Update: Zoo Pictures

I just added a bunch of pictures to the post "Whew! I'm out of my hole now!" There are also some pics of when Braylei fell asleep reading a book in her bed, Tayscen eating rice cereal for the first time, Tayscen in his Jumperoo, Braylei loving the ducks at the Wildlife World Zoo and many more!

Whew! I'm out of my hole now!

I am now 2/3 of the way through my didactic studies of medical school! I finished the horrible, horrible finals week on Friday and now I get to enjoy 2 weeks off! The rest of the quarter went relatively well. I survived a group of Monday/Friday/Monday tests including the terrible trio of Path, Micro, and Pharm! It will only get worse next quarter, though, as nearly the whole quarter is Monday/Friday/Monday exams.

For Halloween, Midwestern put on a really cool "Safe Halloween" for the kids. All the departments had things set up for the trick-or-treaters to visit. This was Braylei's first time trick-or-treating. It was a different concept for her, and she was a little scared at first, but once she realized that she would be getting candy by saying "trick-or-treat," she seemed to be much happier. Of course, she wanted to be "Dr. Braylei" as she was dressed up in little scrubs. Tayscen was also dressed up in little scrubs, but he of course was a little more chill in the stroller.

Finals week went pretty well for the most part. Because I needed to pull later hours, Meghan brought Braylei and Tayscen to school to have lunch together every day. It was a lot of fun to see them during the day. Braylei loves coming to my school. I think she feels like such a big kid! Ever since Halloween, when she saw a girl dressed up as the little mermaid, as soon as she gets to my school, she'll say "I want to see mermaid!" It's hilarious! On the Saturday before finals began, we went to Chuck E. Cheese's for dinner. We had Meghan's niece, Aliya, with us too. Braylei had a real good time being able to play some of the games and ride the little rides! She is really getting to be a grown up little girl.

The previous week held my Osteopathic Medicine written and practical final, which being my favorite class, went really well. We also had our Clinical Correlates final, which was nice to get out of the way to free up more time for study during finals. That test was tough, but I ended up doing well. Ironically, I had the most time to study for my Pharmacology final, which was on Monday, but that test did not go well at all. I totally tanked it. I don't know why. It was weird. I had been through the material quite a bit, and felt pretty decent about it. But about a hour and a half before the test, something happened to me and it seemed like I lost everything. I wasn't able to go through the drugs in my head like I had been, and it felt like I knew nothing! It was crazy! I tried to regain it, but it was definitely a struggle. The class average was only a 71% on it too, so in addition to my brain spasm, it was a ridiculously difficult exam. Then we had two finals on Tuesday: Clinical Medicine and Topics in Medicine. The clinical medicine final was tough to me, but again I did relatively well, but the Topics final was by far the most ludicrous test I had ever taken! With these tests, they are written by physicians rather than PhD’s, so sometimes the questions don't make sense or there are multiple answers that are correct, or none that are correct. It can be a real crapshoot sometimes. For a relatively minor class, a lot of people struggled on that final. I surprised myself and did better than I thought. But then we had to turn around and take the Microbiology final 20 hours later. Now I had been through the material already but with virtually 2 weeks of finals, it was like a week ago, and new material was presented in the meantime. So we have to assimilate all this information so fast! Again, for the short amount of time we had to prepare, I was pleased with my results. Luckily, we didn't have a final Thursday since we took our clinical correlates final the previous Friday, giving us more time to study for my arch nemesis, Pathology. Path is actually a really good class, and the information is so vital to being a physician, but so much info is crammed into the course, and the professors don't have time to go over all the testable material in class. I took a big hit on the first test, which wasn't too horrible due to the fact that for one, I had no idea what to expect, and also that it was Braylei's birthday, and my Saturday studying was greatly truncated. I don't what the scrud happened on the 2nd test, but I ate it on that one, too! That was another beastly test, with a really low class average. Then I scored a nice A on the third test, which brought tremendous relief to me in securing that I would have to get like a 40% on the final not to pass the class! So things were up in the air about this final. But I ended up getting a 98%! That was the highest grade I've ever received on a major exam in medical school. I had gotten high grades like that in human behavior and clinical medicine last year, but this has been my hardest class and I nailed it! I was very pleased with myself. I've said this before, but sometimes it's hard not to compare myself with my other classmates who don't have a family with kids and a spouse, who doesn't study on Sundays, and has life responsibilities. All those things draw time from studying, and I do the best I can with the time I have. But I am not going to sacrifice not seeing my family and spending time with my kids for a higher GPA or class rank. It just isn't worth it. So it's nice to see that like during finals week, when I did put in that extra time, I can do really well too.

Meghan is my hero. She took up even more of the superfluous slack I usually leave her over the last few weeks. Since I stayed late during finals week, she not only got the kids dinner, but bathed them got them both ready for bed, fed Tayscen, put Braylei down and red her stories and sang songs all by herself. Granted, she usually does most of that, but most of the time I was home for dinner, would give the kids baths, and would have one of the kids while she had the other. But she does this all day, every day. It's really disappointing to me that society places such a negative connotation on the stay-at-home mom. I know it's hard for Meghan because she worked so hard for her education and is insanely intelligent. I always tell people that she would do much better in medical school than I would! I don't know, do people think homemakers just stays at home and watch TV while the kids run around? Meghan is constantly working with Braylei and Tayscen on developmental skills. It's because of Meghan that Braylei has a flippin enormous vocabulary and that she speaks in full sentances as a two year old when normally at 2 kids are just beginning to put two words together and have a 20 word vocabulary. Braylei also loves to color and gets to do that everyday. She works with Tayscen and gets down on the floor to do exercises with him and continuously interacts with him, which does wonders for a child's development. Plus, they go to the library every week for story time, and Braylei picks out new books and learning videos to check out, and they have a rotating playgroup with a couple other kids in her church nursery class. Seriously, they have such busy schedules and they are immersed in stimulating activities all day long. I am so grateful for Meghan's sacrifice to stay at home with the kids.

But she does get me for the next 2 weeks. Honestly, though, it's more as if she has 3 kids to deal with now rather than another parent to help out. She always tells me that she's so much more efficient when I'm at school! On Friday afternoon after my test, we went to go see the Bee Movie. Braylei had been wanting to see that for a long time. It was a really good little movie, too! Then on Saturday we went to the Wildlife World Zoo that's only about 15-20 minutes from our house. I remember going there in middle school. It was so much fun! It was nice because it was much less crowded than the Phoenix Zoo, the exhibits were more accessible for Braylei to see the animals, and there was less space in between the exhibits and every in between the big exhibits were smaller ones with different birds or monkeys. We had a really good time there. I'll get pictures up soon.

And now for these 2 weeks, we have lot to get done around the house and various tasks to accomplish. I'm doing half days of studying as I need to begin preparing for my dreaded board exams coming up at the end of May/early June. But I'll be home by 1pm every day so I can spend more time with Megs and the kids and get stuff done around the house. It should definitely be a lot less stressful, for sure!

Family Pictures!

Boy, sometimes it feels as though I'll never be done with school! There are so many demands on a daily basis, there's never enough time to study, and no matter what you do you know that you're not spending enough time at home. I always try to do the best I can, but it really does weigh me down. I just have to keep telling myself that this is the last year of straight classroom work and then I'll be in the clinical world, where although demands there will only increase, at least I'll be in an environment that I can thrive! We are past the midway point of the quarter and we are learning tons! The topics are very pertinent for a physician, but there is just so much to learn! It's really like being told to drink from a fire hose! You can't possible get everything the first time around, but we tend to see things over and over, as the subjects will overlap quite a bit.

More and more families are moving into our new housing development. It's nice to have neighbors that are in similar situations as us. Last night we had a little block party. I was late because I was at the priesthood session broadcast, as it is conference weekend for the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-Day Saints. But Braylei had a blast playing with all the kids and being able to stay up past her bedtime! We were able to meet more of our neighbors, too. I look forward to developing good friendships here. We are also meeting more people in our new ward. It will be nice to finally be in a non-transient ward, where families stay for long periods of time! Braylei is finally warming up a little to junior nursery. Meghan set up a play date with the nursery teacher and her littler boy in hopes that Braylei would feel a little more comfortable with the teacher. It seems to have helped, as I have actually been able to go to my meetings the past couple weeks. Meghan is already immersed in the ward as the primary pianist, and that leaves me with a great opportunity to spend some good time with Tayscen. He is growing so fast and is developing a cool little personality!

What I wanted to do today was post all of our new family pics, as we cannot possibly send them all out to everyone. But these are all hi-res, so if anyone would have the desire, you can download them and print them off!

Whirlwind

Well, it seems that once again I have neglected the 'ol blog! Life is just so crazy and its hard to believe that the last entry was back in July while I was still in San Antonio! Well, to recap, we moved into our new house about a week after I returned home from the Army's Officer Basic Course. It has been so nice to be home with Meghan, Braylei and Tayscen! The day before moving, Braylei had tubes put in her ears to help reduce the quantity of ear infections she has, and I was impressed about how tough she was about it! She was real groggy after coming out of the light anesthesia, but after I got her some apple juice and cheez-its, she was in good spirits!

The actual moving process was a lot smoother than I expected. We had a loading crew out at Meghan's parents house and a bunch of med school buds made up the unloading crew at the new house. We have since unpacked, and made the new house a home. Braylei loves it! Since Tayscen needs the crib, we got Braylei a "big kid bed" that will last her a long time! Since being here, she has slept really well at night, too! Tayscen is doing really well, too! He's such a happy, laid back little kid with a big coolness factor goin' on! When we first moved in, he was still getting up a couple times a night to eat, but is now sleeping 10-12 hours straight typically! He has grown a ton, too! He loves being on his tummy, too! He would probably play (and sleep) all day on his stomach if we would let him! As a result, his back muscles are really developed and he is trying to roll over and scoot now!

A few weeks ago we were able to bless Tayscen at church. It was an amazing experience! While we were standing in the circle, he was smiling, cooing, and looking at me with his big, blue eyes! We also had a bunch of family out for the event, and that was really nice to have everyone out here on this side of the valley rather than us traveling all the way out east. Since everyone did come all the way out for Tayscen's blessing, we decided to have Braylei's birthday out at Meghan's sister Kim's house. It was pretty low key, Braylei wanted to have a "Cars" party, and picked out sunglasses for party favors! Braylei loved it because she got to go swimming with everyone! She loved going down the waterslide! She has gotten so grown up, too! Her speech and comprehension is scary sometimes! She just picks up words and really understands them, too! She uses multi-word sentences all the time and has no problem vocalizing any concern she has. Last week when I was giving her a bath, she was tossing around her floaty turtle and said, "Daddy, I want to catch it to you!" Then she tossed it to me so that I could catch it! It was so stinkin' cute! She also is very skilled with the crayon! She holds crayons and markers properly already and is displaying pretty good control and loves to use tons of colors.

Meghan is doing great. After delivering Tayscen, she was up and about right away! She is simply amazing! She takes care of the house, the kids, me, and makes excellent dinners while still finding time to work out! I am so, so very lucky to have her in my life! She spends all day with the kids, playing with them on the floor, interacting, and when the other is down for a nap, spends one on one time with them, helping with developmental skills. She does exercises with Tayscen everyday to help him as he gets ready to roll over. Braylei is so advanced because of the amount of time Meghan spends with her everyday.

Meanwhile, my second year of medical school at Midwestern University-Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine is well under way! It's hard to believe that we are almost halfway through with the fall quarter already! This year is absolutely nuts! The classes are way more rigorous, expectations are higher, there are way more small assignments, and much less time. We have the triple threat of Pathology, Pharmacology and Microbiology this year, and if that's not enough, we have tons of clinically oriented classes and the best of all, our Osteopathic Medicine class. I am still trying to get find a solid rhythm for studying and spending time with family. I am getting up at 3:30am everyday, going to school, working out, studying before and after classes, and I try to be home by 6pm every night to have dinner with the fam, and getting the kids ready for bed. I am trying to go to bed between 9 and 9:30pm, which is needless to say, much earlier than my classmates. But it has been a good schedule for me, as I at least get a couple hours of family time in a night and then in the morning, everyone is sleeping, so it's not cutting out of their time. Oh, and me being me and wanting to get involved, I'm the President of the Sports Medicine club, Vice-President of AMOPS (Association of Military Osteopathic Physicians & Surgeons), Vice-President of the Latter-Day Saint Student Association (LDSSA), and also the class liaison for the UAAO (Undergraduate American Association of Osteopathy.) We do a lot of lunchtime speakers and evening workshops to facilitate of medical school learning, so it's pretty beneficial on the whole. Plus, it helps me to get to know the 1st year students and students from the other programs. Hopefully I'll get fully into it soon! We have a huge Pharmacology test tomorrow morning, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll do well!











P.S: Here's some funny video clips!

Update: OBC pictures

I have added some of the pictures from my Army Basic Officer's Course. Please disregard the lack of picture quality. I opted to take a disposable camera rather than our $500 camera. One of the guys in my squad broke his $400 camera while low crawling out in the field. I'll try to get better copies of some pictures from others who had better cameras!

Update

I have now added pics from the 4th of July with Russ Wilde! They are under "Another Wilde Week!" Enjoy!

Almost Done!!!!

Oh, Boy! It feels so incredible to be done with all of our field training for the Army Officer Basic Leadership Course! It felt just as good to take a shower when we returned to post Friday evening! Although baby wipes and liberal amounts of medicated Gold Bond (the menthol is a real treat!) do wonders, nothing can beat a real shower! What a week it was, though! This whole week focused on AMEDD operations, or medical related simulations. We were given a full OPORD (operations order), which describes in detail the simulated situation and mission. It was pretty funny that we were sent in to protect the newly liberated Southern Republic of Texas (SRT) from the communist People's Republic of Austin (PRA). We also had to be aware of SRT insurgents who called themselves the Texas Unification Front (TUF). We were charged with the challenge to provide medical support to the US troops sent to protect the SRT from the PLA and TUF. On one day, my group was in charge of setting up a battalion aid station, which is a level 1 station. This is typically acts as a casualty collection point for injured soldiers. Casualties are brought in and are triaged, treated, and, with minor bumps and bruises, are usually returned to battle, or in more serious cases, are taken to a level 2 hospital. I was in charge of triage, where I had to evaluate and rank the severity of the casualties coming in, which determined who was treated first. Another day included setting up an AXP (Ambulance Exchange Point). This is an intermediary point between level 1 and level 2 stations in order to cut down traveling distances for the vehicles. An ambulance from the battalion aid station would bring the casualties to the AXP where they would be taken off, quickly triaged and then placed on the ambulance belonging to the level 2 hospital where it would return. The key with the AXP and level 1 is that these are unestablished areas that need to be secured and cleared before they could be set up. The last task dealt with setting up a level 2 hospital, which is set up within the FOB (forward operating base). This was split into two parts. The first was concerned with running a level 2 hospital, which received and treated casualties from both the level 1 via the AXP, as well as the FOB, which was concurrently under attack. I was part of the quick response force (QRT) aid and litter team. the 4 of us were the first responders to immediate casualties on the FOB. It was pretty intense to go into hot areas to retrieve the injured soldiers and take them to treatment. It was hard work, too! I got pretty tired after carrying a few 200 lb soldiers a few hundred yards! The second part focused on FOB operations. My duty was as the lead radio transmission officer, where I relayed all incoming radio messages from all posts on the FOB to the company commander. It's really hard to try to relay a message as three more are coming in! The whole day was crazy as we were dealing with insurgent fire, mortar attacks, angry civilians, and injured soldiers, but it was a great learning experience!

Overall, I thought this week was very beneficial. We had some breakdown in leadership that caused a lot of moaning and groaning, as they decided to enforce rules that were never mentioned before. And then on the last night, they went crazy on us as we were cleaning our M-16 rifles! They were given to us in pretty poor condition, but they acted like they were brand new and expected us to return them as such! We cleaned them for hours on end and were up past 1am! Then we had to get up at 4:30am to do a 3 mile road march. Little did we know that we would end up doing over 5 miles due to the cadre's miscalculation. It was a good march, though. I was given the charge of keeping everyone in the back of our platoon together. This was very rewarding indeed, as I was able to motivate my platoon, keeping morale up. This was especially important toward the end, as we began to realize that our march was going to cover much more than 3 miles. Some of the platoon was pretty frustrated, and the lack of sleep did not alleviate the matter in the least! But in the end, we stayed together and it we made it through our last week of field training!

This weekend was pretty relaxing for me. I had pretty good food, especially as opposed to MREs! The best part about it was that I had an opportunity to attend a session at the San Antonio Temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The little Ft. Sam Houston branch made a little temple trip. It was so wonderful to escape the world, escape the vulgarities of the Army for a few hours and find true peace in the temple. It was revitalizing and refreshing. On Sunday, the investigator family returned to church, this time bringing 2 more members of the family in tow! They are wonderful people and it is a shame that I will never know what paths their lives will take, but I hope that they were able to feel the sincerity of my heart as I testified to them of how I found my place in this world.

This week should prove to be relatively uneventful. We have a lot of lectures, but not much else until our final exam and graduation on Friday! I can't wait to get back to my beautiful family in Arizona! I began to cry as I talked to Braylei on the phone Saturday night, as she kept asking me to color with her. She wanted to see me through the webcam, which is unfortunately blocked from streaming while I am on post. She says, "Daddy! Cue-per!" Meghan said that she also has taken up the pastime of tickling! She will run up to people and just start tickling, saying "Tickle, tickle, tickle!" Tayscen is still eating well, and beginning to go longer than 2 hours between feeding at night, allowing Meghan to get a little more sleep! I miss them all so much! I can't wait until 9:21 Saturday morning when my plane arrives and I am reunited with them once more!

Another Wilde Week!

Only 2 weeks of officer training left to go! I am so excited to go back home to Meghan, Braylei and Tayscen! I miss them so much! Braylei is going through a growth spurt and is getting more and more clever by the day! She loves to carry a little step stool all over the place and is now using it to turn lights on and off as well as open doors. Her new movie phase is the CG animated Madagascar, asking for "Video! Lions!" Meanwhile, Tayscen is up to 9 pounds, is eager to hold his head up on his own, and definitely enjoys eating! Meghan is doing excellent, and her incision from the c-section has healed and looks darn near close to her pre-pregnancy self, save her uterus is still a little enlarged. She has adjusted to taking care of two kids amazingly well. I don't know how she does it! She is incredible! I can't wait to see them again.

Meghan has also been working hard, with the help of her family, in painting our new house so it will be ready to move into when I return! Everything looks so great! They painted the living room, loft, and the kids' bedrooms! The living room is a khaki color called prince I believe, while the loft, which will be the kids' play area primarily, is kind of a khaki green. Braylei has a sherbet green half wall with yellow and pink stripes, and Tayscen's room features a rich chocolate brown. We haven't decided what we will do with our room. We also ordered chocolate brown leather living room furniture and bookcases for our room and the loft. We are looking at TVs but haven't decided on that quite yet either. I am so excited for our house! I get to install ceiling fans and a garage door opener when I get back! Yea!

Meanwhile, this past week was pretty exciting. We spent Monday and Tuesday out in the field, working on FOB (forward operating base) operations, and convoy operations. A convoy is a group of vehicles with the mission to get from one point to another. In the field, or in theater (an area of war) anything coming into or going out of the FOB is conducted by convoy. It isn't safe or prudent to have single vehicles coming to and fro. Plus in today's warzone, Iraqi insurgents using roadside bombs disguised as everyday items. So there are many battle drills that we must know so that if something were to happen. I was selected to be one of the Truck Commanders (TC), which was a crazy, but cool experience. I did, however, inadvertently cause the death of two Iraqi citizens at a wedding party due to a gun firing wedding ritual that was unknown to me. I mistook it as enemy contact, and by the time I saw otherwise and gave the command for my truck not to fire, the truck behind me saw my signal and opened fire before I could stop them. That's exactly why we practice these drills before we're actually in that situation for real. During the convoy, the rain started coming down very hard on us again, which in many respects made it seem really cool because we were dismounted at the down and we were simulating a medical evacuation. It was pretty intense. On the Wednesday, the 4th, we were back in San Antonio and we had the day off. I was able to get in contact with my old college roommate, Russ Wilde, who recently took a job as a news reporter for a station in nearby Austin. He and his wife met me in town and we were able to have lunch and see the new Transformers movie,which is brilliant, by the way! We then hit up downtown San Antonio where we saw the Tower of the Americas, the River Walk, and the Alamo. It was really good to see them. The rest of the week was just classroom work, which was pretty dull. Nothing major went down this weekend. I did have a really awesome missionary experience at church today with a wonderful young medic, her 4 year old son, along with her mother and grandmother. I was able to share my conversion story with them, and help answer some of the more obscure questions that I remember asking when I was in their shoes! It is always important to me to express how thankful I am for my upbringing and hold in esteem the catholic church and all others that I investigated years ago. There is light and truth in everything, and we must all see it. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I believe that the fullness of the gospel's light and truth has been restored to this earth. But never let go of all the good within you and around you. I would just invite anyone to look and see if we can help them find a supplement to the wondrous light they already have in their lives, not to reconstruct it, but rather enrich it. People will say what they will about my religion, but the only thing that matters is what our hearts tell us. I intend to follow my heart through the promptings of the Holy Ghost, who so beautiful guides me through this life!