Welcome Tayscen Daniel Schroeder!

At 0933 Wednesday, June 20th, we welcomed Tayscen Daniel Schroeder into the world! He was 8 lbs, 2 oz and was 20 1/2" long. Meghan delivered Tayscen via a scheduled c-section. Due to the vast complications with Braylei's delivery, this was deemed a high-risk pregnancy. However, we were very blessed that there were no complications this time around! Meghan was never on bedrest this entire pregnancy (unlike last time), and she even drove out to our new house to sign the closing papers and everything the day before the delivery! Tayscen was born full term, had no respiratory difficulties, and no jaundice. Meghan healed very fast, much unlike last time, when she lost so much blood and was very weak for weeks. Meghan was up and moving around the same day, and the next day she was moving around with ease! Again, it was a true blessing to us, especially since I have been away with my military training.

Another surprising, yet truly wonderful blessing was that I was granted permission to fly home for the delivery. I left at 0600 Texas time, arrived at 0621 Phoenix time, and immediately headed to the hospital where Tayscen was born at 0933! It was very exciting indeed! I was able to be with them the whole day and through the first night. I had to leave again early the following afternoon so that I could return to my training, and although the time with them was short, it was so worth it! It made the biggest difference in the world and I will always be thankful to the company commander and the cadre (staff) for the opportunity to be present at my son's birth!

As of yesterday, Tayscen was now up to 8 lbs, 12 oz and is doing exquisitely! Braylei, meanwhile is adjusting very well to being a big sister. She loves to help hold him and get the diapers and wipes when he needs to be changed. We had been reading her a book titled "I'm a big sister now!" for the past month or so to help her get excited for her new little brother. Hopefully she will stay that enthusiastic about it!

Officer Basic Leadership Course

I am now in San Antonio, Texas (Boo, I know!) for my Army Officer Basic Leadership Course (OBLC) at Fort Sam Houston. I arrived on the 10th of June and I will get back on the 21st of July. As of today, I have three weeks left! I have learned a great deal thus far. It's crazy being thrown into the Army life of an officer, having all the enlisted soldiers saluting you all the time, and trying to recognize all the customs and courtesies in the military. The first couple weeks consisted of a great deal of in-processing and paperwork, and with 300 medical, dental, vet and PA officers, that translates into a lot of sitting around. We haven't done near as much Physical Training (PT) as I thought, but I have been running daily with Ken, a former Army Ranger who is also going to be a 2nd year at AZCOM. That has been good for me. As far as our PT test, I did better than most with the 2 mile, 2 minute push-up and 2 minute sit-up tests, especially considering the amount of time (or lack thereof) I had from the end of school to my report date. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Meghan and Braylei before I left so my workout time was reduced to before either woke up each morning!

We do a lot of classroom didactic study, as that has taken up most of our time thus far. However, we just spent a week and a half out in the field. There is a large military reservation on the other side of San Antonio that simulates what is like to be in a FOB (forward operating base). We had no showers (yuck!) or plumbing (go port-a-potties!), but there was water so we could shave, brush our teeth and wash our faces. We also had air conditioned tents, so that was nice. There were probably 30 of us per tent, so it was pretty large. The cots weren't horribly uncomfortable, and we were very blessed with cloudy/rainy weather the whole time so it wasn't too hot. While there, we did a lot of training, much of which was very new to me. We shot with a M-16 rifle, an M-9 handgun, conducted day and night land navigation, mounted (vehicle) land navigation, and urban tactical training (clearing houses and buildings). I did really well, getting perfect marks in all my land navigation training, and qualifying as a marksman with both the M-9 and M-16! I told Meghan that I'm becoming a real man out here! We had to return to Ft. Sam a day early due to heavy rainfall and flooding, but we are going back for two more days Monday, then we will have another full week after that which will all be medical related. We will be in charge of setting up a combat support hospital, transferring combat casualties (injured soldiers) to level 1 (battalion aid station) to higher levels. It has been a very good experience for me, but I will be happy to return back home! I will add pictures once I get back and develop the pics from my disposable camera.

Our First House!

We are very excited about our new home! We had been searching for quite some time for a home closer to my school in Glendale. It was becoming just too much to be driving 2 hours round trip every day. I was still doing fine in my studies, but it was taking away from family time too much. We weren't sure if we wanted to rent or buy, but we felt that it would be a good investment to buy. But it sure wasn't an easy process! For one, the market by my school is an expensive one. The houses we looked at were not in very good condition, or were very small. It's amazing how different a house can look in person from the pictures posted on the MLS! We were just about to give up when we stopped by a brand new housing development. We were told that we wouldn't be able to get in until November, but then we found out they had a spec home that would be done at the end of June. It was perfect. A brand new home that was bigger and cheaper than the others we had seen. Plus we were able to pick the upgrades, the carpet, tile, and everything else. The mortgage process was not fun as the in-house group did a very poor job. Needless to say we will be refinancing in a few months. However, that being said, it is now ours, and we will be moving in as soon as I get home from my military training! Braylei is excited as every time she goes out there she runs around and goes in her room, saying "my room!" It's super cute! Plus my commute time is greatly diminished, as it is less than 15 minutes from my school! So I can get to school earlier to work out and study, and I can get home earlier to spend with my family!

What the Scrud!?

Whoa! It's been forever and a day since I posted! Life has been unreal! So much has happened! So to start off, I'll cover Spring Quarter. This was by far my best quarter of the year! I did much better than the previous two, and I seemed to have more time for things. My study habits were a lot more focused, and I felt like I was spending more time with Meghan and Braylei! I was also diligent in keeping the Sabbath day holy and not studying on Sunday. This is a really hard thing to do sometimes, especially since we always had Monday morning tests. Plus, this quarter was tougher because we had more classes, and thus more tests. So we often had Monday/Friday/Monday test schedules, so I didn't get to really hit the studying for the Monday exam until after the test on Friday! It was really crazy! But everything worked out well in the end!

I also had a great experience with my preceptorship, Dr. Carfagno. He is a physician who is dual certified in Sports Medicine and Internal Medicine. I was able to see many different cases, conduct history and examinations on patients, and even sports physicals! I learned a great deal, and also gained many volunteer opportunities, like the Valley of the Sun half Marathon, and the Ironman competition in Tempe! I look forward to continuing learning under Dr. Carfagno's guidance.

Another really cool service opportunity came with the TOPS program, which stands for team of physicians and students. We conducted 1000s of sports physicals for an entire high school district in Phoenix. I myself performed over 20, which helped me greatly work on my techniques. It was a really cool experience!

I will definitely enjoy my time off from school, as we don't start up again until the end of August! But it has been a busy Summer, with moving, having officer basic training in Texas, the birth of our son, and so much more! But I will get to all of those soon!

Onward To Spring Quarter!

Whoa! I guess I haven't posted in awhile! I've been in a super flurry of events as of late! Let me give a brief rundown of all that's been going on! First, finals week was like none other! It was absolutely insane! Through the first week, I ended up doing really well on my OMM exams, getting solid A's on both the written and practical portions. However, my intro to clinical medicine final didn't go as smoothly. Typically, Dr. Schwartz asks pretty surface (albeit sometimes obscure) questions, but apparently he was really mad that hardly anyone went to his lectures on the morning before one of our killer Anatomy/Histology/Embryology block tests, so he had a ton of questions on that information. Fair, I suppose, but pretty stupid. It's a good thing I had a hefty cushion in that class. Then, as for the real finals week...it went okay. I didn't sleep a lot, but I manages fairly well. I received my best test score in Physiology of the whole quarter on the final. Then the Anatomy/Histology/Embryology block came pretty hard. I received my best grade of the previous two quarters in Histo and Embryo, but at the cost of Anatomy, which was a sub-par score for my anatomy standards. But it didn't bring my average down too much. Next was Human Behavior, which was a typical crapshoot human behavior test. Psychiatrists, go figure. The last final was Biochemistry, my arch nemesis. However, this exam's material was very interesting to me, as it dealt mostly with human nutrition, and of special interest, nutrition during pregnancy, and infant nutrition. I did pretty well, earning my best score from the past two quarters in that class! It was a good thing that was the last final, because we were all looking pretty ragged by the end! The best part was that we had a week off!

My "Spring Break" flew by so fast! I was able to enjoy most of it by just being with Meghan and Braylei, my two favorite people in the world! Bryalei just cracks me up! She is so clever and smart. She has also fallen in love with the movie Cars. I probably watched it 20 times over this past week! She mainly likes the racing scenes, but loses interest during the middle. It's hilarious because she'll point to the TV and say "Ideo" and "Carsh!" She is getting even better at her animal sounds, recognizing both when she sees a picture and by name. We've also been including her in helping out. She'll go put things away, or hand something to Meghan or myself. It's really unbelievable how fast she is growing. She also will point to Meghan's tiny little stomach when we ask her where the baby is, or where her brother is.

Alas, the week has come and gone. And now Spring quarter is upon me. I am excited to be done with Anatomy, histology, embryology, and biochemistry. Now we start neuroscience immunology and our early clinical experience preceptorships! I guess I'll find more details out tomorrow at orientation! 11 more weeks until summer vacation!

Treading Water!!

Wow! This has been one long week! Probably because I haven't slept very much, but I am nearing the end of this treacherous testing stretch! Biochem went okay on Monday, the OMM quiz wasn't too bad, the Anatomy and Histology tests were pretty tough, but hopefully I did well enough to get by. My Physiology group presentation Friday went well, although the other groups took too long and, as we were the last group to present, did not have a great deal of time. Unfortunately, the Physiology test did not get moved like I was hoping. The class liaisons presented a good case to the Physiology department chair, and they had it arranged to switch the Wednesday biochemistry workshop to Monday so that the phys test could be Monday at 8am. However, AZCOM has this really lame "unwritten" rule that states that for a change like that to take place, the class has to unanimously vote in favor of this change. And there were two people (out of 150) who did not want the test to be changed! Apparently, they wanted to just get it over with so they could have a week off. But there is no reasoning with them, as these are confidential votes, and they are most likely those students where everything comes pretty easy to them and aren't concerned with those of us who need a little more time because we actually have lives outside of school. Oh well. After tomorrow, we have our OMM written final next Monday, the practical final Wednesday, and our Intro to Clinical Med final Thursday. Then we hit finals week! Yea!
Braylei meanwhile is feeling much better and has returned to her usual hilarious self. I wish that I got to see her more. And those days when I do its only for a half hour or so before she goes to bed. I hope that she understands. Meghan is doing well, and is the most incredible person I know. She is so supportive of me and does so much. I admire her so much for her selflessness in putting aside her own wants and needs to take care of our family. She is a true inspiration and I am eternally grateful for her!
I hope everyone is doing fabulous and I wish an awesome week ahead upon all!

Pouring it on

Sorry it's been awhile since I posted, but school has been absolutely nuts! I got through midterms okay, albeit a very crazy time! The day after MLK brought a 6:30 am Gross Anatomy test on the Lower Extremity, then Wednesday was a Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine quiz, Thursday was my midterm in Intro to Clinical Medicine, Friday brought a midterm in Human Behavior, then we got to rebound with a Physiology test on Monday morning on Cardiac Physiology. Now I am facing perhaps an even bigger challenge with a Biochemistry test Monday morning, then an OMM quiz Wednesday, Head/Neck exams in both Anatomy and Histology on Thursday, then Physiology the following Monday! It's really hard to balance studying time when there are so many tests back to back! I guess that med school for you!

Meanwhile, Braylei has gotten pretty sick, currently battling both an ear infection and pneumonia. We have had some long nights, and for Meghan, some very long days. Braylei's vocabulary is soaring! She is learning new words every day, her cognitive skills are really developing, as she is getting so good at basic problem solving, and she is all over the place.

Meghan's been very busy as the Young Women's President in our ward. They just had their New Beginnings, for which she invested a lot of time. She also just had her second OB checkup and we are happy to say that we are having a boy!!!! I'm so excited! Plus, the ultrasound revealed a high placenta, so as of now there is no placenta previa as was with Braylei, and there are no other current signs of a high risk pregnancy! So we are praying that her conditions will stay this positive!

Hopefully I will get through this set of tests, especially Biochem tomorrow!

The Wonderful World of Coagulation!

Every time I have a break from school, it is so hard to get back into the swing of things. This time, though, I do not have a choice, as our first Biochemistry exam is tomorrow! It is really unbelievable how much information they cram into such a small amount of time! A test over lectures 1-10 and workshops 1-3 doesn't sound like a ton, but the breadth of the material is really incredible. Especially deep are the first 3 lectures on the inflammatory response to injury and the coagulation/healing process. At first I thought, "oh, no big deal." I remembered covering that in my undergraduate athletic training classes. I can still vividly recall my professor Ben Davidson spitting out terms like prostaglandins and neutrophils, but it came across like a magical process! We have learned every step of the way, a the systematic process by which blood clots are formed and resolved. The same thing with my athletic training pharmacology class. In undergrad, it was just knowing names and what they did. I knew COX-2 inhibitors like aspirin, ibuprofen, vioxx and celebrex, but now I know what they do and how they do it! The more I learn, the more I see the interrelation of all things, and although very complicated, the up and down regulations of these processes really testify to me that we are divine creations. It really is amazing!

I have put in a tons of time in my studies, but there is still more that I would like to cover before the 8am test! Then I can look forward to a patient simulated male invasive (rectal) exam! Doesn't that sound spectacular? I hope Midwestern is paying these people well! That means yet another late night here, but at least that gives me plenty of time to study for my 3 exams next week!

Sundays are really nice for me. Establishing that I will keep the Sabbath day holy and not study was at first a trial, but now it is a huge blessing. Sure, I get up super early on Mondays to prepare for my tests, but I love spending time with my family and being able to take care of church responsibilities. I stayed home from church today since Braylei was not feeling too well and Meghan was teaching a lesson in Young Women's. I will take every opportunity to spend time with Braylei since I hardly get to see her during the week. She is really getting so clever and smart. Her beautiful personality is coming out and she reminds me more of Meghan every day! My family truly lights up my life and I wouldn't trade anything for that.

Merry Christmas/Happy New Year

Merry belated Christmas to all! We had a wonderful Christmas, and it was so fun to watch Braylei open presents and enjoy the day! It was busy, though, as we went to have brunch at Meghan's parents, came home for Bray's nap, then had my parents over in the evening. Then we packed up and headed up to the White Mountains with our friends, the Sessions, to hang out at Chris's family's cabin. It was nice to just chill for a couple days. Braylei got to play in the snow for the first time and had a lot of fun! I actually rode a snowmobile for the first time and almost killed myself! Chris and his brother Mike told me to go off a jump, but I didn't realize how big it was until I was 2 feet away and going full speed. I got some sweet air, but nearly fell off. Luckily I landed it okay, but it scared the crud out of me! On the way home, we got caught in a snow storm that kept getting worse as we went. We hit a patch of ice and nearly slid off the rode, but through the grace of God, I was able to turn with the slide, and we spun a full circle but stayed on the rode and continued on. We were quite shaken up, though, and the storm continued, so we stayed the night in Payson.

I am excited to bring in 2007. 2006 was a great year, as the Lord blessed us so greatly. I am so grateful for my last minute acceptance into medical school, and the time I was able to spend prior to that adjusting to parenthood. I was able to spend a lot of time bonding with Braylei, and watch her grow and develop. I am so thankful for my beautiful wife Meghan and the patience she has with me. We are also very excited to announce that we are expecting our second child! Meghan is currently 15 weeks along and she is due on June 23rd! It has been a wonderful year, indeed, but I look forward for 2007 to be even better!

That said, my Christmas break will soon be over, as I resume school on the 2nd. The last few days before break was just as crazy as I expected, but it was loaded with great learning experiences and it is over with. I have really enjoyed how AZCOM gives us so much patient simulation exposure, so that we are a little more familiar with clinical exams when we start our preceptorships in the Spring. The rest of the quarter should prove to be very crazy, as there are many instances with 2 tests a week. So it will be challenging to balance my studies and stay up with everything. I do, however, look forward to the challenge!

Well I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and I wish everyone a happy and safe New Year!

On the Brink of Insanity!

I apologize in advance for the conciseness of this entry, but these next three days are unbelievable! I have already described my schedule in the last entry, but experiencing it has been something different altogether! I have been studying like crazy, and hopefully my efforts will be enough to receive good marks on my exams and that the information I have been studying will be applied to permanent memory. I must never lose focus that these classes aren't just for a degree, but for being able to provide quality, competent care to others. I absolutely love medical school, despite its immense difficulty, but I do look forward to Wednesday after my Physiology exam!