Christmas in May

Sometimes it is difficult for me to empathize with others in their work struggles.  The pressures of a job or career seem to be as different as the careers themselves.  I don't know what it is like to have to worry about my job security or where my next paycheck is coming from.  There have been times when I worried if I was going to be able to make it as a physician, but now that I have a license and I'm on the downhill side of residency looking forward to a relatively lucrative career I don't worry about getting a job and supporting my family.  I honestly can't imagine how difficult those worries would be and sometimes when I get overworked about how hard my life is and how hard it is to be a resident caring for people who don't want to care for themselves and feeling inadequate when things don't go as planned I look at my wife and kids and see how good I've got it.

Residency is hard, there is no doubt about it.  These last two years have been the most difficult of my life, though this last year was better than my first.  I dread the hospital and the resposibility that comes with being on call in-house.  This coming Sunday is my last in-house call and it kind of feels like Christmas.  Well not exactly like Christmas because I generally enjoy the days leading up to Christmas, whereas, I am dreading the rest of today and Sunday, but come Monday morning at 6:00 when I am no longer on call I will be celebrating.

I'll probably finish up my work sometime around noon on Monday and then drive home to a lonely house so I can take an afternoon nap in complete silence, but it may very well be the best Memorial Day ever. 

Marital Strife

I just don't know what is going on here.  Have you noticed that the name of the blog has been changed to We are quilters?  I haven't either, however, the mother of my children seems to think differently.  I think it's about time for a good old fashioned rant.

I'm down to two medicine calls.  I'll be celebrating come Memorial day.   Many would celebrate this occasion by getting drunk.  Many Mormons might celebrate this occasion by drinking a case of Mountain Dew.  As for me, I'll probably get a dozen Krispy Kremes and put myself in a coma.  Then I'll go to Utah for the wedding and maybe talk my folks into bringing up a few Alligator Jaws for the weekend that they will be in SLC.

Saturday's call was a good one.  Nobody died on me.  I had one patient that was threatening but she made it to today and got a ride to the hospice house.  It was a fun discussion with her family who had been kept in the dark for the past month by the current boyfriend who was only following the wishes of the patient.  Saturday she was unable to speak for herself so the boyfriend spilled the beans to the family.  Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be the first soldier through a mine field.

I am not the least bit excited to watch the Lakers and the Celtics in the NBA finals.  The life of a Jazz fan is painful.  The Jazz are the most consistent team in all of professional sports.  They came on-so-close when I left the country, but just couldn't quite overcome the most arrogant individual to walk the earth.  Then when they could have sunk into the depths of the lottery they couldn't even get that right.  Sure they got Deron Williams with the 3rd pick of the draft, but  they had to trade down from 6 to get it.  The Lakers have 4 guys on their team who were top 10 draft picks.  Kobe Bryant is not one of them.  The Celtics have 4 as well.  Rondo, not one of them.  The Pistons in 2004 had 4 top 10 picks as well.  Since 1996 those are the only three teams without Tim Duncan, Shaq or that cocky guy, to win a title.  The Jazz currently have one top 10 drafted player on their roster.  Guess how many first rounders play for the Jazz.  Three!  That's right folks the Jazz suit up with three guys who were picked in the first round of the NBA draft.

The only reason the Jazz aren't in the Lottery every year is Jerry Sloan.  That guy has made more money for pathetic basketball players than any agent in the country.  Remember Byron Russell?  Boozer's gonna go to Florida this summer and be a 12/6 guy the rest of his career.  Sloan has had 3 legitimate all-stars in all the time he has coached in Utah and Carlos isn't one of them.  We'll witness that next year after Booz signs his next contract.

Why couldn't Larry H Miller leave well enough alone and let the Jazz leave the state back in the day.  If that would have happened I might have been a legitimate Laker fan like I am a Dodger fan and each year I could get behind my team because even when they're bad they can always buy their way back into contention.

Maybe the Jazz can pull off a sign and trade.  Boozer for Dwight.  No one would be embraced like Dwight in Utah.  Honestly, a clean cut, untatooed ball player who smiles and doesn't cuss.  That man was born to play ball in Salt Lake City.

I'll spare you my thoughts on the Harvey Unga situation.  It's hard to dislike a University that seems to be able to stick by it's principles (the Jim McMahon years notwithstanding), but somehow I'm still able to do it.

If you've read to the end of this diatribe you should most certainly comment to let Melissa know that we will not stand for her usurpation of this blog.  I refuse to go quietly into the night!



I better go, I have to go buy some thread.

Where It All Began!

So I have been posting a lot about quilts lately. It so happens that I have been quilting a lot lately as well. While surfing around this morning for some inspiration I stumbled along this blogger quilt festival and of course I had to enter.

So I thought it would be appropriate to enter the quilt that began it all.

In the beginning, Just Kidding. About 6 1/2 years ago Jacob got accepted to medical school in Kentucky. (Wow that's been awhile.) Before moving, I went to my mom and asked her to teach me how to quilt. I was worried about how busy Jacob was going to be and how much time I was going to be at home with just me and Spencer (1 at the time) and figured quilting would be something fun to keep me busy during nap time and late nights. So my mom taught me all she knew while we pieced the first block together. And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship . . .with quilting that is. I have now been quilting 6 1/2 years, I have lost track of how many quilts I have made and I continue to expand my quilting skills. I am in love with quilting and even though I now have 4 kids, I still take full advantage of nap time and late nights to whip out a few more blocks :)

I picked this pattern those 6 /12 years ago to give to my wonderful mother-in-law who loves Santa. It is Santa through the year. It has so much fun appliqué. (Thanks mom for helping me with that). I had so much fun creating this quilt and learned so much along the way. I wish I had a better picture but this was before we went digital :)

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!!!

Thank you everyone for your wonderful advice on how to finish my quilt. I can't believe how many people commented. My husband says no more giveaways any time soon as he also gets the emails of the comments to our blog :) I told him next time I will make sure to take his email off for the few days it is posted :) Oh yes, there will be a next time. This was so fun!!

In the end, I really appreciated Suze's comment about how it is hard for artist to create duplicate works of art. Now, I don't consider myself an artist, but I did decide that I have the ability to create truly unique pieces each time I go to my machine. So with that in mind and all of your wonderful suggestions, I came up with this . . . And I couldn't be happier with it! And if you are happy with it as well, you can find it in my Etsy shop, (I know, shameless plug)

And now for the part everyone is waiting for, And the winner is . . . MaryAnne!! Congrats!! I hope you enjoy your I Spy Quilt Kit!

Lots of Quilting and a Bonus at the End!

So now that my house is all painted I find myself needing other things to keep me busy when Jacob is on call. This month the other thing has been quilting. Yes, I am still in a quilting funk and loving it. (although, my shoulders are pretty sore :) So you remember the sneak peak I gave you of the octagon quilt. Here it is all finished. Special thanks again to Natalia at Piece N Quilt for the great tutorial!

There was a lot of applique on this quilt.

A friend suggested to shadow quilt the octagons and I am so glad I did. I love the way it makes them pop!

Oh don't worry, the quilting doesn't end there. This week I sold 2 quilt kits on my Etsy shop. Now my Etsy shop isn't that big and I'm okay with that and I haven't sold anything is a while and was okay with that too. I am trying to be careful that I don't turn this into something I have to do rather than something I get to do. Otherwise, I worry that I will start neglecting things that shouldn't be neglected. Like my children. So anyhow, with these two sales I got so excited that I decided I was ready to put a quilt on my shop. So I finished my 2 quilts that I have had tops done for a month. and love them! I call them Inside Out Modern Squares. I think they are pretty fun. (Technically the original pattern had a ruffle as well but I messed with that for an hour and got fed up with it :)

I love how the back turned out on this one. I think it looks almost as cute as the front :)

Here is the same quilt but in a more girlie version.

Yippee!! I am having so much fun quilting!

Okay, so here comes the bonus!! Sew Mama Sew is doing a Give-Away-Day and in honor of posting a quilt on my Etsy shop I will be giving away . . . . No, not the quilt, but your choice of a 25 6" I Spy Quilt Block Squares from my Etsy shop. (You can see your choices in the link to my shop on the right.)

So how do you enter. Simple. I need advice. Along with making the above hexagon quilt for my friend I also made a similar one for fun.

I have put all of the hexagons together and now am having a hard time deciding how to finish it. Should I leave it blank with no appliquéd? Should I do just a few appliqué like the picture? Should I do an appliqué in every hexagon again? Is there something I am not thinking of? Any ideas on quilting it other than shadow quilting?

So Leave me a comment of how you think I should finish this quilt and on May 20th I will be announcing a winner!! My first giveaway, I am so excited!!

Life...and Death

I woke up this morning with a pit in my stomach.  I'm not sure why, but it started out as one of those days.  It has gotten worse.  When I got to the hospital I found that one of my patient's had died during the night.  I was the first to note that she had no pulse.  I called the nurse and she was dumbfounded as the patient had been fine when she was rounded on less than 2 hours previously.  I called the attending who was covering for his partner and didn't know the patient any better than I.  I then called the family.  Do you know what it is like to have to tell a person that their family member has died somewhat unexpectedly over the phone?  It's difficult to express empathy and give comfort to someone who you've never met concerning the death of another person who you just met 4 days ago.  It's just plain horrible.

In the past week I have had two family meetings where the families of a particular patient decided to hold off on lifesaving measures.  In both cases I agreed with the decision.  I wish someone had done the same with the patient above.

Right now I am struggling with how to deal with today.  There are a lot of things I still love about medicine, but I hate the system.  I hate that I don't know how to deal with the emotional onslaught I have raging inside right now.  I hate that I can't talk about it in specific terms with those who could best help me because somebody I don't know has decided that this part of my life needs to be kept private because it belongs to another.  I hate that I can't even write about it because of the paper trail that might be used in some courtroom someday.

"Doctor were you taking care of said patient at the time of his/her death?"
"Yes"
"Doctor do you believe you did everything in your power to treat his/her medical conditions?"
"Yes"
"Doctor is this your writing where you state that you disagreed with the decision to do said procedure because you "believed it was a waste of time and money""
"Er, umm, Yes"
"Doctor is it possible that your judgement was based on your feelings for the situation and not entirely on the facts of the case?"

What's worst of all is that I have a sense of relief as I don't have to fight a battle between specialists concerning what other tests might have been done today.  Those points have been made mute by the events of this morning.

The medical system has become so disconnected and decisions so often are made because of fear of repercussions instead of what is best for the patient.  My father recently told me that if he were faced with another year of chemotherapy and radiation he might just throw in the towel and say no.  I don't doubt that he would do just that and I couldn't fault him for it one bit, but I think I would be hard pressed to find an oncologist who wouldn't try to convince him otherwise.

We spend years and years learning how to treat sickness, but so little time learning to treat the family of the sick and afflicted.  The family member I spoke with this morning was blindsided by the information I gave her and that in itself is the tragedy.  I'm not sure you can ever be truly prepared for the passing of a loved one, but to be totally blindsided in a case like this is a failure of the system.  Why was the family not at least made aware that this situation could arise?  Maybe they were and they just didn't grasp the gravity of the situation, but then again is that not just another failure of the system.  Why can't we as doctors accurately portray to our patients the gravity of their conditions?  Maybe this patient did understand and she was unable or unwilling to pass that information on to her family.

Death is a natural part of life and it should be a time for mourning and hopefully in some cases, rejoicing.  What it should not be is a time for worrying about how to cross my t's and dot my i's.  I've seen it over and over where the medical community is in an uproar over some bad outcome and everyone is scrambling to make sure the documentation is air tight.  When do I get to stop worrying about what someone else is going to say a week, a month, or a year from now and concentrate on those who need help today?  How do I learn to worry about those things I have control over and let go of those I don't?

Tonight I'm going to go to bed like I always do and in the morning I'm going to get up like I always do, but I'll be different.  I can't experience these things without changing.  My only hope is that it ends up being a change for the good.

Featured!!

So those mini blocks that I was doing for a quilt along, they've been posted on Sew Mama Sew! I can't believe my work is now part of a post on the Sew Mama Sew blog! I am just giddy with excitement! You can check out the post here.

P.S. The mini blocks are now in my ETSY shop. I finally got to check "putting a quilt in my etsy shop" off of my list of things to do. Yippee!

My Latest Projects!

So lately I have been in a real quilting frenzy!! Which has been rather enjoyable! Along with the 4 mini quilts I posted earlier, I also finished 5 tops last month and quilted and bound 3 of them. I can't post all three as one is for a gift that hasn't been given yet. But here are two of the three I finished.

This quilt was given to a friend here in South Bend that will be moving soon and is in the middle of the adoption process. I'll miss you guys and pray that everything will go smoothly for you! I love stacked coin quilts and thought an all pink one would just be so cute! Don't you just love the pink polka-dots!

arrgh . . I didn't realize the picture was rotated :(

I also changed up the quilting doing a loop de loop pattern instead of my standard stippling. I find this stitch very fun and relaxing.

Okay, so I have been told that this next story makes me seem a little, oh what's the right word, "Molly Homemaker" maybe, but here it goes.

There is this wonderful person, Kristen, at the Wal-Mart studio that has been taking our pictures for the last 2 years. I only ever get the introductory package and yet she still takes the time to get great pictures each time we come in. And I keep thinking that I want to say thank you some how, other than buying $100.00 worth of prints. So the last time I was in getting Kami's pictures we starting discussing how she is expecting her first and it's a little boy. And wham, thank you found.

I found this idea on Sew Mama Sew. It was talking all about how it was made for a little boy to take to preschool, so the mom didn't want to spend to much time on it but still wanted it to be cute. And once again, perfect for my thank you! I love, love, the ducks!!

I was trying to make the quilting look like waves. I was pretty happy how it turned out.

And last but not least, I made a trade with another friend here in South Bend. She made me this wonderfully adorable Family Home Evening Chart.

I am working on a quilt for her in exchange. It's a tutorial from Piece N Quilt and here is a sneak peak.