Windmills

Have you ever wondered just how big those windmills are that you see off in the distance? Last week, I had the chance to get out and see some of them up close. I knew they were big but they are huge. It's impressive when you calculate the velocity of the blade tips. I think they are doing about 0.5 revolutions per second.

Here are some blades lying on their side.
The tower is two pieces stacked one on top of the other. This picture does not even show an entire piece.
You can see hundreds, if not thousands, of these windmill dotting the West Texas landscape. Just five years ago there was not one. I guess it is Texans doing their part to save the planet.

Christmas

I have been encouraged to update my blog. I guess since my last post quite a bit has happened. There were four or five more ophthalmology interviews and two or three more preliminary medicine interviews. My trip up to Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis was complicated by the ice storm; lots of white knuckle driving. I was also up in Seattle for an interview. My ophthalmology interviews are completed. I am so thankful to be done with the traveling. Planes, hotels, and shuttles get old really quick. I can't understand how someone would want to be a traveling businessman. Now it is time to go back over all the programs and rank them in order of where I would like to go. Any suggestions?

I have been doing a little bit of reading too. Someone gave my a pamphlet on rediscovering our 'brethren' heritage. It was an interesting read. Now I am working through a pamphlet called "The Origin of (so called) Open-Brethrenism." I am also hoping to read through a book about the history of the 'brethren'. I have been reading through Joshua and Judges. On my drive out to West Texas I was listening to a talk by Gordon Hayhoe entitled "True Fellowship." He took a look at Acts 2 and the story of Caleb and Othniel in Judges. I thought it was nice as that happened to be where I had just read.

Over the break, I took the chance to get outside and play some basketball with friends. It was nice to get some fresh air and exercise. Unfortunately a partially blocked shot resulted in a broken finger. No bagpiping, sports, etc for at least a month. Typing is incredible slow. I guess I will just continue to catch up on reading.

What Did I Do for Thanksgiving?

Earlier this week, I think we hit about 85F in Dallas. The weather has certainly changed though. On Thanksgiving Day we ended up getting about 5" of snow. It was snowing all day so we ended up spending most of the day inside finishing off pies from the day before. Today though I decided to take a few of my nephews and nieces out to build some snowmen. Rolling up some of the bigger snowballs was really a workout. The midsections also required some serious lifting.

Back for the Break

I am back out in West Texas for the break. It has been a busy few weeks with interviews. Last week, I drove to Little Rock, Arkansas and then to Jackson, Mississippi using the backroads. I was very impressed with the scenery in Arkansas and Louisiana. I was also able to spend some time at the historical sites in Vicksburg, Mississippi. If you are driving between Dallas and Jackson on I-20, it is worth a stop. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me so I don't have any pictures to show for the trip.

Today was our Thanksgiving celebration. It is was good to get some homecooked food. Right now I am about as full as the snake in the picture. I was not there when the photo was taken but I was told it was about 8 feet long and looked it it had just eaten a sizeable animal. Just looking at how large it is compared the door frame makes you want to take a step or two back.

Big Problem?

This was always an aspect of modern medicine that had disturbed me. You have to wonder how many half-siblings there are out there that are unaware of each other. How do people know if they are marrying their half-sibling?

Interviews

A lot of things have happened over the past few weeks. I had a great time in Kerrville at the Bible conference. Reading meetings focused on John 20 and Isaiah 53. A few friends from the Dallas area were able to make it which was nice.

This past weekend I was able to head out to Possum Kingdom for a couple days of camping with a group of Christian friends from school. The water was suprisingly warm for this time of year and the weather was superb. I also ate much better than I normally do. Getting out of the city for some ultimate frisbee, football, swimming and hiking reminded me of the need to pursue a more regular exercise schedule. I didn't have a camera, so I will have to wait until I get some pictures from my friends before I put them up.

Over the past two weeks I have had four interviews, two ophthalmology and two preliminary internal medicine. By the time January rolls around, I will have a lot of frequent flier miles and will be no stranger to hotels. I am very thankful I know people in many of the places I am interviewing. With all the traveling for interviews, it has made it quite difficult to spend as much time as I had hoped on anesthesiology. I am hoping to get in the OR tomorrow for a case or two. On Thursday and Friday I have two more interviews locally. Not having to fly, arrange tranportation and hotels will certainly be a big plus.

I have been reading an interesting book recently. I guess is more a collection of writings. The book, "The Mackintosh Treasury," has some great stuff. I have found several of the essays very though provoking. Maybe after some more reading I will be able to elaborate more. I also found some interesting writings by J.N. Darby.

No More Tests

Well, I guess it has been almost a month. USMLE Step 2 Clinical Skills seemed to go ok. I still think it is a cash grab by NBME or USMLE. The test alone costs about $1000. That probably generates some 15 million for whoever is organizing it. On top of that, you must travel to one of the five locations in the US that it is offered. I was fortunate enought to take it in Houston, so I didn't have to get a flight but I still had to drive four hours each way and get a hotel room in Houston.

Today, I took the USMLE Step 2 Clinical Knowledge, a 9 hour computerized exam. No matter how you do it, sitting in a chair and reading off the screen for 9 hours will make you crazy. I just about lost my mind in the first hour when they seated me next to someone who was taking a typing exam. Anyway, it is done with and I couldn't be more thrilled. As far as I know, that was my last exam of medical school. I still have a few more clinical rotations, but nothing too major.

The past three weeks, in addition to studying for this exam, I have been rotating in family practice. It has been a lot of fun. My preceptor is a great. His office is really like a military and war museum. There are newspaper clippings from WW2, cross sections of bombs, airplane props, and a multitude of other stuff to distract you. He is also an avid pilot. I am hoping to get up flying with him in the next few weeks. If things work out with scheduling, I think I will also get a chance to work on the sidelines of one of the local high school football games as one of the "team docs."

Next week starts the interview season. My first one is in Akron, Ohio. I am looking forward to it. By the end of January, I am going to have lots of frequent flier miles. Any of you other meds students started interviewing yet?

Waiting Game

I have finally submitted my ophthalmology application. I have applied to everywhere from Connecticut to Florida to California to Washington. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will hear about some interviews. Last night I finalized my application for my intern year, which may actually be in a different city than my ophthalmology residency.

The past week and a half has been spent on the Otorhinolaryngology service. There has been no shortage of interesting stuff to see. The residents and faculty have been great.

Well, this Friday I will take the Clinical Skills portion of my USMLE Step 2 Exam. I am not really looking forward to it, but as I read somewhere "this too shall pass as a kidney stone."

Trip to Canada

I actually forgot about my quick trip to Canada at the end of July and start of August. I ran up there during my month of radiology. It was good to visit old friends and see relatives. I water skied just enough to make myself incredibly sore. A round or two of golf proved that I didn't play enough. You know it is a bad game when you are counting strikes. It was also the first time in almost 13 years that I saw uncle Stan and aunt Barbara and certainly the first time to see one of my cousins. After another year of school in Dallas, it was nice to get up to the lake.

Back to Busy, Plastic Surgery

I can't even remember the last time I posted anything. There really is no excuse for the long delay. The past month was spent on a radiology rotation that was certainly the easiest month of my time here at school. Believe it or not, it was actually pretty interesting stuff. The kinds of things that can be picked up using the various imaging techniques with a trained eye is pretty amazing.

This past week has been spent on plastic surgery. I decided to split this month up and do two weeks of plastics and two weeks of ENT (ear, nose, and throat). The hours have been long. Usually I get there before 6am and stay until 8pm or so. There have certainly been some interesting cases. I have been very impressed with some of the facial reconstruction that the surgeons are capable of. This hospital sees a lot of trauma and they can take a banged up head, put 6-7 plates in it and things come together ok. And on top of that, they are usually able to hide most of the incisions Once again, I remind all readers to avoid motorcycles. I have seen several skin grafts too.

My ophthalmology application has come together. My personal statement is pretty much completed. I am just waiting for a letter of recommendation. I also need to finalize a list of programs and the application will be sent off.

Hard to Beat

It's hard to believe that a month of fourth year has already passed. I just finished my rotation in ophthalmology and it was great to finally have my weekends and evenings off. Coming off the Trauma and Emergency Surgery rotation, it was a welcome relief. There was finally some time to catch up with old friends and enjoy the outdoors. After third year, I had almost forgot what daylight looked like.

This weekend, I took the chance to drive out to West Texas. I guess it has been over three months since I have been out here. Anna, my youngest neice in Snyder didn't even recognize me. Weather permitting, there might be a chance to get up flying this weekend. It has been a while since I have been up. I guess it was one of those hobbies that has been neglected during medical school.

Last Friday, one of the ladies in my assembly gave me a DVD that had a 45 minute ABC (Australian) film peice about the "Exclusive Brethren" in New Zealand and Australia. From what I could tell it was about the group known as the "Taylorites." Interesting stuff. Over the past 10-15 years, I have met a good amount of various shades "open" and "closed" brethren. I don't know that I have ever run across any "exclusives" though. It is such a shame that there are so many small pockets of "brethren" across the continent that really don't have much to do with each other.

Well, the weather in Dallas has been unreasonably hot for the past few weeks so I thought I would throw in a picture of the snow.

Finally, a MS4

Well as you might have already been able to tell based on the frequency of my posting, surgery was a pretty busy rotation. I think that we were supposed to be on a 80hour workweek, but in reality it seemed like it was much closer to 90hours/week. That 90hours/week does not included studying either. Anyway, it is over with. Trauma was a very interesting two weeks. There was a huge range of stuff from gunshot wounds, stab wounds, motor vehicle collisions, motorcycle collisions, motor-pedestrian collisions, jet-ski swimmer collisions, to falling from several stories. Emergency general surgery was not that intesesting. We spent most of our time taking out gallbladders, appendix, and draining abscesses.

This past Saturday was truely the first day in about two months that I have been able to wake up after the sun was up, enjoy a regular breakfast and then decide what I wanted to do with a free day. In the end, a group of us college, post-college guys from the area assemblies met up for some ultimate frisbee and tennis. There were nine terribly out of shape people trying to move around the field. It didn't help that the temperature and humidity were both in the 90's.

Always Wear Your Seatbelt!

I had to chuckle when I looked at my blog today. It seems like it has been about a month since I have last given an update; not totally unexpected since I am on surgery. In fact, this afternoon I finished up my first 30 hour shift in one of the local level one trauma centers. The first eight hours was spent in lectures and studying, but a good portion of yesterday afternoon, evening, and early this morning were spent dealing with traumas. I am probably a little delusional at this point as I haven't slept in about 33 hours, but I wanted to write about my experience while it was still fresh on my mind. Only four days have past since I have been on one of the trauma services, but even in that short amount of time I have realized three very important things which I feel obligated to convey to you.

1) Always, and I mean always wear your seatbelt! I just grimace when I hear of an "unrestrained" driver or passenger. It seems that often times, it is connected with "ejected" driver or passenger. I don't understand why people don't buckle up. And, if you are the driver, don't start that car until people are belted in.

2) Never ever drive a motorcyle. Have you ever heard of a "fender-bender" on motorcycle? I didn't think so. I used to drive them when I was a kid, but it was always off road and at low speeds. I think 25-35% of our patients are the results of MCC or motorcycle collisions. Your bodies are not like Lego. You are more like Humpty Dumpty and the nursery rhyme should read something along these lines:

Humpty Dumpty rode on a motorcyle.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the trauma surgeons and all the medical students
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

3) Watch out for the other crazy drivers. You can't overstate the importance of defensive driving. Remember, there are just too many bad drivers out there.

Anyway, last night as I was moving between patients, I concluded that I wanted to have a big helmet for my ride home which would be made at 10mph under the speed limit. In fact, it seems reasonable for humans to have to wear helmets every time they leave the house and that clothing should come with built in airbags.

Well, on a little more positive note, I had a chance to get out the the Texas Scottish Festival and Highland Games in Arlington this past weekend. It was fun to seem some top notch bagpipers in action. I certainly have a long ways to go. I also attended Kevin and Cristy's graduation. Assuming all goes well, in about 360 days I will be walking across that stage to get my degree. By then, I will have need to have picked a specialty too. Any suggestions?

Much Needed Weekend

Pediatrics is over. I doubt I will end up doing pediatrics but it was an interesting rotation nonetheless. The childrens hospital was a fun place to work and the vast majority of the staff were great. For the brief switch weekend, I decided to head back out to West Texas. I figured that I better make it out there before surgery begins. A friend from the Lewisville assembly and one of their friends who comes to the Bible study also came out to West Texas. Both of them are from India and neither of them had really visited out west, so I think it was sort of an eye opener for them. I think they might have enjoyed the lake a bit more if they both knew how to swim. Visiting Lake Alan Henry on Saturday made me think more seriously about trying to get a residency in Lubbock. I will have to see how things pan out. It was fun to get a chance to see my nephews and neices too. They are fearless when it comes to the water. The pictures are of them hanging on to a trolly that zips out over a pond. It has about a 15-20 foot drop to the water.





Well surgery has finally arrived. The first two days haven't been too bad. It looks like most days I should get to the hospital by 4:15am and go home by 6-7pm. If I study for three hours a night, I should be able to get five hours of sleep. I think we get one day off a week. Next month, the schedule is a little tougher as we go on-call every third night. I have been told we get 24 hours in row off once a week.

Major Disappointment

The picture was taken over spring break, looking into one of the canyons or off the caprock near Lake Alan Henry in West Texas.

Well, it has been quite a while. I really wasn't anticipating how busy I would be on outpatient pediatrics, but I figured it was time for a little update. The actual hours for outpatient aren't that bad. I have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks pouring over my fourth year schedule. Every three days we are allowed to schedule one additional class, and it is on a first come first serve basis. Having a firm idea of what area of medicine I want to go into would make this process much easier. Ophthalmology, probably the top on my list at the moment is an early match specialty, which means rotations, applications, and interviews must be completed earlier. However, should I rotate in ophthalmology in July and realize I don't want to do it, then I am forced to revamp my entire schedule and pick up a new elective. After ophthalmology are internal medicine and family practice. Today I recieved my family practice grade, which turned out to be a major disappointment. I knew my test grade was not exceptional, but I thought I had performed well on my rotation and on my presentation. I checked my written evaluations from Tyler and I had done fine. I guess everyone else over the past three months at the various sites had as well. Anyway, because the school will only award a certain percent A, B+, B, and C, a 90% may turn out to be a B. In other words, you must score higher than 80% of your classmates to get an A, regardless of what grades you earn.

After surving four weeks of inpatient pediatrics without getting sick I thought I might just make it to the end but I was mistaken. One week into outpatient, I started getting a sore throat, then fever/chills, congestion, and cough. Two weeks later, I am only now starting to shake it. I sincerely hope it it gone by the time I start surgery in one week.

Kevin and Cristy's Wedding

Spring break has flown by. I feel like I could still use another week but I didn't work too hard during my time out in West Texas. The last day there, David and I hiked around a chunk of land by Lake Alan Henry and I think that was the most exercise I had while out there.

Today was Kevin and Cristy's wedding. All of us guys, six brothers (no Kevin), the brother-in-law, two cousins, and two nephews went out to SpeedZone this morning for some go-karting. It was my first experience go-karting with flurries, as the temperature hovered around freezing. Almost brings back memories of snowmobiliing up in Canada. This evening was the wedding and reception which went well. It was nice to catch up with some relatives that I haven't seen in a while.

Change of Pace

Its amazing. For the the past three days I have actually woken up without my three alarm clocks. Granted, it was not the usual 4am, but it was a welcome change. Today we wandered out to the pond. Kevin and Tyler did a couple fly-bys. It was also my first chance to see the huge wind farm that has been put up north east of town. I was keeping my eye open for rattle snakes, but didn't see any this time. The picture is actually from earlier in the year. Instead of worrying about getting shot like I would in Dallas, I had to watch out for rattle snakes. Kevin and I made it out the tennis courts for a set and then I played Jonathan a little one-on-one hoops. I can tell I have been in medical school for too long. Hopefully, tomorrow we'll get the chance to head out to the lake.

This evening Anthony and the kids were over for dinner at our place and somehow the conversation got around to hockey fights. I am not sure how. Anyway, Tyler made me aware of an interesting clip. If you are remotely interested in hockey, I would recommend checking it out.

Canada vs Russia in hockey

Spring Break

This post could actually be called free time, as I really don't have any pressing school obligations. The weekend was spent trying to catch up on all the activities that I haven't been able to to do for quite some time. I started a little early and got a bagpipe lesson in on Thursday night. After a weekend full of tennis, football, and frisbee, I am certainly feeling the deconditioning that has occuring over the past year. On Saturday, I also went to the third meeting of "Foundations of Faith" in Carrollton. It was good.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to spend a few days of spring break shadowing different physicians around Dallas. Yesterday, I worked with an oral maxillofacial surgeon. It was certainly a change from the crazy pace of Parkland and Childrens. We had mostly healthy patients getting dental implants, tooth extraction, and wisdom teeth pulled. Today, I met up with an ophthalmologist in the Dallas area. I watched a few cataract surgeries, a trabeculotomy, a shunt/reservoir placement for glaucoma. I also some some lasik eye surgery. There were a couple of other procedures involving cutting lasers and burning lasers, but I can't remember the names. The surgeries really are something else. I think the patients are awake for sugeries. The shunt and reservoir surgery looked the most complicated. I could barely see the sutures with my naked eye. Watching the surgeon tie knots was impressive. Cataract surgery was interesting too. They make a few cuts around the cornea, go in, cut a hole in the one cell thick capsule layer surrounding the lens, mash up the lens, extract it, and then stick in a new lens. Never once did I see a tremor in the doctor's hands. I was planning on observing and ear, nose and throat doctor tomorrow, but it couldn't be worked out with the hospital where he was going to be working.

"Free Time"

Another week has passed. I think I am finally getting a little better at pediatrics. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have had half as many patients. It is much easier to keep up with 2 general peds patients a day than 3-4 cardiac patients. Instead of getting to the hospital between 5-5:30am, I can get there at 6am and still finish seeing my patients without too much difficulty. Our attending was so nice as to give us one day off this weekend too. We were originally scheduled to work 12 days in a row, but we agreed to double up and see the other med student's patients on one weekend day. I worked today so I should have the day off tomorrow. That means I will be able to go to breaking of bread in the morning and then have the afternoon "free." True free time in medical school is really a rarity. In addition to the hospital work, we are supposed to keep up with all our own studying, develop presentations, and do patient writeups. In other words, you are free from hospital work to study some more.

I did take a few minutes off this afternoon though to work on my bagpiping. I figured the afternoon was the time of day when my neighbors would be least disturbed by my practicing. With my earplugs in to protect my hearing, the volume is still loud. Hopefully when I go to outpatient pediatrics, I will be able to learn a few more new songs for my neighbors. A few weeks ago, someone was complaining that my blog did not have any Dallas pictures on it, so today I finally erased some pictures from off the camera and will try to put up some photos from around here.

Rocket Fuel

Its nice to finally have a day off after working two weeks in a row. Friday was the last day of my rotation in pediatric cardiology. It started out early, as have most days for the past two weeks. I was up at 4am and at the hospital by 5:10am. By 6:45am, I had seen all my patients, written my notes, and by 7am I was ready to observe a 5-6 hour surgery. One of my patients had a congenital atrioventricular septal defect which was going to require surgical repair. I have never seen so much work go into preparing an operating room, and I can only imagine the cost of the equipment and the surgery. I watched them set up the equipment for almost an hour before word came that the surgery had been cancelled. Over the past two weeks I have seen a good chunk of pediatric cardiology. In first and second year we studied all sorts of cardiac defects and now I finally had a chance to see them. I know I saw tetralogy of fallot, transposition of the great arteries, atrial and ventricular septal defects, coarctation of the aorta, and patent ductus arteriosis just to name a few. Some of these kids have to be fed "rocket fuel." With the various heart defects, their circulatory systems are incredible inefficient and they require a huge amount of calories. Some of them were on 140-160kcal/kg/day diets via feeding tubes. If I remember correctly, 1kcal=1Calorie used on regular food labels. If there is a dietician out there they can recheck my work, but I think that would come out to about 68 Calories/lbs/day. In other words, for every pound you weigh, you must consume 68 Calories a day. Plug in your weight and you can figure out how many calories total you would need a day. Granted, I think infants need more calories for their weight, but these kids are requiring huge amounts of calories. Even on these diets, we aren't always able to get them to grow as needed. On top of all this, some of these kids have congestive heart failure and require fluid restricted diets so their lungs don't get too congested. It is a real challenge to pack enough fuel into such a limited volume feed. Afternoons were always fun. We would usually meet up some time after lunch to do "murmur rounds." We would get a chance to go around and see patients with different kinds of heart murmurs. We would all get a chance to listen, describe what we heard, and the go through the process with our attending physician of figuring out what the possible causes might be. It was amazing to see how a well trained ear could get a pretty good idea of what wall, valve, or vessel had the problem. If I learned anything else, it was that kids are incredibly resilient. These kids would go in for open heart surgery. The surgeons would crack open the sternum, go in and do some major repair and these kids would be going home a few days later. Their pain tolerence was also pretty amazing. Who knows if I would ever end up in pediatric cardiology, but it certainly was an interesting two weeks.

Changing Again

It just never ends. When you finally think you might have figured out one hospital, you get kicked on to the next one. Last month was spent in Tyler doing family practice. I wasn't too thrilled that the flu or whatever was going around, but I did get to see some interesting stuff. One morning was spent visiting with a WWII POW and he had many stories to tell. Before we left, he gave us all a copy of his journal that he kept while in a German POW camp. I think the most incredible thing on the rotation though was that one of my attendings was a fellow bagpiper, scuba diver, and pilot. Since medical school began a year and a half ago, flying and diving have been out of the picture. I picked up piping during second year and it has been a nice diversion since. Back to the rotation. My attendings and residents were a lot of fun to work with as most of them enjoyed teaching and they often let me see the patients first. I was also impressed with how many Christians were in the program there.

But, family practice is over with for now. I am on to pediatrics and for the next two weeks I will be on pediatric cardiology. Today was my first morning on inpatient and I was quite surprised to find that I was presenting my patients to a group of 15 people as opposed to 6. The first few days weeks in a new hospital are always intimidating. You don't know how to find your away around and you know nothing of the subject, in this case cardiology for kids. Anyway, I should learn a lot.

Mid-Rotation Report

Two pictures. One is in the jungle of Ecuador and the other is in the mountains surrounding a crator lake.




It is mid-rotation family practice and I am back in Dallas for the weekend. Unfortunately, we do not have reliable computer access at my current rotation site, so I have to come back to work on a powerpoint presentation. Given that I am in Dallas, I figured I would go ahead and get another bagpipe lesson. I think I am up to five songs on the bagpipes. The transition from the chanter to the pipes is actually pretty challenging.
Family pratice has been interesting. I knew I would see a lot of runny noses, but I didn't think it made up so much of their work. Maybe it is just because the flu is going around, but I bet 90% of the patients we are seeing are complaining of upper respiratory tract infections. Unfortunately, a ton of these patients get antibiotics. I hope there are a few drugs out there that still work when I need them.

Done with Neuro

It is nice to have neurology over and done with. I just wasn't to crazy about it. This year was the first year it was moved from a 4th year pass/fail to a 3rd year grade. The organization just was not on par with the rest of the year. I did get a good amount of exposure though; strokes, Parkinsons, Alzhiemers, Guillian-Barre, Miller-Fisher, Downs, meningitis, encephalitis, and tons of seizures. Reading about the different pathways in the nervous system was fun too. If I were to have to rank the rotations so far, it would probably be:

1) internal medicine- tough, but intereting and well organized
2) ob/gyn- chaos (especially if you don't know Spanish), but I guess that is how you have to learn it here
3) neurology- disorganized and most of time you are called in when things have gone south
4) psychiatry- well run rotation, but probably just not my thing

Still to come: family practice, pediatric, and surgery

Finishing a rotation is a great feeling, because that means you actually have the weekend off. 30 minutes this afternoon was spent running through a few practice tunes on the bagpipes. Fourteen months into it, I finally feel like I am making some progress. Who knows what my neighbors are thinking at this point, but I have to be prepared for my lesson tomorrow morning. A switch weekend also means you might get a chance to catch up with your classmates you haven't seen in a month, and there are always a few good stories to share. We get to see so many interesting things in the hospital and most of it is for the first time.

Week in Review

Work at the new hospital has been interesting. Children are certainly not just small adults. They say neurology is the double SS field for "strokes and siezures." It certainly has been true. The ventrans hospital inpatient was mostly strokes. The outpatient clinics had a bigger mix with some rarer conditions. The children's hopital has been predominatly siezures. There are a couple meningitis or neuropathy patients. There have been a few strokes in children or infants too. I guess I just didn't think they happened in this age group but they do.

Bible study tonight was on Acts 14, where we took at look at the second portion of Paul and Barnabas' first missionary trip. Not your typical modern two week mini-mission trip; run out of the first town or two and then stoned and left for dead. I thought it was interesting to look at two approaches used by the apostles when sharing the gospel. When speaking to groups in Antioch and Iconium which had a knowledge of scripture, they presented the gospel using Old Testament material. However, when they went to Lystra and spoke to predominantly Gentile's who lacked a knowledge of the Bible, they referred back to the more universal gospel that is presented in creation and mentioned in Romans 1:20. There is a lot of other interesting stuff in the chapter. Anyone have interesting thoughts on the passage? Maybe that will be the topic for the next entry.

For now, I should run. I have an early morning bagpipe lesson. Hopefully, I will have more than Amazing Grace learned and my lungs will hold up for more than half the lesson.

New Hospital

These are two pictures from my trip to Ecuador with Matt during first year. The mountain is Ilinizas and I can't remember if we were climbing up the north or south peak. I did eat the critter on the plate and there are some other pictures to prove it.


Tomorrow morning I will be starting pediatric neurology at a new hospital. I hadn't even spent two weeks at the last one. Third year medical school is like getting hired and fired every two weeks with three or four bosses looking over your shoulder at all times. Just when you think you might have one place figured out, you have to move on to the next one. Sometimes you wonder if you can find the new hospital in the morning. How long does it take to get there. Where are students allowed to park. Where is the rounding room. How do you contact your weekly boss. Where can you put your books. Where are the bathrooms. Where can you find food. Anyway, I guess it is all just part of the process.
The weekend was good. The assembly in Lewisville had a series of Bible meetings. It was mostly teaching with a little discussion afterwards. I won't go into all the details here. One of the questions that I was discussing afterwards with a law student was how to share the gospel with an atheist. Interesting stuff.

Neurology plus Matthew

It has only been one week and I would hate to pass judgement on a rotation so quickly, but I think it is fair enough to give neurology a 1 week evaluation. Maybe I am biased because I just came back from my Christmas break; who knows. Maybe it is because my first lecture was at 7:30am on a national holiday and and the slide projector did not work. Seriously, how much can you get from a neuroanatomy lecture at 7:30am when there aren't even any pictures to see. There are a few other things, but I don't know want to post them on the blog. Who knows who actually reads this thing. I will post an update on the rotation after it is over in four weeks.

One advantage to working at a hospital that requires a 25 minute commute is that there is time to listen to the Bible on CD. I have been going through Matthew. There are a couple of things that have struck me as I have heard it. Jesus is very harsh on the Pharisees. It seems they excelled at professing a knowledge of the scriptures, yet lacked an understanding and a practical application. Their hypocrisy is certainly laid bare in chapter 23. "Ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity" (vs 28). We must remember what is recorded in I Samuel 16:7, "the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."

The other day during a lecture on epilespy, I think someone brought up Matthew 17:14-21. Maybe I have the wrong place, but I am curious to get someones thoughts on it.

The pictures are from a trip I took last year in California along the coast.

They received the word with all readiness of mind....

Well, school is back in full swing and I am already buried under in homework. It is always fun to go the first few days and be completely lost. Medicine these past few months put a serious damper on Bible study but I am hoping neurology and family practice allow for some free reading time.

The pictures in the post are of Quechua adults or children in the Otavalo area after receiving 2007 calanders with verses on them. Most of these people were so excited to recieve material in their own language. Please pray for those that read the gospel, that they might receive it with "all readiness of mind."

Over the past few weeks I have been discussing with some friends of mine how exactly we feel we should share the gospel. I have been reading http://dyspraxicfundamentalist.blogspot.com/ and he occasionally has blurbs about his experiences preaching on the street. I have heard of people doing that ten or twenty years ago, but don't hear much about it anymore. Where I live, there just isn't too much pedestrian traffic and a large percentage of those walking the local streets seemed to be armed. I wonder what is most analagous to Paul's experience in Acts 17. Any thoughts as to what that might look like these days? Does this relate at all to what we find in Matthew 5:13-16? It seems like we live in a society where our faith is supposed to be excluded from our place of work and the gospel is to only be preached within in the confines where believers meet.

During the last three years, there have been some interesting opportunities to share the gospel with classmates, co-workers and friends. One of them came to know Christ a few years back and we can praise God for that. However, the majority of the responses have either essentially boiled down to, "it works for you, but I really think that we can believe what we want" or "based on what science tells me these days, there really just isn't a need for a god." A couple had much more complicated objections, but those are topic for another day. While I was down in Ecuador over the Christmas break, a group of young adults sat down and discussed a variety of Biblical issues; among them was how to address various objections to recieving Christ. I thought Dean Rule had some interesting verses and ideas. I am curious to konw what other people out there might be thinking.

New Year

Well, I had a few hours off and figured I would go ahead start a blog. I have been mulling the idea for a year or two now. Can't promise this will not be my first and last entry, but I will try to do periodic updates.

Christmas break is drawing to a close. I spent the majority of the last two weeks down in Ecuador visiting some second cousins. Although I took 420 pictures before filling up my card, I will only stick one or two on here.