicine rotation and have got about a week and a half left to go. I was post call on Christmas eve but managed to get about three hours of sleep before we all went out to my mom and dad’s house and celebrated Christmas a day early since I was working on Christmas day. Read more…
Daily Living, Family, Pictures, Travel
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
In my last post, I had talked some about one of our favorite restaurants in Chicago for deep dish pizza – Lou Malnatis. We first discovered this pizzeria about 4 years ago when we we did a marathon 3500 mile trip that brought us through Chicago on the way to Kalamazoo, MI. Since then we have loved the pizza at Lou Malnatis so much that if were are within an hour of Chicago on a trip we will usually make a detour to stop at Lou Malnatis for some pizza and buy a couple extra to eat later when we crave authentic deep dish Chicago style pizza. Apparently because of our love for Lou Malnatis pizza we also go to make our first TV debut last November on the show Food Paradise on the Travel Channel. Read more…
Family, Food, Pictures, Travel, Video
Sorry we have not posted in a while. We were on vacation the first week of October to visit my sister, Chrisly, in Battle Creek, Michigan and since we got back I’ve been working long days in Labor & Delivery at Parkland until today, which was my first day off since I got back to work. We had a wonderful time hanging out with Chrisly and enjoying the beautiful fall weather in Michigan. The leaves had started to change in Battle Creek although they were not at the height of their fall color but the kids still enjoyed getting to play with all the fallen leaves.
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Family, Pictures, Travel
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