Halloween!

Oh boy! Halloween flew by fast! But it was fun-filled for the kids! We started things off the weekend before when Old Navy had a big Halloween special. Any kid who dressed up get a coupon for a free screen print t-shirt. Plus, there were tons of discounts throughout the store that day! Braylei had her beautiful Cinderella outfit that Meghan's mom made, and Tayscen was supposed to be a lion, but didn't wan any part of the headpiece. So we knew we'd have to make some adjustments for Halloween. Luckily, Old Navy had all their costumes on sale for $5 during those few hours, and there was a pretty cool Ninja outfit that would be good for him and for general dress-up play around the house!

On Halloween, I dressed as festive as I could to work. I had recently begun my Psychiatry rotation which is at Rosewood Ranch Center for Eating Disorders in Wickenburg. It's all inpatient, but it's pretty laid back. I wore my bright orange dress shirt with black pants. I also had on my black skeleton shirt I bought at Old Navy for $1 underneath my dress shirt, but it was buttoned down enough to see the ribs pretty good! I found this somewhat humerus, so I posted on Facebook whether or not it was bad to dress up like a skeleton to an eating disorder facility! It went over great, though! Some of the patients went all out for their costumes, based of course on what they had. The girls mainly dressed as crazy psychos, or Hollywood divas at an addiction center. Cool stuff like that!

I got to leave a little early so that I could get back for the kids. Each year, Midwestern puts on a Safe Halloween Carnival event. The kids trick or treated at all the department offices throughout the school, and then there were cool games and activities in the Cafeteria, like fishing, cake walks, cookie decorating, and ring toss stuff. Then outside there was a bouncy castle and a couple of other games. Then we headed back home where we had a potluck with our neighbors. We got to hang out outside and let the kids run around. Then all the kids went together around trick or treating in the subdivision. Braylei loved it, but Tayscen just wanted to run around.

A cool new tradition we implemented for the family is the Great Pumpkin! Since the kids don't need all that candy for Halloween, we thought it would be a good idea to trade it out for something cool. We did it with Braylei this year. She got to pick out 5 pieces of candy she wanted to keep, which she could have periodically, and the rest she left out for the Great Pumpkin. In return, the Great Pumpkin leaves a toy or other surprise. This year, the Great Pumpkin left a Cinderella Barbie with a horse, along with a Halloween Strawberry Shortcake DVD!


Braylei's preschool class (she's a year younger, why she's so short); Braylei getting a pumpkin at the farm; Braylei decorating her pumpkin


Braylei as Cinderella; Tayscen's intimidating Ninja custome with his Chuck Taylor's; bro and sis


At Midwestern: Bray eating the cookie she decorated; Taysce in stealth mode; fishing with the kids; Me and Tayscen

Braylei on the Bouncy Castle


The kids from the hood; trick-or-treating; Braylei hitting the Halloween pinata!


Taysce getting the pinata; children looting the streets (is Taysce doing the chicken dance?)

OMM Research

I always caveat my passion for OMT by stating that it is a great tool and provide a great use, but that it's not like it will cure cancer or anything. True, it is awesome for musculoskeletal pain, headaches, migraines, pregnancy uncomfortabilities, and even some GI or autonomic problems. Well, I recently had the opportunity to perhaps build on that foundation when I teamed up with Midwestern's OMM department for their Parkinson's research study. I was asked to be one of the clinicians for the study, where I would either perform an experimental treatment or a sham patient, assigned randomly to study participants over a 6 week period. The aim of this study was to see if the use of OMT, specifically Muscle Energy/PNF, could reduce physical symptoms felt from Parkinson's Disease. Muscle Energy uses proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation that targets the golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles and manipulates their normal responses in order to increase flexibility, decrease pain, and increase overall functionality to a given muscle group.

This turned out to be a very cool study indeed! It was awesome interacting with these Parkinson's patients! It was randomly assigned whether of not the would receive real or sham treatments, but those who were sham patients would be given 6 real treatments upon completion of the trial. It was still hard performing the sham treatment to the same person week after week, especially when the would come in and tell me that they felt like they were improving. What can I say? I'm just a darn good sham clinician! The post-trial assessments were just done on Friday, so I am excited to see how the results are! Hopefully good enough to be published, as that does look very good for residency!

Rotation Block 4: Sports Medicine/Orthopedic Surgery

This last rotation was spent with Dr. Gary Waslewski, MD at the Arizona Sports Medicine Center. Dr. Waslewski serves as the orthopedic surgeon for the Phoenix Coyotes and also works with the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants, whose rehab programs are stationed in Arizona. He also is the team physician for Chaparral High School, which was a nemesis of my high school, Tempe High. Having a true interest in sports medicine, I wanted to see both aspects of the field- the primary care side and the orthopedic surgery side. Although I had strong leanings already for the primary care route, I wanted to see firsthand what life as an ortho doc would be like. To start with, Dr. Waslewski is easily the nicest and must humble surgeon I've ever met. His patients love him because he is actually willing to listen to them. After examining a patient, he'll usually say something like, "Hmm. So what are we going to do about this?", before going into a number of different options for the patient to decide upon. This was very gratifying to the patients, as they were able to weigh the pros and cons of each option. Then, another cool aspect was that they didn't feel like they had to decide right then, as he would tell them that he would write up the note, and then when his medical assistant goes through them the following day or two, see would call the patients to schedule either a surgical procedure or conservative followup. He also reassured the patients by offering a number of conservative approaches, instead of pushing them into surgery right away. Of interest, he was very interested in Osteopathic Medicine as a valuable alternative approach. During my first week working with him, we saw a mid 30s lady with chronic Right hip pain. Imaging showed some arthritic changes, but not really enough to mandate surgical intervention. Injections had proved unsuccessful. Out of the blue, he said, "How's you hip and pelvis OMT skills?" I said they were pretty good, and began a quick eval. Her seated flexion test was prominently positive on the right side, revealing a locked out SI joint on the right side. I made sure to show Dr. Waz the huge difference there as she bent forward for the test. I also quickly evaluated her innominates by rocking her ilia anterior to posterior, which showed major restriction on the right side, as it was stuck anteriorly. At this point, I had Dr. Waz come over and rock her ilia and put my hands over his to ensure that he could appreciate the difference. So I did a few techniques to balance things out, explaining to the patient, Dr. Waz, and his medical assistant, all of whom seemed mesmerized, what my treatments were accomplishing. When the patient got up from the table, she stated she hardly felt any pain! It was such a thrill! Sharing my enthusiasm for osteopathic medicine to the medical community is almost the same rush as sharing my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ (although of course not as eternally fulfilling)! I got major props from Dr. Waz and his assistant, which opened up a lot of opportunities for me to incorporate OMT into this allopathic rotation!

I also had the chance to follow and work with some of the other docs in the practice, which is always nice to see how each physician conducts his/her practice differently. One doctor, Erik Dean, is a primary care physician who specializes in sports medicine. I was able to spend a week with him, which was completely awesome! I really enjoyed the diagnostician role of the primary care sports doc, which was more acutely injured patients. To me, it is more exciting seeing a presentation and trying to figure out the injury based on history, mechanism of injury, and clinical exam, than to have all the imaging and saying what it is and decide the plan of care. I also was able to do a lot more procedures with Dr. Dean, as the primary care schedule is more spread out than the clinic time for a surgeon. Overall, it was a great rotation!