Augustana, My Amazing Friends, Fun at the Orchard, Happy 8th Anniversary

First, I need to point out that I have a lot of work to do getting good at this blogging thing.  If I want to chronicle my adventures, I need to be better about taking pictures.  Pictures that anyone would want to see anyway.  I find I use my phone's camera more for reminders, references, and jokes than anything.  Kind of a waste.  I'll try to do better in the new year.  It's not even Jan 1 and I have some resolutions ahead of me.

Next I'll actually move on to some of the fun I had!  In late October my friend Ethan and his parents hosted a "Nerd Weekend" for some of my college friends. We gathered to play nerdy games, eat good food, and drink good beer.  I started the weekend off by meeting my good friend Nate at our Alma Mater: Augustana College in Rock Island.  We enjoyed a stroll around campus, marveling at just how good the kids there have it these days.  It was a beautiful morning all around.

I have a lot of great memories from Augie.  I met some amazing people there, people I have carried forward the lessons I learned, and the people I love from that place.  That said, there are many parts of Augie I don't miss.  The overwhelmingly liberal culture (as evidenced by the "Feel the BERN 2016" graffiti that was... everywhere) which pervades most campuses, and the abandonment of their Lutheran principles.  Still, it was nice to be back, even for just an hour. The rest of the weekend was also a ton of fun.  A shout out to the hosts with the most, the Essers!  

Very early in November the official service for my grandfather was held in Mahomet. He passed away in October.  We had a small family service, which was lovely, but this memorial was for his friends.  What I wanted to share here was the amazing tribute that MY friends, some of whom had never even met my grandfather, paid to him with this lovely arrangement.  It moved both me and my grandmother.  I couldn't ask for better people.

While in Mahomet, we also met some of my other friends, Matt and Jenny for a meal at my absolute favorite spot: Filippo's Pizza.  Filippos is a small, family owned chain of restaurants based out of Monticello IL, with branches in Mt Zion and Mahomet.  Each branch is owned by a son or daughter of the original Filippo Galbo.  The pizza is truly the best anywhere.  I am a sucker for the Thick, Extra-Sauce, Meatball variety (pictured above).  It was a great meal, with good people. I hope I get to go back soon.  And if I do, yes there will be more pictures.

As we cruised into November we managed to get in a trip to Tanner's Orchard, out near Bradford IL.  It is always a fun time.  Mandi was asked by Forrest to join her on the spring-riders. She got going, though not quite as fast as he did:

Heh Heh.  Kid loves those little spring-riders.  

Lastly, I'd like to note that Mandi and I had a wonderful 8th anniversary. I brought her a single red rose, a fun mini-cake she had commented on a while back, and a card.  It was a quiet night in for us, but sometimes that is best.

My wife can blog, and so can I.

For any of you who don't know, my wife blogs.  And she is really good at it.  Her talent for crafting has helped her do wonderful work cataloging our life together for the past... many years.  Anyone who wants to follow her can, and should at:

Mandi's Musings

Me on the other hand?  I struggle.  I would love to chock it up to the ADHD, and maybe that plays a part, but really I just lack the discipline and dedication.  I work a lot as well, so that doesn't help.  Still, I need a journal, and a forum to express my joys, my concerns, my love, and my faith as much as the next fella.  So I'll try to do a better job.  If not for me, then for my kids to have something to look back on, besides their mother's blog. 

I'll start with an update.  When we left off, I was paradigm shifting.  It was 2012, Mandi and I were moving to Monticello IL after finishing residency.  Mandi was carrying Forrest, and I was making a lot of transitions.  

Monticello was a wonderful place for us.  We accomplished a lot, and I'll summarize in bullet point :D

• August 2012:  Forrest came into our lives.  We love you buddy.  You were tough at first, you were not the happiest baby, made worse I am sure by our new parent anxiety.  But we made it through and you sure are a ton of fun now!
• September 2012: I reunite with an old friend, Josh, who is an instructor in Choy Li Fut Kung Fu - I begin my study of the martial art.
• October 2012:  I was made President of the Medical Staff at the local hospital.  I learned a lot about administrative medicine, and myself as a physician
• November 2012:  Our 5 year anniversary!  Fun!
• November 2012:  I pass my ABFM board exams, and become Board Certified in Family Medicine!
• February 2013: I traveled to Phoenix for an administrative medicine conference - what an awesome time!  The Hilton Pointe Tapatillo was a great place to stay, I made some great friends and learned a lot.
• July 2013:  My college friend and fellow physician Mark Keplinger and I decided to go into business together, founding The Gaming Goat - Champaign.  A specialty game store.  We operated as a franchise of The Gaming Goat out of the Chicagoland area.
• September 2013:  I went on a CME trip to San Diego, where I learned a lot, and spent time with my friends Brent, Nate, and Brian (Brent's Brother).

• September 2013:  Forrest and Mandi enroll in a local Montessori Toddler program, Mandi meets a great friend in Heather Foran.
• November 2013:  Mandi and I celebrate our 6th :)  
• Christmas 2013:  Forrest, having developed an obsession with KitchenAid Mixers (which he refers to as "Ddittz") receives his very own Blue (boo) Mixer (Ditz).  Video shown below:

• August 2014:  Mark and I strike out on our own, dropping our Gaming Goat Franchise, and convert our store to Titan Games - Champaign
• November 2014:  Many changes over the past year push me and my employer further apart.  For reasons I won't elaborate on, we decide to part ways.  I begin my search for a new job, planning on finishing up in March of 2015.
• November 2014:  Mandi I celebrate our 7th anniversary, and beating the odds.  I love my wife more and more everyday, she lights up my life and grounds me in all the right ways.
• January-February 2015:  The job search continues, with interviews all over IA, IL, and WI.  Eventually we decide that we will return Peoria, our home during residency. I take up employment with UnityPoint Health as a Flex provider.
• April 2015:  I finish up at Kirby and begin the next Chapter.  For the time being I commute to Peoria as we try to sell our Monticello home.
• May 2015:  Our house sells!
• May 2015:  Mandi and I find out she is expecting our second :D
• June 2015:  So long Monticello (or Mommicello as Forrest calls it).  We bid farewell to our happy home, and one of our favorite towns and make our way back to Peoria.  I am loving my new position.
• July 2015:  During our annual trip to WI, we find our dream retirement home, and we pull the trigger.  Me make an offer, and the offer is accepted.  Whitefish Lake here we come!
• July 2015:  We join Mandi's family on a trip to the west coast of Michigan, what a lovely trip (see Mandi's Musings for more detail)
• September 2015:  We close on our new house in Gordon!

• October 2015:  We finally find a house we like in Peoria, after renting for a few months in our old neighborhood.  (see Mandi's Musings for more detail)

So that was a lot, in very little time.  I didn't cover nearly everything, but I don't know that I could in one blog post.  Heck, Mandi has done a lot more than that to cover those three years.  But it serves as a fair summary.  I hope to be back at this regularly, now that I am living and loving my time in Peoria.  I'll end this with a verse I read today:

"They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God;, he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this way we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error."

1 John 4:5-6

Paradigm shifting.

So residency is done.  We are moved.  While our move isn't totally complete (we have a few small totes, bicycles, etc...) to pick up later this week we are definitely IN the new house.

I subscribe to the theory that good things come in threes.  I also believe that life can be fairly succinctly divided into three phases over a variety of classifications.

The easiest is by age.  With an average lifespan approaching 90, ages 1-29 represent Early Life, ages 30-59 represent Middle Life, and of course 60-90 represents Late Life.  Notice the avoidance of using the word "Old".  Old is a state of mind and body.  I have seen plenty of people firmly in their Middle Life, or even late in their Early Life who I would classify as Old, and even a few people in Late Life who I would classify as young (Here's looking at you Grandma).  And for any of you wonder what 91+ is... well thats just bonus.

Another, more abstract way to view life in phases is by our education/occupation.  This one is a little more maleable, and many people shift back and forth between phases on occasion.  The first is Education, the second is Occupation, and the last is Retirement.

One can also use the life cycle to divide one's life.  Youth, Parenthood, and Grandparenthood.  One could add Great-Grandparenthood, but like the 90+ category that is more of a bonus (although it becomes more and more common as life expectancy climbs).

I am sure that there are many more ways to divide life.  But those come to mind as some of the most significant.  And even if they aren't the most significant overall they are certainly significant to me at this moment because I find myself readying to transition to the next phase in all three of those categories.  This year, I will turn 30, become a parent, and will have left Education for Occupation.  All within 2 months.  It is certainly a lot to get used to at once.  As a friend recently described it to me "Its like drinking life from a firehose".  And that is the truth.

Mind now this isn't bad.  In fact, it is all very very good.  I am loving life at the moment.  The completion of Residency is thrilling.  That place was wearing me thin.  Not down, but thin.

But still all of those transitions have taken me somewhat aback.  I find myself wistfully contemplating upon the stages which I am finishing up.  I have lived a blessed, AND charmed life.  Of that I have no doubt.  And thinking on the relative eternity of my progress to this point, and the memories contained within that progress I still find myself saddened by opportunities missed, and roads not taken.  By life expectancy 1/3 of me is gone.  By relativistic time its closer to 80%.  Thats a lot of time.  I hope I can make the most of the next stages.


Stay Healthy!

Finishing up.

So I now consider myself in the finishing up phase of residency.  Time to tie up loose ends and wrap everything up nice and pretty.

• Patients seen in clinic:  1540/1650, only 110 left.
• Continuity Deliveries:  10/10
• Total Deliveries:  40+/40
• Monographs:  6/6
• Home Visits:  2/2
• Circumcisions: 5+/5
• Step 3:  Passed
• Research:  Submitted
• Research Presentation: Finished but not presented.
• MNPS MCQ:  Passed.

That leaves only 110 patients and one 15 min presentation, which I have already prepared.  And two rotations to pass, but those won't be a problem.

We have a house in Monticello, are looking to have our house in Peoria sold soon.  Everything is wrapping up nicely.

No complaints. 

Stay Healthy!

So close, and so much left to do.

So as most of you know, I have anxiously headed toward the end of my residency since... oh... I don't know, around midway through first year. And now that the end is rapidly approaching I find myself wishing I had a little more time. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean IN residency, I just mean more time to get things done in the rest of my life.

For one, we sold our house. This has left us with a definite deadline in terms of moving. This is a great thing overall, we sold our house! Thanks to craigslist, it took only 6 days. Thats right, For Sale by Owner from list to completed offer in less than 1 week. Pretty awesome.

For second, we now have to find a place to live. This has proved to be a different kind of trial than what we were expecting to face. For those of you who don't know, we are moving to a small town in Central IL, around 5500 people in the town, and an area that serves around 13,000. The wife and I had expected to find ourselves short of options. Well, we were pleased to discover quite the opposite. Indeed, there have been a lot of GREAT options, at a great price with a great interest rate. So now we have the trial of trying to pick among many great options. 1st world problems to be sure, but it *does* have to get done, and now it has to be done sooner rather than later.

For Third, as many of you know we are expecting. So now in addition to a new job, new house, moving to a new town, and moving out of our old place, we have to get ready for our little guy. And yes, our little guy is a boy :) I felt him kick for the first time today, talk about wild.

On a completely different note, I have also started reading the "The Dark Tower" series by Stephen King. And it is awesome. It hasn't been since I read a Song of Ice and Fire that I have been as engrossed in a series. Roland Deschain of Gilead ftw. Hile gunslinger.

That is long enough for now, more as it comes.

Stay healthy!

Here we go!

FMS is done, and I move quickly towards the finish. The relief is palpable. My time here is soon finished, and I will get to move on to something oh so much bigger and better. The final step. The last leap. And it feels great.

More to come. I just had to share that FMS was over. In fact, it has been over for several days now, and every day has been better than the last. Lets see how long that can last, and how much goodness I can pack into the rest of Residency. My guess... a lot!

Stay healthy!

Family Medicine Service

So here I am again, in the Family Medicine Service. FMS. The second most dreaded of all of the services. And it is my last one. And I am over halfway done. So I am not complaining. Because every day done now sets me just that much closer. Closer not only to the end of all of my service months, which is already pretty awesome. But also closer to being done with residency as a whole. This is going to be a huge step!

And in fun news, I have been approved to work shifts at both Proctor and Methodist for moonlighting. I am super excited about this. Its a chance to make some extra cash, and to get some valuable experience. It will mean working a few weekends, which is going to be a bummer, but at least I will be making extra cash. I really do believe however that the greater part of the benefit is the experience. I get to act as an independent physician. This may seem like no big deal to many of you. Especially when compared to the cash. But this is huge. We are talking about the first time in my entire life that I have been able to work without being under the direct supervision of another person in a similar but supervisory position. Alllll the way back to the DQ. I worked grill there, and my manager also worked the grill. At Lil' Porgy's I prepped food, and the manager's and owners did the same, and oversaw me. At Augie in Res Life my supervisors were ARD's, or Assistant Resident Directors... themselves former Community Advisors who also did CA work. Even at Elliott Aviation I worked under other receptionists. Literally, EVERY job I have ever had, I have never been "on top". Of course this has been especially true through Medical School and Residency. It makes a lot of sense with Medicine... new students and new doctors HAVE to be supervised because a mistake could be so dangerous.

But finally... FINALLY I get to work on my own. Its an almost surreal feeling. And somewhat frightening. I have full confidence that I will do a good job, but it would be a lie if I said there wasn't some comfort in having an attending there to bounce questions off of. But for every iota of fright, there is an abundance of excitement. Its going to be AWESOME. I have dreamed of this moment for 24 years. Since I was old enough to dream of being anything I have dreamed of this. And while it isn't the end, it is a taste of the end. It is the first glimmer of the finish of this long road, and the beginning of another, I believe, better road.

Its going to be awesome.

Stay Healthy.

And pray for my former patient Mr. P.. He was recently diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of Cancer. He and his wife, and their Church community can use all the prayers they can get.