Another great day.

Hi everybody!

Our new camera is here! Mike doesn't know how to use it yet...so it will take until tomorrow to get the pictures posted. Maybe I should look at it. I am so exhausted from this surgery rotation that I have about 20 minutes of being at home before I'm ready to hit the sack. Guess the camera will have to wait until I'm a little more awake to know what's going on. We did figure out how to take pictures with the thing...just don't have the ability to make the computer and digital camera talk to each other.

Today in surgery, we had a 61 year old lady with a bowel obstruction. We took her to the OR and it turned out to be a huge colon cancer. There were metastases all over the mesentary (bowel stuff) and it had spread to her liver. Bad news!!! Message for today: find someone you love who's over 50 and tell them to get a colonoscopy. A colonoscopy a few years back would have saved this poor lady's life.

Surgery is fun. It's exhausting...long days, long cases, lots of patients...but it's really neat. My favorite part about it is how you can take a patient that has a problem, cut them open, and just fix it! It's simple, really (not the surgery itself, but the concept of it.) I would totally be a surgeon except for the fact that I'd never have any time outside of the hosptial for my dear family. Sometimes in life you just gotta make those kinds of choices. I will compromise with myself and learn how to do operative Obstetrics like C-sections and the like while I"m in residency.

Mike and I and Julia went with some friends to Mexico Lindo, a little family run mexican joint in Cloquet, for supper tonight. Yum! They have cheap food and crappy service, but it was a blast! I ordered "the special," which consisted of a variety of things I couldn't pronounce. It turned out to be tasty. I still have no idea what I ate. Mexican food is pretty predictable...it's all a mix of tortillas, rice, beans, meat, and cheese. YOu can throw in a little variety with some tomatoes and shredded lettuce on top. The only variation is what they do to the tortilla.

Today's pictures will be on today's topics. A colon and a margarita. Both are essentials.

Taking a bath with grandma! Nov, 2006

We recently bought a new digital camera from Ebay, but it's not here yet. This is an older picture, but it was cute, so it got blogged. :) Grandma Beth came to visit us in November and she is known throughout the world for her babay bath-giving abilities. When we leave Julia in her care, she always comes back squeaky clean!
Well, after a nice weekend off, it's back to the grindstone. I am on call right now. I got home around 10pm and took care of Julia til 11 so that Daddy could get his assignment in before midnight. I went to bed in my scrubs thinking I would get called in for a late-night surgery. I heard my pager go off a few minutes ago. Crap! I loathe the idea of leaving my nice warm bed for a freezing cold car and a freezing cold operating room. I called the number and nobody answered! Yay! I can sleep some more when I am finished with this blog.....so I guess that's all for today, folks! See you tomorrow. Hopefully our new camera will be here and we can upload some more pictures for you.

A glorious weekend...

Julia eats her first Nutella at Trivia Weekend, 2007


A weekend at home at last! We had a wonderful weekend doing very little. I wrote a paper on atypical antipsychotics and insulin resistance, Mike watched Julia, fixed the Chrysler, and cleaned our house. Julia was high-maintenance, but is the cutest thing I've ever seen.





One funny thing she did today: Annie and I were sitting on the couch eating popcorn. Julia was watching Annie and I stuff our faces with popcorn. (You know...when you take a handful and push it up into your face and take big mouthfulls...) I broke a few pieces up, took out the sharp parts, and gave them to Julia. Instead of eating like she usually does, carefully and meticulously, she grabbed all of the pieces in one hand and shoveled them into her mouth. Annie and I got a good laugh...she did a great imitation of our hoggish popcorn-eating.





Went to ShopKo today to buy toilet paper and a new laundry basket for Julia. Real exciting.. I was feeling lazy, so we stopped and ate dinner at Perkins with a gift certificate somebody gave us. MIke ate his first and only patty melt of his life. Julia ate most of Mike's fries and some of my bread bowl salad. Then, it was home again. We bought Julia some clothes on Ebay today because we noticed that she is growing out of all of her current wardrobe. All of her pants look like capris. Her onesies are coming unbuttoned in the crotch when she bends over. Time for some 18 month outfits!!!

Julia's new hat from Grandma Beth! She actually likes to wear it!

Ahhhh...a Saturday. Spent the morning sleeping in til 7:30 (I never ever thought that 7:30 would be considered "sleeping in.") Drove Annie and myself out to "coffee cabin," this little family-owned coffee shop in Rice Lake township a few miles out of town. They have the best coffee, cheapest prices, and best studying atmosphere around. I needed to work on the paper for my psych rotation that was due two weeks ago. Annie studied for the NCLEX, a nursing exam.

Came home and studied some more, Annie made lunch for Mike and I. Annie and I attempted to take Julia outside for a walk with Psymuhn. We lasted about 20 minutes before Julia decided that being in the stroller was for the birds. Annie carried her the rest of the way home.

We had our romantic valentine's day dinner tonight. I made salmon with thyme and lemon, rice pilaf, and asparagus. There is greek Baklava waiting for us for dessert. I am still burning off the red wine I drank. Mike got a teaspoon of sugar in his dry red wine...that makes it taste more like Boone's Farm or Mogen David and then he'll drink it. Yum.? I will take my wine plain, thanks.

Tomorrow, we have to figure out how to fix the Chrysler because we have to move it across the street: alternate sides parking. We also have to order the supplies for our new hand chime choir. Rehearsal went really well last week. More on that later!

We're home for a weekend!

Wow. I forget how quickly February passes by...we're already halfway through! Mike and I are reveling in the fact that we are actually home (in Duluth) for an entire weekend. Neither one of us needs to be anywhere until MOnday morning (except for church.) Yahoo! After a grueling, but fascinating week of surgery with hours from 5:30 AM until after suppertime, I am excited to be "sleeping in" until 7:30. Maybe I should go back to bed just because I can...

Julia's burns are healing up nicely. In the picture above, you can see the harness we made for her using my nylons. Its purpose was to keep that little piece of gauze under her chin while she slept. It worked! The spot is healing. We have been putting lotion on all her burns and all you can see now is the pigmentary changes left behind. These should also clear up, but will take months. After all she's been through, a few pink spots on her face and chest sound pretty A-OK to me!

Our latest issue: the shift-interlock on the Chrysler is broken. For all of you non-car-minded folk out there, that means that when we put her into park, she doesn't know it and she won't let you take the key out. It sounds benign if you're OK with having the key in the ignition forever, but there are a few little lights on the dashboard that are also staying on ("check engine" and "cruise" to name a few.) Anyways, I decided that the little indicator light was enough to drain the battery up and disconnected the battery the last time this happened. Mike laughed at me for being so anal. There was no way a silly little check engine light was enough to drain the huge battery we put in that car last year.

So, the next time it got stuck, I left her parked in front of our house with the little lights on the dashboard happily burning. Mike wanted to go somewhere a day later, and oh! the car wouldn't start because the battery was dead.

We are going to try and jump the battery today. My husband will get a refresher course on how to hook up jumper cables while I sit in the warm car and wait.

Long week was three weeks ago, but here's a catch-up

Okay...so I never finished my story. Here's the short version: Julia's burn were bad enough to send us to the pediatric ICU for two nights at the St. Cloud Hospital. They gave her fluids and pain control. We were actually very glad that they admitted her....it would have been awful trying to control her pain at home. Grandma Beth visited us a LOT. She took Julia so mommy and daddy could eat some lunch. Pastor Timm came to see us, as did Tim, John, Jenny, Grandma Ruth, Grandpa Dave, Grandpa Dick, and Annie came. We went home with lots of baby codeine and ibuprofen.

I took a week off from my psych(o) rotation in Anoka to care for Julia. She needed three baths a day and special lotions on the burns round the clock. We rigged up a system to keep the gauze on her chest all night long with cut-off legs from my old nylons. It was very labor-intensive. Thank God, we came through all right! Julia is looking just great these days and we know it's because of all the prayers she had. So, thanks everybody. What a blessing. No burns in her eyes, no third degree, and plastics says "no scarring!"

A long week...

So it's been a long week...

On Friday, Jan 26th, Julia and I were home alone at Grandma's house in St. Cloud. Daddy was gone for the quilting retreat at Camp, Grandpa and Grandma had gone to the Cities to pick up Grandpa's new truck. I was assigned to make baked beans for Great Grandpa's birthday party. Since grandpa and grandma have a brand new kitchen with new appliances and granite countertops, this sounded like it would be an OK way to spend the evening. The kitchen is so classy that even the garbage can has its own drawer. Just pull it open and toss away.

Julia was crawling around as usual, ignoring her toys and going for more interesting destinations such as the doggie water dish; I was keeping one eye on the frying bacon at the stove and one eye on the "toddler." I drained the first batch of bacon, poured the grease into an empty microwave popcorn bag, and put it in the garbage. I closed the garbage drawer and went back to the stove. Just as I finished putting the next layer of bacon in the pan, Julia came cruising into the kitchen. I greeted her and went back to the stove. A few seconds later, I heard a blood-curdling scream from behind me. I turned around: Julia was standing up next to the garbage drawer that she had just pulled open. I checked her fingers because I assumed one had gotten pinched in the drawer mechanism. Fingers OK. Why was she so upset...?

I picked her up and looked at her. I saw hot bacon grease on my daughter's face.

I instantly plunged her into the kitchen sink and sprayed water all over her. Off went the clothes, more water. There was grease on her chest, right over the sternal notch running down to the epigastric area. I held her to my chest and tried to comfort her crying. I knew this was very, very bad. My mind started to race: how bad is she burned? Is this ER-bad? Intensive Care Unit-bad? HCMC burn unit bad? First degree burns turn red, second degree burns get blisters instantly, third degree burns are through the dermis.... Her screams continued. I grabbed the diaper bag and wrapped my wet, burned daughter in a quilt. We jumped into the front seat of our Honda and drove straight to the ER. It was the first time Julia had ever been in the front seat.