Kolby's Post

So, this week Kolby said he’d like to write our blog post for us, and I’m just going to type what he says:

I love my manta (blanket). And I love preschool. I like church because I love Jesus. I love my toys. My favorite toys are my cars, and my favorite car is my new car from Christmas. It is my favorite because I like it, because it makes noise. My other favorite toys are my trains. Making a train track is fun.

I’m going to write what our family did this week. On Monday we didn’t go to school because it was a holiday. On Tuesday it was Isaac’s doctor’s appointment, and Mommy’s doctor’s appointment. And Camden was sick that day. On tv we watched the parade for the new president. On Wednesday we went to the temple open house. The temple made me feel good, it was quiet and beautiful. My favorite part of the temple was the room with the baptismal font. Later we went to my piano lesson. I played three songs on the piano. And then on Thursday it was Eli’s birthday party. Before the party we decorated the house with balloons and ribbons. People came to Eli’s birthday party. Kaitlyn and Nikki, Chelsie and Emily, Paige, and my cousins, Jaden and Kyler, and aunt Mel and aunt Annette all came. When people came, we got out cars to play with. I played in a box too. After we played, we sang “Happy Birthday” to Eli and ate cake. It was a car cake. After everyone else left, Jaden stayed for a sleep-over. We played together and then we went to sleep. The next day we played and colored together. On Saturday I helped Mommy get some food out of the food storage. And I helped Daddy move the clothes because my brothers and I moved bedrooms. Today was Sunday. We hade stake conference at church, it was a special meeting where we listened to people talk. And that’s what we did this week.

Eli's 4th Birthday Party

So, we had Eli’s birthday party on Thursday (he will turn 4 on January 31st). I made a Lightning McQueen car birthday cake which turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. The boys were excited to help me curl ribbons and hang them from the ceiling, and to blow up balloons too. Since it was a Cars themed party, we got out the boys’ box of matchbox cars for all the kids to play with. We also got out several little boxes that the boys like to play with like they are garages for their cars, and a large box that we happened to have from the dishwasher that had to be replaced earlier this week. The kids enjoyed climbing in and out of that big box until it finally collapsed at the end of the night. Eli liked his cake and ice cream, and enjoyed the treat of drinking soda (we usually only get soda for birthday parties). And of course he had fun opening a few gifts from his friends, which he has been carrying around and having fun with the last couple of days since the party. Although it was a traditional Bradshaw family kid’s birthday party [lots of loud kids running around for the entire evening], the kids had fun and it was nice to see the parents and get to say hi to them too. You can tell from the pictures and video clips that Eli enjoyed the night – he has a big smile in every photo.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

ER is over

Today was the last day of my ER rotation. That’s 5 of the 13 rotations for this year done. Yeah!! The ER was nice – I worked 21 eight hour shifts and had 7 days off. The shifts ranged from 7am-3pm, 9am-5pm, 2pm-10pm, 5pm-1am, and 11pm-7am. I saw quite an array of people with lots of differing personalities and problems, ranging from no reason for being in the ER to every reason for being there and very sick. Here are examples of some of the more interesting things I saw:

An older man who had a tumor growing on his head for a year before seeing a doctor finally because it was giving him headaches and leaking lots of junk on his shirts. It was about 5 inches wide and 1-2 inches deep and was eating into his bone. We took a biopsy and he ended up having a really bad squamous cell skin cancer. He will need a lot of work with plastic surgery to try and fix it.

A teenage girl who came in 1 week after being diagnosed with strep throat with no other medical problems. She was put on an antibiotic and had a rash appear on her stomach and the front of her legs, and we thought it was just a reaction to the antibiotic. We got some basic labs that came back showing signs of cancer. Further testing showed she had a new leukemia (blood cancer).

A lady had back surgery about 10 days before and had gone to a rehab center. She was not having very many bowel movements and started having a lot of pain and bloating in her abdomen. She ended up having a hole in her large intestine from all the pressure that had built up and was quite sick from it. The CT scan of her belly showed lots of air in her abdomen (a really bad sign) and she was rushed to the OR, where a large part of her bowel was taken out and she was in the ICU on a ventilator for almost a week afterwards recovering.

A man who was wheeled in by EMS with really bad chest pain. We were sitting in the other room and heard, “I need a doctor and nurse in the room now!!” so I rushed in after the attending doctor to watch. The patient had stopped breathing and had an abnormal heart rhythm. The doc ran in and gave a large thump with his fist to the man’s chest while the machine was getting ready to shock him. I think he ended up being shocked 3-4 times before he came around and said “Ouch!” with the last one. He was rushed up to cardiology to get a rapid procedure to look at the blood vessels to his heart, and they found a giant clot blocking the main vessel in his heart. He is so lucky because if he had been at home when he lost consciousness, he wouldn’t have had the machine there to shock him, and so he probably would be dead.

A lady who got something in her eye from raking leaves. We placed a fluorescent dye on her eye and then used a machine called a slit lamp to look at her cornea to see if there were any abrasions (cuts), which would fluoresce a light green color, and I got to see it.

I got to suture (sew) up a few people’s lacerations – one on an eyebrow and one on a head – all by myself, which was so much fun.

I would go see the patient, then talk with the doctor over me, and we would talk about the possible things going on and decide what labs or other tests to order. It was a nice month because the ER is run by the attending doctors, and we are there more to learn than to run it. So we could go a little slower and take time to learn about our patients. I also enjoyed the people I worked with.

There were some frustrating things that would keep me from choosing ER as a career: 1) I saw firsthand the problems that our current healthcare system has with respect to the ER – so many people who use it as their primary care office because they don’t have insurance so they don’t go to a regular doctor, which drives the premiums and taxes up for everyone else; 2) I got annoyed by people who use the ER like McDonalds: they think they can come in, pick and choose (sometimes demand) what tests they want ordered or what pain medicines they want, and then get mad when things are not done as fast as they like because they need to be somewhere else; 3) I don’t like the lack of continuity of care while working in the ER – you see patients, figure out what is going on with them, and then send them out, and it is hard to know what happens to them. I guess if anything this year continues to make me more and more excited for the upcoming training when I will get to learn dermatology, which I am liking more and more the more I see of it.

In other news, Kolby has now done 2 weeks of piano and loves it. He can already play a song that is recognizable (“Merrily we roll along”). The boys had doctor’s appointments this week for well-child checks and they all seem to be doing well. We went on Thursday to JC Penney to get a family picture that we will send out for Christmas. The lady who did our session was the same one who had taken the pictures of the boys in their Halloween costumes a few weeks ago, which turned out so cute, and she was so good again this time – we want her to do it for us every time we go. I can’t wait to get the pictures back – they turned out so nice. Thursday night was Daddy-Eli night and we went to see Wall-E together. Eli was so excited to get a little bag of popcorn and watch the movie on the big screen. We took the van in for a $20 oil change on Friday that ended up costing about $400 – the area where you put the key in locked up and so we had to have a locksmith go to the car place and replace that; the battery was dying and needed to be replaced; and we got the oil change. At lease that van works so well for us most of the time. Yesterday Kolby had a practice for his primary program that he participated in at church today. We had dinner tonight at the Eccles, a family in our ward. The kids had so much fun playing together and we had fun just talking. It has been a pleasant evening and a nice week.

Kolby's 5th and Isaac's 1st Birthday Party

On Friday Michael had the day off and we planned the birthday party for Kolby and Isaac for that evening. I made a couple of cakes the day before and decorated one to look like Cookie Monster for Kolby. And on Friday we finished getting the house all cleaned up and put up some streamers and ribbons for decorations. I ran to pick up the little cake for Isaac – Mel told me about this deal where you can just call any Albertson’s grocery store and ask them at their bakery about their birthday cake for a child’s 1st birthday, and they will make you a free cake. All you have to do is call at least 24 hours in advance and tell them what you want on it (I guess they can write the child’s name if you want, but it has to say “Happy 1st Birthday!” on it). It’s not a huge cake, but on our boys’ first birthdays we always give them their own cake and set them on the table and let them eat it all by themselves, and then I make other cake(s) for everyone else at the party. So, this free cake worked great for Isaac’s cake. We video-taped him eating it, and he gets the biggest smiles once he actually eats a bite and realizes that it is food. Michael did put Isaac’s face in the cake (as he has done with each of the boys), but he didn’t end up getting too messy from that. Isaac actually didn’t need Daddy’s help to get really messy – by the end of the night he had done a pretty good job of covering his face and hands (and arms, legs, tummy, table, floor, and high chair) with lots of bright multi-colored cake frosting. He probably got the messiest that any of our boys have with their cakes on their 1st birthdays. We found out later that the pink frosting happened to not wash off very well, so if you look close you can still see a few pink spots on Isaac’s forehead and legs today. Camden thought it was pretty exciting that Isaac got his own cake, and that Isaac was nice enough to share some with Camden after he started in on it. The one thing that night that was really frustrating was that the camera ran out of batteries during the party. It didn’t show that the battery was low at all until after the party started, and then it went dead after Isaac started on his cake, but before we brought out the Cookie Monster cake for Kolby. So, I was so sad that we didn’t get a video of Kolby blowing out his candles. But I did remember that Grandma Faun had a digital camera that she’d never used before, so I got that out of it’s box and was able to take several more shots of the kids throughout the evening before the battery ran out on her camera too. I think Kolby really liked his cake – when he saw that I had gotten some blue and black icing, he asked where the brown icing was to make cookies, and I told him that I wasn’t doing that. But I surprised him by putting real cookies all around the outside of the cake. The Eccles and the Mills from the ward were able to come for the party, and the kids all had a lot of fun playing games like Simon Says, What Time is it Mr. Fox?, and Duck, Duck, Goose. And Kolby was excited to show his friends how he could play some songs on the piano right before everyone had to leave. (I am amazed that after taking 2 lessons Kolby can now play a recognizable song with the right timing and everything – we’ve never done the whole music lessons thing before, but I just assumed that it would take a lot longer than that).

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Halloween Night

So, we enjoyed trick-or-treating around the neighborhood with a group of friends from church on Halloween. Kolby mostly ran around with his friend, Kaitlyn, and Camden tried to keep up with Eli. The boys all had a lot of fun – I think Isaac even enjoyed it, as he ended up napping in his stroller for a good part of the walk. The boys tired of trick-or-treating about an hour later, and we headed over to the hospital so Daddy could show of his cute boys in their costumes. The boys enjoyed having Daddy do a little pretend check-up on them in one of the empty ER patient rooms.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Camden's 2nd Birthday Party

We had Camden’s birthday party on Thursday and it turned out to be really fun. After seeing that there was a 20% chance of rain for Thursday, we waited until later in the afternoon before deciding that the nice weather would hopefully hold out and putting up the decorations in the back yard. I was glad that it didn’t end up raining at all that evening, because I really didn’t want to have to move the party inside and then have to clean up cake and ice cream off the floors afterwards. If I’m counting right, we ended up with about 15 adults and 22 kids at the party. Michael’s sister and her husband, Mel and Christian, and Michael’s cousin and his wife, Joe and Heidi, and their kids came. Our friends, Emily and Lamar May and their boys were also able to come up from Pleasant Grove. And the Eccles, Mills, and Harkers from church made it too, so it was nice to have everyone come. I made an Elmo cake – really, just a cake with white frosting with red frosting dots (it sure takes a lot of red food coloring to turn white frosting red instead of just pink!), and a little plastic Elmo figure on top. Camden liked the cake (although he needed help blowing out the candles), and he has carried the little Elmo toy around with him since then, taking him to bed and having him sit at the table with him to watch him eat his dinner. :) After most everyone headed home, the family came inside and we got some cute pictures of all the cousins together. And then the next morning we gave Camden our birthday gift – some more animals to add to the boys’ collection that they love to play with so much. I was glad that we had such a fun time at Camden’s party and that we got to celebrate with Michael before leaving town next week. And I love this picture of Camden – it shows just how much he was enjoying himself at the party too. Enjoy the rest of these photos and videos:

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