Looking back, I thought I had posted more in 2010 than I actually had. It looks like a typical year of New Years Resolutions where I started out strong and tapered off shortly into the 1st quarter. Once again, I'm going to try harder this year though and endeavor to write in my (our) blog more. In fact, I'll post again in the next few days with the update on our Christmas trip. 2500 miles in 8 days!
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Christmas Letter 2010
Published on in
Well we’ve had quite a year again! We started off with our poor Wonky Wolfie getting surgery on his heart. As you may remember, our puppy Wolfie 1.0 died of a faulty heart (aortic valvular stenosis) in late July, 2009. We were devastated naturally, but always wanted two shepherds, so we got Wolfie 2.0 in October. Imagine our surprise when Wolfie 2.0 also had a heart defect (patent ductus arteriosis)! However, we discovered this one early enough, and had it repaired. The surgery was a complete success, and we have one very happy and active puppy now! We also had his wonky ear fixed a little, although it’s still wonky (and adorable). Winnie and Wolfie occupy much of our free time, and are our pride and joy. They get along very well with our cats, Beeble and Trillian. Winnie will RUN from the room when Beeble makes any sudden movements towards her, which is hilarious given she’s an 80 lb dog. Michael also thinks it’s hilarious that he gets exactly 3 inches of bed space when everyone is allowed up.
Sheila spent the whole year in Medical School rotations. For those who don’t know, med school consists of 2 years classroom study, and 2 years rotating in clinics, hospitals, ER’s, etc. Sheila completed a number of required and elective rotations all over the globe. She started the year in Nepal for an elective foreign medical rotation, performing exams and surgery alongside Nepali medical students in Kathmandu. Along the way she had family medicine, general surgery, pediatrics, gynecologic oncology, psychiatry, and a few more. Besides Nepal, she was in San Antonio, St. Louis, Phoenix, Des Moines, and a couple small towns in Iowa. She completed her 3rd year of school with a few exams, and took her 2nd set of boards which has a computer based question portion and a Physical Exam. For the PE, she traveled to Philadelphia, as all D.O. students do, to perform mock physical exams on live actors who pretend to have certain symptoms. She passed her computer based boards, but we’ve yet to hear back on the PE. More importantly though, Sheila has chosen a specialty: Ob/Gyn! This was a tough choice as she likes both the duties of the surgeon and the family practice physician. Ob/Gyn is a good meld of these disciplines because you get the one on one patient time, you follow patients for a long time, but you also get to perform interesting surgeries. Sheila is considering a fellowship later in gynecologic oncology. With her specialty chosen, she has completed her applications for residency and has been invited for interviews. Once interviews are complete in January, we will submit our desired locations for residency, and will await the “match” in February and March. Then we’ll know where we’ll live for the next 4 years!
Michael has been loving the new job he started last November. He’s been doing software development at Geolearning, the top Learning Management Software (LMS) company in the world (they won that award the last 6 years). They write software for the web, and are about to release mobile versions of their software for iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry, which he hopes to work on soon. Outside of work, he became president of SOS club this year, which is Significant Others Support, the organization for spouses of medical students at DMU. This club advertises and recruits new members each fall from the incoming student class, and helps the spouses and Sig-O’s find other people with similar interests. We get together for fun outings, or to volunteer to help the community, or just to share what we’ve learned about the med school experience! We also have sub clubs for common interests, like Men’s club. He runs that club, which mostly consists of drinking beer and playing poker! Speaking of which, Michael also continued his home brewing hobby this year. He brewed about 10 types of beer this year, from a Bavarian Hefeweizen to a Scottish Wee Heavy. In order to counteract the additional caloric intake this hobby demands, Michael decided to take up running. His goal for now is to run a few 5k’s next year; this year he ran the Living History Farms outdoor 10k race in November, 2010. At a blistering 20 degrees Fahrenheit that day, 8000 runners ran through woods, rivers, and mud for 7 miles to raise money for this historical site in Des Moines, and just to generally act like fools.
That’s it for now! Merry Christmas to all our friends and family! We hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and great and exciting New Year!
Sheila spent the whole year in Medical School rotations. For those who don’t know, med school consists of 2 years classroom study, and 2 years rotating in clinics, hospitals, ER’s, etc. Sheila completed a number of required and elective rotations all over the globe. She started the year in Nepal for an elective foreign medical rotation, performing exams and surgery alongside Nepali medical students in Kathmandu. Along the way she had family medicine, general surgery, pediatrics, gynecologic oncology, psychiatry, and a few more. Besides Nepal, she was in San Antonio, St. Louis, Phoenix, Des Moines, and a couple small towns in Iowa. She completed her 3rd year of school with a few exams, and took her 2nd set of boards which has a computer based question portion and a Physical Exam. For the PE, she traveled to Philadelphia, as all D.O. students do, to perform mock physical exams on live actors who pretend to have certain symptoms. She passed her computer based boards, but we’ve yet to hear back on the PE. More importantly though, Sheila has chosen a specialty: Ob/Gyn! This was a tough choice as she likes both the duties of the surgeon and the family practice physician. Ob/Gyn is a good meld of these disciplines because you get the one on one patient time, you follow patients for a long time, but you also get to perform interesting surgeries. Sheila is considering a fellowship later in gynecologic oncology. With her specialty chosen, she has completed her applications for residency and has been invited for interviews. Once interviews are complete in January, we will submit our desired locations for residency, and will await the “match” in February and March. Then we’ll know where we’ll live for the next 4 years!
Michael has been loving the new job he started last November. He’s been doing software development at Geolearning, the top Learning Management Software (LMS) company in the world (they won that award the last 6 years). They write software for the web, and are about to release mobile versions of their software for iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry, which he hopes to work on soon. Outside of work, he became president of SOS club this year, which is Significant Others Support, the organization for spouses of medical students at DMU. This club advertises and recruits new members each fall from the incoming student class, and helps the spouses and Sig-O’s find other people with similar interests. We get together for fun outings, or to volunteer to help the community, or just to share what we’ve learned about the med school experience! We also have sub clubs for common interests, like Men’s club. He runs that club, which mostly consists of drinking beer and playing poker! Speaking of which, Michael also continued his home brewing hobby this year. He brewed about 10 types of beer this year, from a Bavarian Hefeweizen to a Scottish Wee Heavy. In order to counteract the additional caloric intake this hobby demands, Michael decided to take up running. His goal for now is to run a few 5k’s next year; this year he ran the Living History Farms outdoor 10k race in November, 2010. At a blistering 20 degrees Fahrenheit that day, 8000 runners ran through woods, rivers, and mud for 7 miles to raise money for this historical site in Des Moines, and just to generally act like fools.
That’s it for now! Merry Christmas to all our friends and family! We hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and great and exciting New Year!
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Can you believe this dog? He's gone through more surgeries than Sheila! Ok, not really even close. But he's gonna catch up quickly at this rate. Honestly, we think he's done now. This one was planned in advance, like the last one, so nothing out of the ordinary is wrong. Some people wait until their pup is nearly 1 year old to get neutered, but with Wolfie's heart problem, they suggested we get him cut short (hahah, get it, short = early). Yeah, poor guy. But also this was a good opportunity to get his ear fixed. We'll never know exactly what happened with his ear, but the best guess the experts gave us was that Wolfie had some kind of birth defect that caused blood vessels to burst in his ear, which caused the cartilage to splinter into different pieces and grow all wonky. That's the best word we've found to describe it - wonky! So the wonderful doctors at Iowa State Veterinary hospital fixed him right up.
They weren't very worried about the procedures themselves, because these are fairly basic things that they do often, but they were more worried about Wolfie's heart, which was just fixed. and his strange reaction to the anesthesia and disinfectant last time. But, everything went off without a hitch, and 2 days later, our Wolfie came home with a nice big e-collar and 4 more scars. His new name is Frankie (as in frankestein). The best thing about Wolfie (besides being super cute and very well behaved) is that he is unbelievable tolerant of all this poking, prodding, and cutting. He comes out of these surgeries, and 24 hours later he's ready to run. They love him over at Iowa State. Actually, they said that they like him so much, that if he has another surgery, they're going to name a wing after him (is that because we bought it?)
The worst part of this whole thing, honestly, is that Wolfie wants to play so badly, but he can't because he'd probably rip his sutures right out. When he and Winnie get into it, they play hard! Seriously, the neighbors get scared =) We've had to keep him in his crate most of the time. But he's a good kid, and we let him out on good behavior. His favorite "entertain myself" game is to go outside (works best in fresh snow) and scoop a bunch of snow into his e-collar, and make a little Wolfie snowcone. When he comes inside, he can spend the next hour licking it clean. A side effect of this is that when he does a #2, and he goes to sniff his product like any good male would do, he sometimes makes a poop flavored snowcone. Guess who gets to clean that out!? Oh, he's worth it! He's the best damn dog in the world (together with his sister)!
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Wolfie had surgery last week on 1/6, and it was a complete success! You might have read in my previous post that he was discovered to have a PDA (patent ductus arteriosis), which is a duct in the heart that is supposed to close when you are born into the world. Wolfie's was not, and the concern was that if we didn't close it, he could suffer the same fate as all Wolfies (the ones that we know anyhow). The surgery took just a few hours to insert a device through the femoral artery to close the hole from each side, and he recovered gently at Iowa State Veterinary Hospital. They are a top notch facility, certainly the best in the state, and Wolfie was in good hands. I would mention his doctor's name, except I don't have his permission, so I'll only mention it in person, if anyone needs a cardiac referral. It's interesting, treating our pets almost as humans, and I know some people will disagree, but can you be surprised really? They are a part of the family unit. And Wolfie 2.0 has stolen our hearts just as much as Winnie and Wolfie 1.
A hilarious side effect of the surgery was bringing Wolfie home from Iowa State. He scared the crap out of Winnie, who went running into the corner behind the piano (her favorite "don't bother me" spot), only to emerge when Wolfie was out of the room. I laughed myself silly watching Wolfie try to play and watching Winnie run away full speed! So Wolfman is resting, against his will, for the next couple weeks, just to make sure nothing comes undone. It should be an interesting couple of weeks! I'll be glad when this is all done.... and Sheila missed all the fun!!!
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I want my baby back baby back baby back...
Published on Sunday, January 3, 2010 in holidays, nepal, sheila
Sheila's been gone about a week now. Ok, I'll admit it, I was rather bored this weekend. That never happens! I don't know why it happened this weekend. I think it's because it's so cold outside that I couldn't even tolerate being out there for a minute. Seriously. I guess I kept busy with xbox, web surfing and general nerdy pursuits, adding music to my ipod, babysitting Ooka (friend's dog)... blah blah blah. Yep, I was bored. Damn, I hate it when that happens. Last time I talked to Sheila was on New Years day at 2am. She was wishing me a happy new year though it had been 2010 for her for ~14 hours already.
So she's doing well, albeit cold. Her exact words were "I hate hate hate hate hate hate being cold". I told facebook that, and facebook said, meh. Several people emoted surprise when I said Nepal was cold. You do know that's where Mt Everest is right? Ok, Kathmandu is 1400m (4500 ft), so a little lower than Denver. Right now it's in the 30's at night, and 60's during the day. But you have to remember that the days are still short (a little longer than DSM), the buildings don't have great heating systems (or heat at all), and there are no heated showers... Did you read that? Go back and read it again and then think about getting up in your house each morning to relatively little heat, then taking a cold shower. You never get warm. Add to that the fact that Sheila is from AZ, and has thin blood to start (I've never actually tested this blood theory, though I did accidentally cut her foot once when I dropped a razor on it. It bled a long time... hmmm).
But mostly Sheila is enjoying her rotation there. She's been seeing Parvati quite a bit, who has helped her get around and obtain a space heater. She's been observing surgeries in the hospital, and they've been top notch. We miss her dearly here of course. I represented her at a gathering at Vuong's house for the Eve. We drank, laughed, played games, and then laughed at how everyone played games. I might have come across a bit competitive, which I'm not really, but I do love me some Catch Phrase. Do they have updated version of that game? After you play it for a while, you get to memorize the answers. I remember playing somewhere once for several hours, and we started giving clues like "Remember that answer you gave 2 hours ago?" I was thinking they should make the content downloadable. Oh wait, I have it... I should write an iPhone version... then there would be an app for that (I can't get that stupid phrase out of my head).
Well, cheers everyone, here's to 2010! Happy New Year!
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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
Published on Saturday, December 26, 2009 in nepal, rotations, sheila
Merry Christmas everyone! I'm a little sad cuz Sheila left for Nepal yesterday. This is rotation #6, and the first elective one. I would say she exhibited a mixture of excitement for the upcoming trip, trepidation on making sure to pack well, and annoyance at having to leave home again. As any of the business travelers out there will know, it's always exciting in the beginning, and get increasingly annoying and tedious at the end, after you've been traveling for a while. As Sheila describes it, any given rotation is exciting the first week as you are learning the ropes, fun the second week as you master the routine and contribute positively, and then you pretty much want to start going home.
So, I guess I'm a bachelor again. It's not so bad really. I get to play xbox all the time, watch whatever I want, not take showers, not do the dishes... eh it's pretty much like that when Sheila is here too =) Med school is like being single again in many respects. You spend a lot of time finding ways to fill your time. I happen to be pretty good at that, but I'd rather spend more time with my wife, and I'm certainly grateful for the fact that 3rd year of medical school is a lot less time consuming. Certainly these away rotations are difficult, especially this one to Nepal where I can't even visit her. But this will be a great experience for her and I'm super happy that she gets to go back and give back as well as she received from this country in the past. Before she was the patient, and now she will be the doctor (student). I'm sure this is a great sense of closure for her.
Well, we'll all miss Sheila while she's away. She's going to miss Wolfie's surgery, and a New Year's kiss from her husband (I'll save it for later). But we love her and wish her a good rotation!
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Merry Christmas!
Published on Thursday, December 24, 2009 in drink, holidays, sheila, winnie, wolfie
I thought I'd repost our Christmas Letter here for posterity.
Another wild and crazy year for this branch of the Drnec family: Tumultuous, fortuitous, studious, industrious, and at times frivolous and capricious!
A couple additions enhanced our clan this year, of the small and furry kind. “Congratulations! It’s…a puppy!” Actually, it’s 3 puppies. Last Christmas, we fell in love with Granny’s puppy, Maggie, a Christmas present from Uncle Billy. U. Billy had just adopted Buddy a few weeks prior. We added Wolfgang (Wolfie), The First, to our family in January, a 9 week old German Shepherd. In April, we added Winifred (Winnie) to the family to give Wolfie I a playmate. They were the best of friends, and great companions to us, until Wolfie tragically and unexpectedly died in late July due to an undiagnosed heart defect. We were heartbroken, but adopted Wolfie 2.0 (two-dot-oh) in November to give Winnie her playmate back. Though Winnie, Buddy and Maggie are all confirmed healthy via echocardiogram, Wolfie 2.0 was also found to have a heart defect. Fortunately, it was caught this time, and it’s fixable, and he will have surgery on January 6th, and should live a normal healthy life. We couldn’t be happier, because we couldn’t imagine life without our furry friends (Beeble, the 20 lb. Maine Coone cat, would tend to disagree).
Sheila completed her 2nd year of medical school in May, much to the joy of her husband, who had forgotten what Sheila looked like. However, the first half of summer was reserved for studying for the first Medical Board exam, which Sheila took in July. She passed, much to the joy of Sheila, who was stressed to the max. We took a vacation for a couple weeks (see below), and then Sheila started her rotations. For those who don’t know, the 3rd and 4th years of school consist of a series of 1 month long required and elective rotations in various hospital and clinics. Sheila is based in Des Moines (while other students move to other locations for the year), but has to travel to other locations as there aren’t enough spots for all the students here. So far Sheila has completed ER, internal medicine, surgery, Ob/Gyn, and family practice, and is headed to Nepal for an international rotation right after Christmas. While this time has been hard with the travel to other cities, and us having to be separated, 3rd year is far better than the first two. Sheila is enjoying practicing real medicine (she delivered 11 babies herself in San Antonio, under supervision, of course), and Drink is enjoying seeing her more.
Drink spent much of the year hating his job and trying to fill his spare time with other activities. He was active in SOS (the support organization for medical student spouses), becoming secretary and redesigning their website, and participating in several of the sub groups like the book, tennis, and men’s club. He was officially accepted to University of Iowa’s MBA program and continued pursuing his degree at the local branch in Des Moines in the evenings. Much to the surprise of everyone, his new hobby this year was home brewing after getting a starter kit from Sheila for his birthday. He’s a little disappointed his nickname “Drink” is no longer ironic, but that doesn’t last long past the 2nd tasting of his weekend’s efforts. In October, Drink landed a new job at GeoLearning as a software developer for their Learning Management software (they help many companies deliver online training to their employees). He’s much happier!
This year we traveled to Nepal for a well-deserved vacation after completing half of Medical school. This was both a vacation and a business trip in that we scoped out where Sheila will be living and working for her January rotation. It was really an amazing trip, as we visited many of the same places Sheila had seen when she lived there in 2000/2001, including the site of her motorcycle accident, and some new places. We did a 4 day trek in the Himalayas on the Annapurna trail, we visited the holiest Hindu temple in Nepal, Pashupatinath, we rode elephants in the Chitwan jungle and visited the birthplace of the Lord Buddha. We planned an Everest mountain flight too, but got rained out. We spent a lot of time with our Nepali family, Parvati and Swamijee. They treated us as if we were their own children, and we are forever grateful for their hospitality! We hope they can visit us in the U.S. soon.
We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season! We’re trying to keep warm here in the Midwest, and not get buried in the snow – at least the dogs love it! We know we’ve been out of touch with many friends and family over the past 2 years, and we look forward to post medical school when we can reconnect with everyone.
You can see pictures of our puppies and the Nepal trip online at http://picasaweb.google.com/
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We took Wolfie to the Iowa State vet clinic today to get tested, and it was actually good news (relatively). We already knew he had a heart condition, but we didn't know what it was. Also Sheila was really concerned about his right eye, which seems smaller and more closed than his left eye, and his ear which was covering his eye. We didn't want him to have trouble seeing at such a young age, or there is no way he could keep up with Winnie. I was beginning to wonder why kept missing whenever he tried to hump a visitor (just kidding).
The verdict was that he has a PDA (patent ductus arteriosus). The doctors in the audience will already know what this means. For the rest of you, this means he has a duct that all babies (human and canine) have that's supposed to close shortly after birth. Sometimes it doesn't close, like with Wolfie. Luckily, there's a simple procedure they can do, that also works on dogs, and that's what we're going to have done on Jan 6th. They'll use a device to block the hole on each side of the duct and effectively fix the heart. The vet thinks that as long as Wolfie is a house dog, he'll live a long and happy life. I guess my aspirations of having Wolfie carry me to the top of Mt Everest are shot (and I was so looking forward to that).
I had several people ask me about pet insurance, saying we should look into it to help pay for the cost. And to interject for a minute, it didn't even cross our mind not to get this procedure done (I won't mention how much it costs). Wolfie's a part of our family now, I don't care if he's a dog. Yes, it helps that we don't have children =) Anyway, turns out pet insurance has the same pre-exisisting conditons that human insurance does, so even if we wanted to get it, we couldn't! Poor Wolfman, he's so young to have so many problems, but most likely, everything's going to be fine!
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Published on Thursday, November 26, 2009 in holidays
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I took a nap after work tonight and ended up sleeping most of the night away. Crazy! But it was great. It's now 2am, and I'm catching up on tons of blog posts I meant to make, but never did. You'll see them start to pop up on their historically accurate dates. So please read through!
We're having Thanksgiving at DMU this year. With all the travel Sheila has been doing for school, and the general chaotic mess that is our lives, we decided to stay here this year. The school offers a nice dinner hosted by Dr Tom and Sharon Mueller. Sharon is Sheila's advisor, and we consider them friends. Other than that, we are going to spend time together and with the pets, and relax! I plan on reading, blogging, and playing COD MW2. Sheila has some patient encounters to catch up on, and planning for her Nepal rotation.
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Winnie takes the stage
Published on Saturday, November 14, 2009 in winnie
I've been mentioning Wolfie 1 and 2 lately, but haven't talked about Winnie. That's because she's great, and never does anything wrong! Ha, yeah right. She's a digger, and I've spent way too much money on dirt this year (where does all that dirt go anyway, does she eat it?). But otherwise, she's just the best! She's extremely obedient, she can stay home alone without being in her crate, she performs about 8 tricks, she goes to doggie daycare a couple times a week and has regular friends, and... all the neighbors love her! Carter, the little boy next door used to be afraid of her because she would love to give him a big kiss on his entire face when he came over. But now they are just the best of friends, now that the infatuation is over. We love you Winnie! I'll include a picture of her playing with her friend Apollo down the block.
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Oh no, not again!
Published on Thursday, October 29, 2009 in wolfie
I took Wolfie to the vet this week for his first checkup, and got terrible news. He has a heart murmur, just like his namesake Wolfie 1! Say it isn't so little Wolfman! I was extremely upset after leaving the vet. The Doc said it was a grade 3 murmur, and we should definitely be concerned. Given previous information about Wolfie 1, we should definitely be concerned that there is a strong genetic disposition for heart defects.
I spoke to Lisa, our breeder, and let her know. The Doc said I should definitely tell her to take Zeus, the father, out of the pool, because he's obviously spreading undesirable traits. I don't know, I want to believe her when she says that none of her dogs have ever had any problems, and none of her adoptees have ever reported a puppy with a defect like that. We had Winnie, Buddy, and Maggie all tested, all cleared. How is it possible we get 2 males, both named Wolfie, who have the same issue? Did we curse him by naming him in tribute to our beloved, departed dog?
At this point, we're not going to get him tested further. We have to make the decision if we are going to keep Wolfie, or return him. I'm sure we'll keep him - I just can't see returning him. Wolfie has the other problem with his eye, ear, and tail. The vet said his ear was damaged, but it's just the cartilage, it won't impact the functionality of the ear. There's nothing to be done for it but watch and wait. His eye looks like it physically set back farther than the good one, but again doesn't seem to have any functional problems. We are skeptical about that assessment. His tail lost hair due to the fungus, but the nerves are intact, and the hair should grow back.
As my sister said, he's scrappy, but we love him! Hang in there Scrappy!
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I left my heart in San Antonio
Published on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 in medical school, rotations
More aptly this post should be titled "My heart left for San Antonio". Sheila's latest rotation is Ob/Gyn in that wonderful lone star city. Naturally, she's staying on the "wrong" side of town. Actually, she doesn't even have a place to live! I'm really not happy with DMU and the management of their rotation program. I think this might have been one of the rotations where Sheila had landed a Des Moines location, but it got taken away because there weren't enough spots, or because one of the doctors pulled out of the program. In general, there just aren't enough doctors offering to take students in Des Moines. This is a perplexing practice, because you are just shooting yourself in the foot by failing to train your replacement.
Anyway, this rotation was found by Sheila, but doesn't come with a food stipend or place to live, so we have to pay for it completely out of pocket, and find our own place to live. But Sheila called a week before the rotation to try to find a room through the people she would report to, and they kinda blew her off. Nice! So we booked a hotel for a few nights in the hopes of finding something cheaper quickly.
Ok so I need to backup a bit, because if I don't explain this right, you're never going to believe it. Actually, if you know us at all, of course you'll believe it, because it's a typical crazy Drink and Sheila travel story (Link to map). Friday night, Sheila came back from Storm Lake, IA - her surgical rotation. Saturday was the only chance that we had to pickup Wolfie from the St Louis area, and try as I might, I couldn't convince Sheila not to go with me. I completely understand of course, because she wanted to be there to meet our new pup, or she wouldn't meet him for a month. Secretly, I was glad she went with me, as time together is a rare commodity these days. So we drive 5.5 hours each way with Winnie in the back of the car to pickup Wolfie. Thank goodness Wolfie was an excellent traveler on the way back and didn't need to stop too often! On Sunday, Sheila leaves for San Antonio, which by itself is a 15-16 hour drive. Our Nepali friends Ravi and Devi live in Texarkana, TX, so Sheila is going to stop by on her way through to visit them for a couple hours. Well there really is no direct route from Des Moines to either Texarkana or San Antonio - it's back roads most of the way. Oh, I forgot to mention that Sheila takes the cats with her! There's the setup - a 16 hour car ride, on back roads, with the cats, with a stopover to see friends, with work starting the next morning... oh, and it's raining... and the car is acting funny.
Not everyone might now that we bought a new car recently, a Rav4. But the Rav is for the pups, so Sheila gets my old car, my accord. That car is a 2003 accord that's never had a thing wrong with it, except for a minor paint issue. I had a 100k warranty that just expired, and we are now at 102k miles. You can sense what's coming, right? Sheila's able to get to Texarkana ok, but the car is acting increasingly strange, jolting on acceleration, losing power going up hills... we try to diagnose over the phone, but we can't figure it out. She decides to keep going, and nurses the car to Ravi and Devi's. She visits for a couple hours and heads out close to midnight. She's on her way to Dallas, and then down to San Antonio. However, a couple hours outside Texarkana, the car is really acting badly, bad enough to scare the crap out of Sheila. When she lets off the gas, the car jolts hard as if she slammed on the brakes. It's just not safe anymore, so Sheila stops and gets a hotel in Mt Pleasant, TX, and sleeps for a few hours until the morning. There's no Honda dealer in that town (big surprise), but there's a Toyota dealership, so she hobbles the car there. What's one Japanese car manufacturer or another, they're all the same right? But they really can't find anything wrong with the car, except that there are multiple error codes in the computer. But they can't help, so Sheila gets back in the car and drives to Dallas, another 2 hours down the road. She's already missed her first day of rotation and calls to tell them.
She makes it to a dealership (I found one for her, plus she's got the GPS), and proceeds to tell them the story. So this is first thing in the morning, and she hopes to be on the road shortly. There's only one problem - they can't find anything wrong with the car! What? You are Honda, this is an Accord, what do you mean you can't find anything wrong with it? They clear the error codes, and Sheila takes them on a test drive. Naturally, the car doesn't exhibit the behavior, but we have hopes of a resolution, because when they return to the dealership, there's an error code, and they replace a relay. Could it really be a $5 solution? She's been there all day in the waiting room of the dealership... with Beeble and Trillian... haha! But now she's on the road again, only 5 hours from San Antonio! She's on the road not 10 minutes when the car starts jolting. She calls me, and my heart just drops, because she's so frustrated. What choice does she have? The car doesn't feel safe, so she returns to the dealership. Well at this point, they have to keep the car, because they have absolutely no idea what's wrong with it, and need more debugging time.
So now that the car is in “good hands” (said sarcastically), Sheila still has to get to San Antonio San Antonio
So the GPS got her into
This story is getting really long, so let me cut it short by telling the end. This is where we find out the transmission in our car is busted. What! Let me remind you that we are at 102k of a 100k mile warranty. The bottom line: $3800! We just sold our other car to Will. We have to get it fixed. But the next call we get is the dealership, and Bill, bless his soul, did more digging. He found out Honda extended our warranty to 105k miles due to some recall issue. Score! The transmission will be replaced for no charge. It was the only good thing that had happened to us all weekend. Wow!
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Wolfie 2.0
Published on Sunday, October 25, 2009 in dogs woflie
This weekend we picked up our new puppy, Wolfie 2.0. No, I'm not such a big nerd that that's what we are actually going to call him, we were just having a bit of fun. But we are calling him Wolfie, I guess partially in tribute to our dearly departed friend, Wolfie 1.0. Now Mr 2.0 is not new and improved with retsin, he's not super sized, and he doesn't have micro beads that moisturize and exfoliate. But he certainly is a cute little guy. This whole adventure started shortly after elder Wolfie died. We contacted Lisa our breeder and told her the story. She felt so bad this had happened that she offered us a replacement puppy - no charge. She was under no obligation to do so, though I imagine it's a good business practice.
Weeks of emails and phone calls back and forth yielded a final decision to take one of her male puppies (to maintain the Noah's Ark here at our house) from 1 of 2 recent litters. She had 2 sable males, but we weren't too keen on the sable coloring (http://www.4gsd.net/colours.html). I'd never heard of this sable color, but apparently they have an ever changing coat color. That wouldn't bother me so much as the coat seems to have too much interspersed light hairs in the dark patches. I think it produces a splotchy look, but to each his choice! The bad news with the remaining puppy is he has a couple defects. Actually the story we received was varying, so I was a bit concerned, but we didn't have much of a choice. We like the dogs from this breeder because they have such great personalities, and the quality (except for Woflie) is known to be good. So this new puppy had a damaged ear, which Lisa said was presumably from getting caught in the fence, and she wasn't sure how it was going to affect him long term. Later we found out he also had a problem with his tail. All the hair fell off the tip, probably due to a fungus. Lisa was medicating the area, and had hopes it would clear up.
Upon arriving in Moscow Mills, MO, we met Wolfie 2 right away, and naturally he was as cute as can be... what puppy isn't? Winnie and Wolfie really were best friends right away. Actually, Winnie was more interested in all the other dogs there. I couldn't let her off leash because I was afraid what might happen, especially with overprotective mothers around. In fact, Wolfie and Winnie are full siblings, so Winnie got to meet her Mom. Let's just say the mother-daughter relationship is complicated =) Meanwhile, Winnie was roaming the grounds and Wolfie was following her everywhere. It was a good sign. We stayed for about an hour before leaving. Winnie and Wolfie were absolutely great in the car together. We held Wolfie for a while, but then put him in the back with Winnie. They played very nicely together, and Winnie was deferential to the little guy right away. In fact, we think Wolfie is going to be dominant, because Winnie was letting Wolfie eat from the food bowl first. She didn't growl or force him out of the way. It was weird!
Anyway, we love our new little Wolfgang! And Winnie is glad to have another playmate.
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First rotation
Published on Saturday, August 8, 2009 in medical school, rotations
We just got back from Nepal and there's no time to waste! Sheila left for her first rotation in St Louis. We can't believe this time is finally here! This is the fun part of Med School, if any part of it is truly fun. This is where the students start seeing real, live patients and start administering clinical care. No more studies, no more books... ok, not true. Surprisingly, they still have to take tests at the end of several of the rotations. Ugh!
The first rotation is Emergency Room, and it's actually in O'Fallon, IL, which is probably considered a suburb of St Louis, and is far enough from East St. Louis to be safe. She'll be in a single ER the whole time instead of traveling from place to place. I hate that Sheila has to travel so far from here right off the bat (I'm still mad that rotating in Des Moines doesn't really mean Des Moines). But at least they give her a place to live, and a food stipend. The place is a nice apartment just a few miles from the hospital, that she would share with a roommate, but nobody else is there this month.
It's exciting to get started, but all of us at home can't wait for her to return!
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Wolfie departs, stage left
Published on Friday, July 31, 2009 in wolfie
I'm writing this blog in restrospect, so it's going to be a little more aseptic that it would have been if I wrote it at the time. I just wanted to capture the story, and almost make it seem like I posted it at the time. Here it goes.
We arrive at the airport, and we are so excited to be home, to see our friends, and to soon see our beloved pets. Only, something is not right. We see Charlotte and Paul, and we are excitedly waving at them and saying their names, and they almost look like they are not acknowledging us. Their pace lessens. Their faces ashen, they approach us with heads low, faces down. Sheila's exact words were "What's wrong, who died?" I think they couldn't believe that she guessed right first thing, because it looked like they were stunned, even more so than before. They tell us it's Wolfie, and Sheila insists on the knowing what happened right away.
They tell us that Wolfie was acting a little strange the night before. He was lethargic, and coughing, and maybe even vommitting a little. At first it didn't seem like a big deal, but then he was having trouble staying on his feet. So they very smartly took Wolfie to the emergency vet (there's only one in town). Wolfie couldn't even get into the car, he couldn't jump up. However, by the time they got to the vet, he was feeling more peppy, and was almost himself inside the building. The vets did an xray, and they found that his heart was greatly enlarged, with a lot of fluid around the area causing pressure on his heart and lungs. The vet on call at the time was fairly new and not experienced with the procedure for draining the fluid around the heart, so she called in a consult. But it didn't matter, it was too late. Wolfie died within an hour of his first symptoms, within a short time of being at the vet. He died peacefully.
Sheila and I went directly from the airport to see him. He was still on the table so to speak, as they had only worked on trying to revive him about 6 hours earlier. We were both devastated, he had already become such an integral part of our family. We visited with him for about an hour before we left for home. Subsequent investigation, include an autopsy revealed that he died of valvular stenosis, which is a hardening of the heart valves. It can be a genetic condition, so we were immediately worried about Winnie, our other puppy, and Buddy and Maggie - puppies from the same breeder and have the same father that belong to Uncle Billy and Granny. We let them know right away and found out there's a test you can perform, which is basically an echo cardiogram - the same thing you would do on humans.
We are pretty upset with our vet (Oaks Vet by Drake University) for not catching this. Apparently it's detectable as a heart murmur. And for Wolfie to have died at such a young age, it would have to be a rather large heart murmur. Usually you wouldn't notice any issues until the pet was 2 years old. You might see some signs, but they certain wouldn't die at such an early age. This is such a tragedy, because Wolfie was really the most beautiful and wonderful dog. He was such a bright spot in our life, something we needed while dealing with the trials and tribulations of med school life. He was extremely friendly, very playful, absolutely brilliant, and fairly obedient (he was a puppy after all).
We'll miss you!
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Pretty much everyone has met (virtually or in person) our newest family member Winnie. Say hello Winnie (woof woof)! She had her very first vet appointment this week, and I had the wonderful pleasure of taking her. I was actually really looking forward to it, because frankly I love showing off our pets. Everyone loves puppies, and these GSDs (German Shepherds) are just so damn cute!!! Wolfie has had some weird thing going on with his eye, some kind of infection, and it seemed to have flaired up again, so we wanted to take him again. I changed the appointment so they both could go, but I had to go in the middle of the day instead of the end, and Sheila had mandatory classes, so it was just going to be 3 of us.
I ran home from work with enough time to let the dogs out to go potty (yes, I am a dog owner, and we all say "potty" as if they were little children) and get them into the car and go. Fast forward to the vets office... I get out of my car door, run over to the passenger side to get Wolfie out. I should mention this is the 2 door car, which is leather seats, so the whole drive (which is only 5 minutes) they are sliding around the back seat of the car the whole time. This is also only the 2nd time Winnie has been in the car. Needless to say, they were anxious to get out. So I open the door and am trying to get the leash on Wolfie, but he won't stay still, despite my energetic commands. Winnie tries to jump out of the car, so I need to grab her, and Woflie escapes in the meantime. He's running around the parking lot, and not listening to my commands (sense a theme here?). Luckily, some nice people were just coming out of the office and offered to grab Wolfie, but his capture proved elusive. Luckily he wanted to go into the office (does he know what they do in there?), so instead I handed Winnie to these puppy loving bystanders.
So I finally get a leash on Wolfie, and grab Winnie from the onlookers. I chatted with them for a couple minutes as a recompense for their nice gestures, and because they are also GSD lovers... then Winnie decides she's had enough of being held and leaps from my arms. I forget about Wolfie, and jump forward to catch Winnie, and get enough hands on her to ease her fall to the ground... otherwise I trust our vet visit would have been quite a bit longer and more involved! Naturally, Wolfie gets away. Ok, so I put the leash on Winnie this time so I can control her on the ground, and run to grab Wolfie. Winnie, come.... Winnie, come... Winnie... has no idea how to behave on a leash. Damn! I should have trained her. Well, there's nothing to be done about it now. I kinda just drag her along on the way to Wolfie, who is again at the door.
So I open the door, and now Winnie is all too eager to move and check out her new environment. The only problem is, she goes left, and Wolfie goes right. Now I'm in a doggie straight jacket, because I'm holding them in the opposite hands. Ok, we do the introductions, blah blah, get them into the exam room, and wait a bit. Wolfie is experienced now, so he's pretty good, but Winnie wants to check everything out. Apparently I caught them at a dead time, because they send in two vets and two assistants. So there's examining going on and ooohing and aaahing, meanwhile I'm trying to control the pets, tell the assistants all about them, and listen to everything the vets are trying to say. Next, the exam is done, and we are trying to get out of there, and the pets are pulling me all over the place while I'm trying to pay. It's just crazy, I'm barely keeping control, and then they are handing me a bunch of medicine and stuff - no bag. Ugh! I'm glad there weren't other dogs in there at the time. I finally get them outside and back in the car, and start heading home, and they are great in the back, quietly laying down. Wait, why is Wolfie so calm? Barf! That's why, he had to vommit! Awesome!
So that was our visit to the vet. They did great really, i was just frazzled being by myself. They are both puppies, so I don't really expect much from them, and they are just the sweatest, most friendly, best dogs in the world (and there's no convincing me otherwise, so don't even try)! By the way, they were both happy and healthy. Woflie weighs 54 lbs, Winnie is 20 lbs. Wolfie got some ointment for his eye, and they both got some heart worm treatment.
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