A Busy Week

Well, it is my turn to write out weekly letter. It has been kind of a long weekend – Michael was on call since early yesterday morning until around 2:00 this afternoon. On Saturday I went to a baby shower for Melanie Brumwell, a friend from Michael’s class who is having her first baby in December. That was fun to see several school friends that I haven’t seen for a while and to let all the kids play together. The baby shower was in the afternoon, and we got home pretty late, so instead of taking a really late nap around 4:00, the boys had an early dinner and went to bed early, which was nice for me. Kolby and Eli went to bed around 6:00 and Camden at 7:00, and they slept until I got them up to get ready for church this morning. So, as you can probably tell, I had plenty of time last night (with boys in bed early, Michael gone all night, and nothing good on tv) to update the blog with much of this past week’s goings-on. So, just look at the other posts below this one to see the ultrasound pictures I got last week, the pictures from Michael’s day off Monday when we took the kids to the Milwaukee Public Museum, my thoughts on the 6-year anniversary of September 11th on Tuesday, the good news I got at my doctor’s appointment on Thursday afternoon that my midwife will induce my by November 1st if this baby comes after his due date (October 30th), the video of Camden walking across the room for the first time on Thursday evening, and pictures of Camden scarfing down an entire cake at his first birthday party on Friday. That gives a pretty good summary of our week.

Other than that, I spent a lot of time this week getting all the fall and winter clothes ready for all of our boys. I keep storage bins full of boys’ clothes all divided by size, and I spent one night just sorting through all of those and trying things on the different boys to see what fit and what didn’t. Camden, our big boy, is now wearing 18-24 month sized clothes, even though he only turns 12 months old this week. Throughout the week I went to all of the different clothing stores that I shop at in our area and am finally feeling like we are pretty set for warm clothes for the upcoming seasons for all four boys. One store I really like is just up the street from us, Once Upon a Child, and they sell used kids clothes, but much of what they sell looks new and is still in style (as opposed to the other used kids stores around here that sometimes have a good deal, but mostly just sell worn out junk). Anyways, after spending probably two hours there the other day, picking out clothes and trying each item on the different boys, I purchased a large pile of jeans, long-sleeve shirts, and sweatshirts, etc. The lady who checked me out made some comment about how I was buying a lot of stuff, but I told her that I had really done a pretty good job to get good deals on the majority of winter clothes I needed for all four boys. Anyways, that’s one less thing that I need to do now before the baby is born, so it’s nice to have it done.

And there were just a few other things that happened this week that I should mention. On Wednesday morning I went to visit teach a new sister in my ward, Alicia Taylor, for the first time. We had a nice visit, even though the boys were a little distracting. Then I came home and babysat the Hymas girls while Amy went for an ultrasound. And then on Wednesday evening I got to go to a new service enrichment group where we planned a service project for the women at the META House downtown, a place for women with children who are recovering from addictions and trying to get back to normal life. The META House staff requested that we bring pumpkins and help the women have a fun night with carving jack-o-lanterns (since many of them have not had a chance to do that before), which sounds like it should be a fun activity, although I hope it is not too challenging to get donations of pumpkins, since one of the girls there mentioned that she heard the heavy rains of last month ruined many of the local pumpkin crops so pumpkins are expected to be expensive this year. On Thursday and Friday we cleaned the house in preparation for Camden’s birthday party Friday evening. And on Friday Michael had his last day off for the month, so we went down to Chicago in the morning to go to the temple. We usually go with our friends, the Hedgecocks, and trade off babysitting, but Michael’s call schedule made it so that we couldn’t go with them this month, so we just went on our own and traded off watching the boys. That was a good trip, and each of us was able to get about 10 initiatories done for family names. That night the Wellses and Amy Cortez and her kids came for Camden’s party, and we had fun watching him eat almost an entire cake by himself.

And Kolby will be starting his preschool classes again tomorrow. Michael is going to give him and Eli each a father’s blessing tonight, which should be a cool thing to do. And I will definitely have to take some back-to-school photos of Kolby in the morning. And both boys will start up their swim lessons again this week, which will be kind of busy for me for the next couple weeks because Michael won’t get home early enough so I’ll probably be taking all the kids by myself, but it will be good for them to start up their swimming again after the 2-week break between sessions. And on Thursday, September 20th, Camden will turn one year old. He’s getting to be such a big boy.

Surgery

So I guess that it is finally my turn to write. I have been busy this last month doing surgery at a place called Waukesha Memorial Hospital. On a normal day I would get there between 6:00 and 6:30am to “round” on my patients. This includes looking at their chart and reading the notes left by others since the last time I had seen the patient, looking up labs and vitals (temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, etc.) in the computer, and then examining the patient to see how they were doing and writing a progress note. Most mornings we had a meeting with one of the doctors around 7:00am to go over random surgical topics. And then it was off to the operating room throughout the rest of the day. Most days we each helped with 2-3 surgeries. Most of the patients came in through an area called Day Surgery, so we would go over there beforehand and meet the patient and then do a pre-op history and physical exam. Then we wait for the patient to be taken back to the operating room and go to assist the nurses in getting them ready for surgery.

The surgeries could last from one to several hours, depending on what it was. I saw several laparoscopic (with a video scope) gallbladder removals; breast biopsies/lumpectomies for cancer; carotid artery surgery to open up a clogged artery; aneurysm repairs; removal of small and large intestine due to tumors/cancer; removal of a spleen, removal of a thyroid; a toe amputation; and many others. The longest surgery I was in was one called a Whipple, which is a surgery used on a person with pancreatic cancer. The area of the pancreas with tumor is removed, along with the surrounding small intestine; then the stomach, outlets from the liver, pancreas, and small intestine all have to be hooked back together. That surgery took 5 ½ hours – my legs were so tired by the end of that one. I took 5 call days during the month. Once we were done with the surgeries of the day, we did home call, where we would be called back in if the doctor needed our help. I wasn’t ever called back in, though I did end up staying late on a few of my call days before getting home. Overall, though, this month was a lot nicer that I would have expected for a surgery rotation.

As I watch these surgeries, I am amazed by the complexity of the human body, and yet how it works and functions so nicely – it has been an added testimony to me that our bodies are divine creations of our Heavenly Father. I am also continually reminded of how blessed I am to have a family that is healthy and well.

Yesterday we were able to go to the temple and do some sealings for several of Steph’s direct ancestors (including some third great-grandparents and fourth great-grandparents). I took the car in that morning for what I thought was going to be a simple oil change that turned into the back brakes having to be replaced, but at least the car is safe now. There was an accident on the freeway on the way down to the temple that put us quite behind the time we had scheduled to get there, but everything turned out fine, and we had a wonderful experience. The spirit is so strong in the temple, and there is just a feeling of peace and happiness that I feel every time I go. I love it there.

I got an email this week from Dr. Flores, who I did a summer research project with a few years ago, saying that our paper we had submitted is about ready for publication, and he included proofs of the article pages for us to review one last time before final print. The paper should be published in August, so I’ll let you know more about it then, but we were so excited to hear of the progress. I am also working on a case report right now with a pediatric dermatologist, Dr. Lyon. We are just in the rough draft stages of the report, but it looks good so far.

We have had beautiful weather here this past week and have enjoyed playing outside with the kids. Steph was able to take them to the zoo and is enjoying here year-long pass. We went to a end of the year choir barbeque at a park on Friday night to just have fun with the others. We took our grill and roasted up some hotdogs and then had fun talking and playing on the playground. Then we had some friends over for games afterwards.

Kolby continues to love school and learn new things each week. He is almost done with this semester and then will have the summer off before starting back up. He is so good with his numbers and colors and is always pointing things out to us. Steph put together a chore chart for Kolby and Eli of things they can do each day to help her in the house, and then if they do all their chores for a week, they get a special prize at the end of the week. They love helping out around the house.

We are told by Eli’s teachers that he is one of the best kids in his nursery class. He loves to play, he is nice to the other kids, and he loves to help clean up. Steph says that he is just a little fish now in his swimming class and loves to go under the water.

And Camden just got his first tooth today!! It is his front bottom left one. He has been a little fussy this week, so that would probably explain why. He sure loves playing in his jumper and he actually started crawling for the first time tonight!

Oh, and Stephanie got a new calling at church this morning. She will be a visiting teaching district coordinator, and she thinks that will be a good calling.

We hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day. I am starting trauma surgery tomorrow and so have to be there to help out, as this holiday is one of the busier for the emergency room. I’ll let you know what that is like in future posts.