Free at last!

The OKAP 2008 (ophthalmology inservice exam) is over and life is suddenly sweeter. Directly after, we headed to !Coma Rico! for some takeout pupusas and tamales and then went to Duke Gardens to hang out in the shade, eat and relax. There were a whole new crop of flowers in bloom from when we were there a few weeks earlier. Becket at Gretchen caught caterpillars and climbed the trees while Micah crawled around on the grass.


Strawberries are also in season, so we headed to Waller Family Farm for some "agritourism" which included picking 6 pounds of strawberries and trying to keep our kids from smashing six more.


We ended the day with the yearly elder's quorum barbecue at Homestead Park, where we talked a bunch of Hispanic kids into acting like Dora and Diego characters so Becket could pretend he was Swiper the fox and steal things from them. They didn't have anything valuable, unfortunately, but they did chatter in Spanish, which made him laugh.

"A Mormon View"

Our sister-in-law, Cassandra (Handley) Bullock, works for Vanity Fair Magazine and wrote this short article which appears on their site. She apparently gets a lot of bizarre questions related to her religion and wanted to openly dispel some myths.

Busy week ahead

We have a busy week ahead of us, then hopefully some calm. Micki will be watching the 4 month old daughter of some of our friends, whilst I study for my ophthalmology inservice exam. We are looking forward to getting past the test so we can enjoy the nice spring weather. We have had a lot of rain so far this month and our lawn is as green as it has ever been. Hopefully it will continue and we'll avoid another drought.

I've had an interesting experience at work these past few weeks. I saw a patient urgently in the ER a few weeks ago who presented with sudden loss of vision a few days prior in one eye. There was no clear reason for it, but I was suspicious of a rare hereditary disorder that causes loss of vision in one eye, followed a few weeks later by vision loss in the other eye. The patient was unaware of any family history, until the next day when the patient contacted me stating there were 5 people in the extended family with this hereditary disorder that they hadn't been aware of. Now, the patient, who has several young children and a successful career, knows there are just a few days left until they will be profoundly visually impaired. This patient has been calling and emailing me frequently relating various research studies and possible treatments they have found, all of which have never been shown to work in other patients, asking my opinion. All I can do is try and be empathetic, but I have to be realistic and let the patient know it is highly unlikely anything will save their vision. The whole experience has made me very grateful for the good health I have. It has also made me wonder what things I would want to see in the last few days, hours and minutes before I didn't see anything in this world again.

Vegetables

In preschool we are learning about items around us that start with the letter "V." Vegetables was one of the many things we had mentioned so I decided to ask each child their favorite vegetable. Peas, carrots......when I got to Gretchen I asked, "What is your favorite vegetable?" Her response, "Chocolate!" (heavy on the exclamation). The other preschoolers let out a scream of a laugh. I think I shall have chocolate be my vegetable too.