Savoring the dying days of summer

A whole other country

One of the things Dave & I look forward to doing once medical training is all said and done is traveling. Last night, Dave asked me what my top 5 choices for countries to visit would be. Before I could answer, Dillon quickly stated "I want to visit Texas and then California!"

Well, Texas does market itself as being like a whole other country...

A sampling of today's questions

Mom? (This has been uttered no less often than an average of every 90 seconds)
Why? Said with equal frequency to "Mom?"
What happens if you let go of the steering wheel while you are driving?
Would you run into that guard rail over there?
Would you get hurt if you went down that hill right there?
What if cars were meant to drive without someone steering them?
Why don't the people that make cars just put a sensor on the bottom to tell it where to go?

Dave recently picked up a book- The Ultimate Book of Useless Information. Somewhere in it was a tidbit that says the average 4 year old asks 437 questions a day.

I'm pretty sure we hit that by noon.

On the positive note- with her kind of thinking, she'll be the one that invents the flying cars we all thought we'd be riding in by the year 2000. It's a matter of me surviving the machine gun fire nature of those questions until then.

7 months

I'm a little more on time this month! She turned 7 months old yesterday.

First, the update- her arm is fine. She didn't use it for about 24 hours, then started using it normally. We saw the pedi ortho surgeon on friday who deemed us to be fine. They didn't even do repeat x-rays since she was using her arm just fine. Thank goodness.

So, here we are at 7 months old. She's very contemplative and gives everyone these pensive looks. She will smile at people but not freely- it's more of an earned thing. She was laying on her tummy on the floor the other day and was staring at her hand. I thought she had something in it, but she was actually just intently watching how her shadow moved when she moved her hand.

She still likes pretty much only me, but will tolerate other people for short periods of time. Playing with hair is a big favorite & Dillon has been the victim of this more than once. She's only mildly interested in eating, but stick a large cup of water in front of her and she'll nearly nearly knock it out of your hand to get a drink. Still not sitting independently, but is starting to scoot around the room. We're trying to get back in the habit of keeping the gate at the top of the stairs closed.

We soon get to see how she does traveling as we head to Indiana next month. Let's all pray it goes well...

The terrible, horrible, no good afternoon

Corryn woke up from a nap while Dillon was helping me with laundry. I got her from the bedroom, laid her on the floor of the basement (it's finished & carpeted) and asked Dillon to keep her company while I finished up the last few minutes of laundry tasks. A minute or so later, Corryn started crying. It's not unusual since Dillon tends to be a little too much in her face when she first wakes up. I asked what happened, but Dillon wouldn't tell me. With both of them crying, (Dillon because Corryn scared her with her crying) we went upstairs to try to calm everyone. Fast forward about 40 minutes (and nearly non stop crying by one or the other of them) I finally get Dillon to tell me that she had forgotten to put Corryn's arm at her side when she tried to roll her from her tummy to her back.

So, after a couple of calls, we head to the pediatrician's clinic. Then to X-ray where the tech was initially less than gratious about having Dillon there. I, too, was guilty of being less than gratious as I snapped at her that I didn't plan on my infant getting injured today and didn't have a babysitter at my beck and call. She chilled out after that. Dave, as is always the case, was on call in the ICU- his first day in there and couldn't get away.

No obvious fracture on x-ray, but she won't use her left arm, so we are sent down to the ER to see the orthopedic surgery resident. They were kind enough to warn us that we would be waiting for "hours." Dave was able to join us briefly, I was able to reach my dear friend Juliana to come get Dillon & we were able to get some food.

Long story made shorter, 4 1/2 hours, 2 exams and 2 more x-rays later, the consensus was that no one was 100% sure what the injury was, but it wasn't limb-threatening, so we were sent home.

I just got a call from the resident we saw last night who consulted with the pediatric ortho surgeon. The feeling is that it is a fracture in the growth plate in her left upper arm. There is really nothing to be done except keep the arm pined at her side for a few days while her body creates new bone. No casting, no surgery. We follow up with the surgeon on friday.

Not sure how to approach this for the future with Dillon. Obviously, I need to not leave them alone together for a while. It was an accident, though I did spend the afternoon fighting being really angry at Dillon. I'm calmer now. Exhausted, but calmer, so hopefully I can be a bit more rational while I duct tape her hands together to keep her from hurting her sister again (I'm kidding of course...).

In the words of Dora the Explorer...

Lo hicimos! We did it! As of about 7:30 this morning, residency is complete. He is officially a board eligible anesthesiologist. Wow. It hasn't really sunk in yet.

When I started dating Dave I knew he wanted to go back to school. Not long after we were married, it was decided-together- that it was medical school he wanted to pursue and so shortly after our first anniversary, he started back to school for a Bachelor's degree. Fast forward 11 years, 2400 miles worth of moves, $250,000 in student loans, 2 kids and here we are. Did I know what I was in for? Nope, no idea. Would I do it again? Absolutely not. Do I regret it? No, though it has been difficult beyond anything I would've imagined. The number of nights that he has fallen asleep within 1/2 hour of getting home are more than I can count.

But on the other hand, I've been witness to someone who dreamed something and against pretty siginicant odds, acheived that dream. Afterall, this is the guy that flunked out of college at 21 with a 0.6 GPA. Who goes to medical school after that?! He has such a passion and a talent for medicine that it truly would've been a loss for him to not be where he is today. I'm glad to have been part of the ride, being the support system. It's much easier to say that now that we are finally, finally here.

There is still the fellowship, but the job search has already started. We are headed to Indiana for 3 job interviews next month. It gives us hope that there really is a reward for the nose to the grindstone existence we've lived for the last 11 years.

An anesthesiologist. Wow.

Lo hicimos!

A matter of hours...

He's on call tonight. By this time tomorrow, he'll be finished with residency.

Nope, we're not excited or anything.

:)

A matter of days...

6 of them until residency is over. Less than a week.

It's still not soon enough- we're both just so ready for it to be over.

For he who hung the moon...

Because as far as she's concerned, he did.