Knucklehead!

For those of you not on Facebook, here are the pix of Petey's stitches that he got last night. He was goofing around on his bud's backyard ice rink without a helmet or skates and ended up with 6 stitches. It's turning a lovely shade of purple today.

Bragging rights.

Petey's team, Chicago Mission, played in the Silver Sticks tourney this past weekend. They beat the #1 US team, St. Louis Jr Blues, in the quarter finals (giving them their only loss in 55 games!). Then they beat the #3 team in Ontario, Mississauga Rebels, in the semis. The championship game was against the Toronto Marlboros who are not only ranked #1 in Ontario, but also #1 in North America. Unfortunately they lost 1-3, but they played a solid game, kept Toronto's guard up and kept the score close against the best team in the continent. Of course they brought home runner-up hardware. Here is the link for the current US national rankings.

Official grades .....

.... are in. I ended up with 2 A's and 3 B's for a GPA of 3.4. I was shy of my goal of a 3.5, but my grades were respectable and worth posting.

New Nanny!

We just hired a new nanny today and his name is Christoph. Yes he's a "he". We're all very excited and feel quite confident that he is a great match for our family!

Give me 30 lashes

with a wet noodle for being such a slacker regarding my blog. Where do I start? How about a few bullet points:

~ My semester ended pretty well. My official grades aren't out yet but it looks like I earned a 3.3 GPA. Respectable but disappointing, especially because I missed an A in two classes by only 2 points!

~ After the last final the entire class (well, almost everybody) piled onto two rented trolleys and bar hopped throughout the city. Great fun was had by all, at least until the point when I left to catch the last train out of the city during the ice storm.

~ We fired another nanny. This time because she obviously had an undisclosed medical condition where she was fainting/passing out and we couldn't trust her to drive the kids around. Not to mention she had slept through the time to pick up Ros & John from school several times. We're in the process of finding our next (and hopefully last) nanny. It will be so nice when we can find someone who can become a part of the family.

~ Mitchell was home for the holidays and so was Jim so we had a nice relaxing time, despite the frozen pipes and mouse invasion.

~ Jim is taking Mitch back up to school as I write this because he leaves for a 6 day trip on Sunday. This will be the 3rd month in a row that he barely flew, that is until his days off. The company has the right to do that when you fly international but it's usually a rare occurrence. It's now happened more in 3 months than it has in his entire 13 years at United.

~ My big bro' et al are coming into town on New Years Eve so we can watch the Winter Classic together on t.v. (Red Wings vs Blackhawks on an outdoor rink at Wrigley Field). We tried to get tickets but to no avail. So I'll make wings and other good munchies and we'll make an afternoon of it in our warm living room. Unfortunately Jim will now miss it.

~ Next semester starts on Jan 5th. I have 24 credit hours and 35 contact hours. My classes include:
Physiology II
Histology II
Anatomy II
Biochemistry
Pathology
Comprehensive Care (radiology, perio, etc.)
Restorative Dentistry
Occlusion

~ I go on active duty for the Army Nat'l Guard on Jan 1st as the student recruiter.

I'll try to do a better job keeping this up to date, but if you really miss me you can visit my facebook page.

8 weeks closer ...

to graduation. Save the date, May 10th 2012. I survived a rough week of tests along with firing our nanny and trying to find a new one on short notice. I won't bore anyone with the school details because I'm too tired to relive them right now. I'm just happy to be able to report that I'm still doing well enough to be above the class average, and that's harder to do than it sounds.

That's a fact Jack!

OK, people are getting wind of my new job that is pending, so it's time to make the public announcement ..... I'm joining the IL Army National Guard. Yes, Brian, I'm joining the Dark Side and going Green, but I'll still bleed Navy blue. So, assuming everything passes the Commissioning Board's approval in November, here's the deal:

~ I sign an 8 year commitment in the reserves which begins counting down the day I sign, and after 12 months in the Guard, they will pay for school. So that will cover 2.5 years of tuition.

~ On top of that, they're hiring me as a student recruiter to get other students to sign on. I'll get full time active duty pay while only working one weekend a month (15 minutes from my home). And since it's in their best interest for me to graduate, most of my time drilling will be spent studying with lots of dentists around to help with any questions that I might have.

~ I will take a reduction in rank from O-5, but that happens any time you switch from an "unrestricted line" commission to a "corps" commission or vice versa, even within the same branch of service. I'll get paid as an O-3 over 20 years or an O-4 over 20 years while going to school. The board will have to decide which rank based on my prior service. I'm being told that it will probably be as an O-4 over 20, but I'm willing to go down two ranks to O-3 because active duty pay as an O-3 with 20 years of service is a hell of a lot more money than no paycheck!

~Since I hit 20 years in the Nav this Nov, when I do retire it'll be as an O-5, at a minimum, higher if I make O-6 during my time in the Guard.

~ I can't be deployed while in dental school, during a post-doc speciality program or during a residency. So, theoretically, my commitment could be up before I ever have to deploy. They have a written instruction that Dentists can't be deployed for more than 90 days at a time in theater, and then only every few years. So, as long as I join a group practice instead of opening a solo office, deployment shouldn't be an issue because I'll have partners to cover my patients.

~ Plus, if UAL should go completely belly up, my family will have 100% medical coverage! (Jim just got the "bump" down to a lower paid aircraft, thank you economy.)

Kind of hard to pass up. My motto used to be, "It's not just a job, it's a job on a big grey boat". Once we get all the documentation complete and get my commission switched over, my motto will be, "Not just paid, Army paid".





Army Training, Sir

Week 4 review is delayed ....

I finally took pix at school as promised previously, however, you'll just have to wait a bit longer to see them. I caught the nasty cold that everyone at school has been passing around. So, it's a shot of NyQuil and beddy-bye time for me.

Week 3 in review:

I'm 3 weeks closer to being a dentist, yeah!

~My physiology test went well, but we don't have our grades yet.

~I earned the high score in the class on my first wax-up, a 9.5 out of 10, at least that's what my instructor told me. I may have gotten an even higher grade but the instructor said, "We can't give out perfect scores". I'll take the almost perfect.

~We practiced mirror skills on our typodonts that magnetically attach to a head in the sim lab. My patient, Mr. Man E. Kin, was quite accommodating. This Monday we get to practice our mirror skills on each other. I have a funny feeling that my classmate won't be able to open as wide as Mr. Kin, nor will his cheeks stretch as far!

~Our other new found skill is mixing alginate. The technique is amazingly similar to mixing colored frosting when cake decorating. I knew that talent would come in handy some day, besides on my kid's b-days! We mixed a batch of alginate, took an impression of our finger, then poured a stone cast of our finger. We all felt pretty silly walking around the lab with our finger in a dixie cup waiting for the alginate to set, but we had to do this as a dry run before we take impressions of each others' mouths. That happens in a week or two.

~Anatomy lab has rapidly turned into a grind. It's still interesting, but none of us can wait until we get done with the torso and get to move on to the head. Maybe we won't come home smelling like "dead guy" as badly then. FYI, did you know that digging for lymph nodes in axillary fat is very parallel to isolating pumpkin seeds in pumpkin guts? I'll never look at my jack-o-lanterns the same again.

~This Thursday I have a paper due and another test, this time in BHD class (Biology of the Human Dentition). We'll be shown individual real teeth and have to i.d. them by their morphology. Should be fun.

And he's not even a teenager yet ......!!!!

But he will be grounded until he's out of his teenage years. Peter was going to stay after school and hang with some buddies. No problem. However, he conveniently left his cell phone at home. Fast forward a few hours, it's dark, it's raining and we don't know where he is. He hasn't called and his friend, Jake, isn't answering his cell or home phone. We get a hold of Jake's Dad, Tim, who just happens to be in Savannah GA visiting with his oldest daughter at college. Tim tried calling home and couldn't get through to any of the family. Enter the weird twist, all of Pete's shoes are at home and accounted for, but his backpack's not here, so we're pretty sure that he didn't sneak into the house while Jim, Ros & John were picking me up from an early train. Now we're really worried. Awful thoughts run through your head and it takes all your energy not to freak out but instead stay calm and think. So, we called the police. They came and took all his information, including recent pictures (these posted ones), his SSN and any and all identifying body markings. Right as the cops were leaving to go enter Peter's info into the data base so all the other cops could be on the lookout for him, he called home.

Turns out that he was at Ryan's and then Jake's and it never crossed his tiny pre-pubescent mind to call and update us on his location. Which wouldn't have been nearly as big of a deal if we knew more people here in town. And regarding the shoe mystery, he was wearing his old lawn mowing tennis shoes from the basement. So if you ever want to experience the most polar opposite and conflicting emotions all at once, just become a parent who's child walks in the door after you think they were missing. I, for one, don't recommend it.

And, yes I know, next time something like this happens there will probably be girls involved.

Week 2 in review ...

Nothing too eventful to report. We turned in our first graded tooth wax-up and had a quiz, neither of which have been returned to us with a grade yet. We dissected our cadaver's spinal column, once again it was very amazing. We opened the posterior side of the vertebrae with a chisel and mallet, then removed the dura mater to expose the actual spinal cord. Then we cut out a section to view the gray and white matter.

This week we dissect the chest and arm and all the neurovascular bundles that go along with it. We have a physiology test on Thursday, which should be fairly straight-forward, but we also have two projects due on the same day. Bring it on.

I'll post some b-day pix later this week when I need a study break. I'm off to bed, it's going to be a long week.

The week in review:

1. The tough "ology" classes have been covering material that is a review for most of us in the class. That will change soon, I'm sure. The first anatomy lab was awesome. I got to make the first incision on our cadaver, a mid-line thoracic cut along with two transverse cuts so we could retract the skin. What a rush!

2. We began our labs for the "Biology of the Human Dentition" (BHD) module of our comprehensive care course. This takes place in the "wet lab" and we work on a typodont (it's a set of fake teeth that can be taken in and out of the fake gums). We take out an assigned tooth, replace it with another that simulates a tooth that is already prepared for restoration and then we restore it with wax. This helps us learn tooth anatomy and structure, instrument uses, hand-eye coordination, etc. My first wax-up was on an incisor and it turned out okay. Fortunately this week our wax-ups weren't graded. I went into lab this afternoon for some practice and by the time I had restored that same tooth again I was really getting the hang of it. In fact, when one of my instructors saw it he said, "Oooh, that looks good, and your incisal edge is really nice". Woo-hoo!

3. My Sister-in-law, Janiene, purchased all my books for me for my first semester of school. How generous is that??!! Thanks Janiene!!

4. John lost his second tooth, this time his left mandibular incisor. That's two lost in one week, I hope this rate slows down because the tooth faery is getting tight on cash.

I'll try to take some pix at school so you can see what my life looks like there.

The Tooth Faery is coming!

Today in the car John lost his first tooth. The look on his face was priceless! I tried to capture it on my phone, but it's a bit blurry. The excitement in his eyes was amazing as he giggled about how fun it was to stick his tongue in the space and how he couldn't stop himself.


Moments after the big event.


This is soooo exciting!


I'm a big kid now!

And the journey begins ...

Today the UIC-COD Class of 2012 completed orientation week. It was actually really enjoyable. I was afraid it would be a bunch of really boring power point presentations, which of course there were a couple of those, but all in all, it was really well done. I couldn't have asked to spend my next 4 years with a better group of people!


The first day of school, I'm officially a D1!
(Note the lovely leg brace.)


Our orientation cruise. I love dentistry already!


Navy Pier from the "Mystic Blue".

Good news, sorta .....

I went to the orthopedic surgeon today. The good news is that my meniscus is not torn, so no surgery is needed! The diagnosis is a partially torn medial collateral ligament (MCL), a severe bone bruise and a strained patellar tendon. The bad news is that I could be in this lovely hinged leg immobilizer for up to 12 weeks. Ugh. Keep your fingers crossed that I'll heal faster than that.