NYC, a big anniversary, and the USMLE

Hello all!  I am such a terrible blogger since med school (especially second year!) started, but for friends and family who are still faithful readers of my rare posts, here are some new things going on in the Baur household:

1.  I finished my second year of medical school! Woohoo! I am officially done with my pre-clinical years of medical school.  Which leads to....

2.  A wonderful trip to NYC with my cute mother to celebrate the end of med school classes! We went to see Wicked, explored the Met, and had all other sorts of adventures...it was a wonderful break, post-class and pre-boards.  Which leads to...

3.  I took the first of three steps of of the United States Medical Licensing Examination last week!  After a month of nothing but studying, it felt great to put this giant, important test behind me!  It will be a few weeks before I get the score that could determine what field and what program I am competitive to do a residency program in, but I am proud of the work I put in...now only time will tell! Which leads to...

4.  The day after my board exam, Mikey and I celebrated our FIFTH wedding anniversary with a trip to Myrtle Beach for a few days.  It was great to get away to spend some time, just the two of us.  I must say, I really love that man :) And finally....

5.  I just had the first day of orientation for my clinical years of medical school! Next Monday is my first official day in clinic as part of a patient care team! I cannot believe that I have finally gotten to this point in my medical education, but I am beyond excited (and slightly terrified) of starting this new adventure!

a day in the OR

This week, I spent about 10 hours shadowing one of the amazing doctors from MUSC.  He is an orthopedic oncologist, which is a very unique and rare specialty.  Dr. L specializes in bone tumors, but he works on general orthopedic cases as well.  I chose to shadow him in order to get more experience in another interesting focus of surgery: orthopedics!

I spent 2 hours in the clinic with him and his team on Monday, learning about how they deal with patients and what type of cases they work.  Then, I showed up at the hospital at 6 am on Wednesday to attend the Orthopedics M&M (Morbidity and Mortality) conference, which is where the residents discuss with their attending physicians things that went wrong in various cases and what to do differently next time.  After that, we headed to the OR! I got to observe two surgeries, which took about 6 hours total.

Here are two videos from youtube (preceded by explanation of what the surgery entails) showing surgeries similar to what I observed:

(ps I know a lot of people will find these too graphic, but for those who aren't squeamish about surgeries, these surgeries are super cool!)

1.  Total Hip Replacement (this video is of an anterior approach, and we did a posterior approach...but same idea!)

• Cut through the skin, fascia, fat, and muscles to get down to the joint capsule, which is opened.
• Dislocate the hip and remove the head of the femur (which is the problem...often, it is arthritic)
• Ream (with a thing that looks like a circular cheese grater) into the acetabulum (aka the hip bone, where it articulates with the femur) until you hit bleeding bone (which will help the bone grow into the implant)
• Place an acetabulum prosthetic and plastic liner
• Ream (aka drill) into the femur with increasingly large reamers and then fit the hole in the bone with the correctly sized broach (which is a piece of metal that is the same shape as the prosthetic)
• Place the prosthetic into the femur (this part is called the "stem")
• Then add a false neck and the real femur head prosthetic
• Relocate the hip and take an X-ray to check leg length (want it the same as the other leg!)
• Dislocate the hip, attach the real neck and femur head prosthetics to the prosthetic stem
• Relocate the hip
• Sew the patient up!

2.  Tibial Nail

• Make incisions over the knee, to the side of the knee (slightly lower than other incision), and to the side of the ankle
• Disarticulate the tibia from the femur (aka pop your lower leg bone out of the knee)
• Place a guide pin to make sure you are going through the center of the bone as you ream down (as was done in the hip replacement)
• Hammer nail into place
• Screw nails at side of knee and side of ankle incisions (to ensure stability)
• Place tibia back in place
• Sew the patient up!

TOO COOL!  These surgeries make such a difference in the patients' lives...decreasing pain, increasing mobility and quality of life! Amazing.

weary

That is what I am right now. weary.

With all that life is throwing my way, there are days that I wake up and just feel so weary, so worn-out and worn-down.

When the dogs wake me up early again...
When school is hanging a long list of to-dos over my head...
When the laundry isn't done and the sink is full of dirty dishes and half of the surfaces in our house are covered with junk that has accumulated over the past week...
When my back hurts and my eyes want to close and my mind can't rest...

I am weary.

And I know I am so blessed.  And while that sometimes helps, other times it just makes me more weary...because I don't always feel like life is this huge blessing, but am I allowed to get frustrated with life when I have so much more than so many others? Weary.

This is one of those mornings...a morning when nothing can fully quiet my spirit and all I can do is call on God to help my unbelief.  To give me grace when I am graceless, peace when I am in turmoil, and hope when I am hopeless.

I don't deserve it.  I don't even fully believe it is going to happen.  But He does.  He knows.  He's in control.  And so I say it with my words and in my mind, and I hope that the Truth of His love and rest will somehow penetrate through my overwhelming weariness and into my tired soul.

ISAIAH 40:

28Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary,

and his understanding no one can fathom.

29He gives strength to the weary

and increases the power of the weak.

30Even youths grow tired and weary,

and young men stumble and fall;

31but those who hope in the Lord

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

give the world a reason to dance

Just wanted to share this little pep talk with whoever needs a little encouragement today.

Take the road to awesome!

a new addition

Meet Duchess

We weren't planning on expanding our little family just yet, but when we heard about the sweet girl's story, we couldn't resist the opportunity to have her as a part of our family!  This beautiful dog was abandoned at a rental property, where she had likely been mistreated and neglected for most of her life. She is underweight, has heartworms and an ear infection, and had never had a rabies shot before this week when Mikey took her to the vet.  Other than that, however, she is in incredibly good health, and she is probably the sweetest, most gentle dog I have ever met.  We are so glad to have her as the newest member of our clan!

Me with all three of the dogs :)

Because of Duchess's separation anxiety, we try to leave her out of the crate unless we are gone from the house, which means she has been sleeping in our bed with us.  And so as to not be unfair to Oliver and Berkeley, all five of us have been sharing the bed every night for the past week! At least we have a king-sized bed :)

We are getting Duchess treatment for her heart worms, fixing that ear infection, and feeding her regularly (of course!) to get her weight up to normal...and most importantly, we are loving on her like crazy! She deserves a lot of TLC after all that she has been through!

a new season

I have been the most slack blogger imaginable, but as med school is kicking my tail and taking up all of my time, I just haven't thought to sit down and write out how wonderful, crazy, and fast-paced life has been over the past six months or so!

As I type this, I am on a fifteen minute break between two lectures, one on genetic causes of cardiopulmonary disease and the second on non-pharmacologic cardiac interventions. And I have to say, I am loving it all.

Ok...the lecture started, and I had to run...but I am back now! Break #2 :)

Here are some updates on what is going on in the Baur household:

Mikey is changing jobs (but not careers!)
My wonderful and talented husband had his last day at Northwood Assembly on Christmas Eve.  We are both stepping out into the unknown to plant a church in the North Charleston area inside the I-526 loop with some friends.  AJ Rankin was a youth pastor at Northwood and left about six months ago to begin work on The Hive Church.  Over those six months, Mikey and I prayed about where God wanted us to be, and it became clear that we were meant to join AJ and his wife Alison in planting the Hive Church.  Here is our website, if you are interested in seeing what we are all about!

We are both extremely excited about the path our new church is taking as we start to set up missional communities, groups of people coming together to encourage one another, talk about how we can make an impact for Christ in our city, and just live life together.  We are in the process of raising funding for the church, and services will start in August or September.

In the mean time, Mikey is in search of a job to pay the bills.  He is very involved in meetings and such for the Hive Church, so he needs something with sufficiently flexible hours.  Please pray with us that he finds something quickly that will meet our family's needs.  We are extremely blessed to have loan money to depend on until then.

I started taking dance classes again.
Most of you know that I danced ballet for 10 years, starting from when I was 8.  I absolutely loved it and spent most/all of my "free" time in class, rehearsal, or stretching on my living room floor.  However, half-way through my senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with Iliotibial Band Syndrome (IT band syndrome), which means that the tissue stretching from my hip to my knee got really tight and was causing significant knee and hip pain, exacerbated by dancing.  I did 6 months of physical therapy, but dancing was still difficult, as it would cause a flare up of knee pain.  So with marriage and school soon taking up most of my time, I ended up taking about 5 years off of dance, the whole time desperately missing it.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend mentioned a studio really close to MUSC that has dance classes for adults, and I checked it out.  I am now officially registered for two classes a week.  I am not pushing myself to do ballet, although I would love to, because it is harder on my knees, but I am so happy to be taking a modern and a contemporary class.  As cheesy as it sounds, taking a couple of dance classes a week makes me feel like I am finally myself again.  I have missed this artistic side of my life so much, and I feel incredibly blessed to be able to jump back in!

I am 5 months away from the most important test I will ever take.
In mid-June, I will be taking Step 1 of the USMLE.  This is the first part of a board exam to become a doctor.  In May, I will have finished my two years of classes in medical school. I will have about a month of studying devoted solely to reviewing the material that has been covered over the past two years, and then, the test.  It is a day long exam, which I have grown accustomed to in med school at MUSC, but the outcome of this test could determine the course of the rest of my life.  No biggie.  Basically, you get one shot to take the test.  As long as you pass, you are stuck with whatever score you earn.  If you fail, you can retake it.  The score is the way that residency programs weed out people for the interview process.  Certain specialties and certain programs will only look at people with certain Step 1 board scores.  As I am hoping to enter into a surgical residency (at least that is the plan at this point), I need a moderately competitive score to get into a program.  At least I am not shooting for orthopedics, dermatology, or ENT! :) So fingers crossed...the studying has already begun!

In summary...
Life is insane right now...with changing jobs, tons of schoolwork, and a little extra time devoted to one of my greatest passions (besides medicine, of course!).  But it is also absolutely wonderful.  I cannot complain at all. Mikey and I are both working towards jobs we love and about which we are extremely passionate! We have two adorable dogs to love on as we are waiting for the right time to start expanding our family.  We have amazing families that support us (and feed us often! Thank you!) And we have wonderful friends who are patient with our hectic schedules and always there when we need them.

We are blessed and so thankful for all we've been given.