Spencer strikes again

This one was too good to keep to myself. As Melissa and I were watching a movie Spencer came down and started talking to us about his coloring project. Like any 5 year old he had his finger up his nose at the time (he had an itch) and after a bit of a struggle he pulled out his finger. He looked at us with his finger held high and asked in a mater-of-fact tone:

"Put the booger back in my nose?"

Spencerisms

Spencer has a tendency to say some strange things that we call Spencerisms. Today we were privileged to have three such comments.

At dinner we were talking about what Spencer wanted to be when he grows up. After deciding that a professional sports career is out of the question as there are no professional teams in Cedar City (some of you may know of Spencer's desire to never move away from mom and dad) Spencer stopped us abruptly with: "Oh yeah, I remember, I want to be a garbage truck dude".

Later before bed it was Spencer's turn to say the family prayer. In the middle of his prayer he paused and loudly lamented: "Oh man, we forgot to read my dinosaur book from school." He then continued finishing his prayer.

Finally (this one is for Ryan and his desire to always reference nakedness) after I stepped out of the shower this afternoon Spencer came up to me and said: "Dad your nipples look like pepperoni".

That's my boy.

Progression of a call month

I am now in the second week of my first OB month. For those of you who don't know the OB month is generally brutal. We have three residents who rotate call so you are on every third day add to that my 1 half day of clinic per week and 2 half day OB clinics and you get quite a month. In addition to those we had our inservice exam last week so I had my first 100+ hour workweek.

I've noticed that my inhouse call months can generally be broken down into three portions, trimesters if you will. First I have the anxiety invoking trimester. This generally lasts at least a week, but sometimes longer (hopefully in the future I will be able to eliminate this portion). The next trimester is where I start to feel a little more comfortable, but begin to realize how much time I'm spending at the hospital. It is during this part of the month that I really miss my wife and kids. I kiss the kids each morning, as they sleep, before heading out the door. Finally, toward the end of the month I hit the fatigue trimester. This is where I start to realize how much sleep I have missed.

I am currently transitioning from the anxiety portion to the missing Melissa and the kids portion. I'm hoping the fatigue portion will be softened by the visits of my two younger brothers during the next two weeks.

No explanation needed

Therapeutic Ramblings

I am currently on my second shift of OB call. As my faithful readers have noted over the past I have a tendency to experience anxiety from time to time, and this OB month is no different. I do feel much better tonight than I did on Sunday night, but I'm still a little high strung. I've written and spoken ad nauseum about why I've experienced so much stress during this intern year, so I'm not going to go there. Rather, I would like to write about some of the things that help me overcome stress (that's the therapy part folks).

First of all I am somewhat seasoned at recognizing when I am getting anxious due to a few months during my second year of medical school that were laced with a great deal of anxiety and depression. I know what it feels like and I'm getting better at realizing when it is getting to the point where I need to elicit help outside of my wife and kids. The interesting thing about anxiety and moreso depression is that they are taboo subjects. There seems to be an unspoken rule that you can't really talk about this stuff because it is too embarrassing. The irony is that, for me at least, the best thing I can do when I get overanxious is to surround myself with people.

Melissa is really good at talking to me and helping me see when I'm getting irrational, and from time to time she makes me talk to some good friends or family because she knows it will help. That brings me to my support group. I have a few really good friends. I don't have a ton of friends but those that I do have are special (unless you are a lurker and I don't know you, you probably belong to this group). One such example is a family that Melissa and I got to know during medical school. When I was going through the worst of things back in Pikeville there were numerous times when we went over to visit them just so I could sit on the couch and talk about school (and sometimes avoid talking about school).

There have been a few specific times since we've been here in South Bend that I can remember some of our newer friends helping me to get over some of my anxiety. One time in particular we invited another family over for dinner and spent the evening talking about everything under the sun. Of course that included the good, bad and ugly surrounding residency and it was incredibly therapeutic to talk to someone who was puting into words the exact emotions I was having. There's something special about knowing that others understand how you feel from time to time.

I think we need more friends in this world. We all have stress from time to time and for whatever reason (I tend to blame genetics) some of us are able to handle that stress better than others, but because we all experience stress we are all qualified to be the one to lend the helping hand. A couple of years ago I was on the phone with a very good friend who seemed to know the exact right words to say to help me feel better and when we were done talking she told me to remember what she said so that I could say it back to her when the time came that she needed those words. The time did come and the words did help.

In the end I am especially grateful for all the friends I do have and I hope that I can return to you some measure of kindness and support that you have given me.

Well I've been paged so I gotta go. Stay tuned for future therapeutic ramblings.