U.F.O.

My brother and I were sitting out on the porch a few moments ago, pontificating- as is the custom of Reeses- when we saw a UFO. I looked up in the sky, and this large, shiny, grayish crescent went gliding over our house. Now, tonight was partly cloudy, and the wind was blowing the clouds west pretty quickly. This crescent was the same color as the clouds, but it was going north. It had no lights, and made no sound, and it was big. It was roughly the same size as the moon in the sky. A little later a plane flew over, and it was really high, but we could still see its lights and hear its engines. Not so with this UFO. We watched go through a few couds, and then we lost sight of it over some trees. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.

Fierce

A quick video showing our dear Adelaide training for the Octagon last week. She's practicing with a life-size dummy of Jack Daniels.



Note the sweet spin move at the beginning. It's like she was born a ninja.

The Grand Adventure

On Saturday, October 4th, at five in the morning, Laura and I embarked upon our Grand Adventure to get our puppy, Adelaide. Taking only a lunchbox, a travel mug of coffee, and a cd of Peruvian mountain flutes, we drove my parents' CRV the seven and a half hours to Conroe, Texas. On the way, we passed the statue of Sam Houston, and paid our respects.
When we finally get there, we find our dear little Adelaide dominating her two stockier brothers. It turns out that she is the alpha dog in the pack. She's also the only one with her coloring (the other three were white with brown spots). She took right to us, letting us hold her and following us around. In the past week, we've realized this is not her usual reaction to strangers. Anyway, after an hour of talking with the breeder, loading her crate and a fifty pound bag of dog food (That's a whole lot of dog food, by the way- and it's only supposed to last her a month and a half), we started the trip back home. On the way, we passed the statur of Sam Houston, and again paid our respects.
Seven hours later, we get to Joe's house, where Adelaide promptly peed on his yard because he never answers his phone. Along the way Adelaide never once whined, cried, peed or threw up. It was a huge success. We let her run around at the Ibanezes' for a while, and then she ate Keith Fischborn's car, because it is so tiny. Then, even though I'd long since lost all feeling in my butt, we got back in the car and headed for Tulsa.
We finally arrived home at 11:30 at night. Our arduous journey made me realize a few things about life. First, fifteen hours is way, way too long to spend driving a car. Second, one of the greatest things about living in Tulsa is that when you past that last QuikTrip in Dallas, you don't panic, because you know that you live just down the street from one. And finally, our dog is freaking awesome.
Here's a picture of her, expect more soon:

My life these days

So, it's been a while since I blogged. I figured I'd give a quick update.
First, I finished my rotation in Family Medicine (Primary Care), and it was the best time of my medical school adventure. Usually, when I have a job, or I'm in class, or I'm hanging out with Zach Herbert, all I really do is watch the clock and endure until I get to go home. Not so with Family Medicine. I found myself wanting to stay even after they told me I could go home. Now, nothing's official, but if I go with this, it will mean a few things:
1) I'll probably enjoy my life, and have more free time
2) I'll definitely never make as much as Zach
I still have something like eight more rotations to go, however, so who knows what I'll actually end up sticking with.
I've also got a few quick stories:
-A while back I saw a guy who would describe himself as a "baller." He'd had a stroke which paralyzed the right side of his body, but was making huge strides in recovering function. This guy went from bed ridden to walking and performing daily functions in less than 18 months. That's pretty rare. Despite all that, this hardcore guy breaks down and starts bawling in the room because he can't afford to keep his gas on, and he really wants to cook for his family. Seriously, bawling.
-I met a guy who can't do simple things like stand up from sitting, or sit from standing, because he gets stuck trying to remember everything he did and said the day before. He can't make himself move until he's sure he has it perfect, which means he may sit in a chair for 4 hours straight, just trying to get up.
-On my first day in my Family Medicine rotation, a girl in her early 20's came in for a pelvic exam. My resident and I and a nurse are in this room, and the resident begins the exam, and then, with the speculum still opened in this girl, the resident stands up and says, "I need my attending to look at this also," and walks out of the room. He is gone for five minutes. No kidding- I timed it. Five minutes in the most excruciatingly awkward situation in the world, and you start timing it because the only thing you look at is the clock. After five minutes, he comes back in, and explains that his atending is seeing another patient right now. "Don't worry," he says, "this doesn't take long. It'll just be another five or ten minutes." I'm not even making this up. After another seven and a half minutes of staring at the clock in dead silence, he finally returns with the attending. How there is not a malpractice suit pending, I have no idea.
Welp, I'll end with that. I'm on Psychiatry rotation right now, which means I show up at 7:30, talk to crazy people, and then leave at 11. Yeah, before noon. It's awesome, except that I'm not a big fan of Psych.

My next post, which should be soon, will tell of the grand adventure that was getting our new puppy.

Nieces and puppies- both adorable

So, first of all, I get a voicemail tonight, and when I check it, it's my niecesaying (semi-coherently) "Uncle Josh!" and then laughing. So I'm pretty pumped, because she's been having trouble saying my name, and it was fairly clear this time. I just figured that my brother put her up to this message to showcase this profound developmental milestone. When I call back, my brother tells me that in fact my niece took his phone when he wasn't looking, and then by chance speed dialed my number. When she heard my voicemail message, she -wait for it- recognized my voice, and then left that message. Yeah, my 18 month old niece just left me a voicemail.
Second, we got another picture of our dog, who still doesn't have a name. We still have 3 weeks to work on that. Also, we just found out she's hurricane proof.
And finally, a quick medical story. I'm seeing a patient, when her gigantic husband starts talking to me about how it's acceptable to eat animals that you run over. He tells a story about how he ran over a deer's legs. Not one to waste, he turns around, pulls up to the deer, and being gun-less but resourceful, cracks the deers head open with a pipe he has in the trunk. The story ends with the deer waking up in the trunk, running its antlers through the top, and the guy shooting it through the trunk with a rifle. Anyway, after all this, as I'm leaving the room, he asks me if I want to go bear hunting with him. I of course say yes, and then he tells me that we can't go with guns. I say, "Oh man, I couldn't hit anything with a bow." He replies, in all seriousness, "Naw, we won't use those. We're goin with swords."

Yeah, swords.

Peer pressure

Today Laura and I finally gave in to the peer pressure we've been fighting off for over two years, and we put a deposit down for a dog. Yes, I know, we have now joined the ranks of young married couples who have dogs instead of babies. Anyway, we are getting an Akita, which means two things: 1) our dog will be way bigger than your dog, and 2) our dog will be bigger than Laura. We are getting a girl, and she was born on July 30th. We'll road trip down into Texas to get her sometime around October 1st. So until then we're going to be busy trying to figure out a name, buying all the eight billion things that a puppy needs, starting to read puppy training books, and periodically posting pictures of her. Here's the first, which was taken yesterday:
In other news, we finally put up pictures of our house on Facebook. Also, Laura and I are flying to Portland in two weeks, and miraculously, in the 39 hours we will be there, an REI used gear sale will be happening.

I finally found it.

Yesterday I found the worst smell man has ever experienced. A rather large guy came in with a ridiculous mass protruding from his abdomen. Imagine if somebody put a basketball on top of your belly, and that's what this looked like. Anyway, it turns out that this was not a basketball, but a giant hernia. Now, the thing with normal hernias that is that sometimes a small portion of small intestine can poke out into them. This is worrisome because the intestines can get their circulation cut off that way, and then they die. Well, this guy had pretty much his ENTIRE small intestine poke out, and guess what- its circulation got cut off. So when they open this guy up in the operating room, they find this guy's intestines rotting. Yeah, you read that right. So imagine the smell of someone's entire small bowel rotting. Now, add to that the smell of all the feces in this small intestine. And we're not talking the semi-solid crap that we all know and love, this straight up diarrhea-style crap, and it's everywhere. To give you an idea about the magnitude of this smell, keep in mind that we are in a place where people routinely do surgery on limbs that have gangrene, and drain cysts full of puss, and no one really even flinches. I was in the room next to where they opened this guy up, and the nurses started putting vapor rub on our masks to try and block out the smell in our room just so we could finish our surgery. Then they went to the next room. By the end of this, the smell had cleared out an entire wing of operating rooms, and nurses were working in 15-20 minute shifts just to keep from puking. It was one of the most mind-blowingly horrific experiences of my entire life.

And then I went and got lunch.