Man vs. Wild

This past weekend I went to a conference in Florida. I have been serving as the National Vice Chair for the Student Osteopathic Surgical Association. We have 2 conferences annually. This was our spring conference in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. The conference was hosted by Nova Southwestern University. The conferences are more geared towards 2nd and 3rd year students, so I was not as interested in the content this year as I have been in the past. On Friday before the conference and our main conference day (Sat), I spent most of my free time at the beach. I had a nice long run along the coast both days.

The conference was nice, but the thing that I was most excited about was that a couple of friends and I added a couple of extra days to our trip and spent some time camping in the southern state.

On Sunday, we drove to Everglades National Park. We canoed about 4 miles out to our campsite and spent the night on an empty beach. The weather did not cooperate though, and we had a very significant thunderstorm that lasted all night.



The next morning we canoed back to the ranger station to return our canoes. On the way, we saw


a 4 foot shark that swam to about 10 feet from our canoe (That is his dorsal fin poking out of the water),


an 8 foot croc sunbathing,

and a bunch of less dangerous flamingos, pellicans, a bald eagle, ospreys, and other wildlife. It was a very neat experience.

Then we then drove down the Florida keys to Key West.


This was our view as we drove.

We stayed in a KOA campsite about 20 minutes from Key West. The campsite was adequate, but seemed to be full of ants. We had to try 3 different campsites before finding one that was not overrun with the little biters!

Back in Key West, we ate and walked around. We saw some street performer shows on the pier and went to the Southernmost Point of the US (that is not a military base with restricted access).



The remainder of the evening was spent at a sports bar watching the NCAA final. Don't worry, I had Diet Coke.

I got home Tuesday eveening after a 15 hour travel day. It felt GREAT to be back in my own bed after sleeping in a hotel and then on the ground for the past 5 nights.

To top it all off, we got another offer on our house last Thursday morning as I was packing to leave for my trip. It was pretty good, but we countered nonetheless. I got a call after I touched down in Ft. Lauderdale that they had accepted our counter offer. We are officially in escrow. We close on 5/6/08. While on my trip, I was faxing back and forth documents and other necessary things to my realtor. It has been a crazy process (securing a spot and moving for residency), but it looks like things are falling into place.

Holy Toledo!

After much stress and many sleepless nights, we have a destination.


Toledo, OH.


I got a spot as a traditional rotating intern as St. Vincent Mercy hospital in TOledo, HO. I will try again for orthopedic surgery next year. It is not where I have ever expected us to go, but we are very glad to have a piece of the puzzle in place. Now if we could get our house sold.

We found out that we were going to Toledo on 3/20 and were on a plane that Satruday afternoon for a recognizance trip. Toledo propper is an older looking, run down city. It was also cold. At least to this native Arizonan it was. The high did not get above 45 and we got 10 inches of snow over the 6 days we were there. But I liked the weather. It was not fun driving in it, but I don't mind the cold.

The main purpose of our trip was to find somewhere to live. While we were in Toledo, the hospital was kind enough to allow Audrey to get a glimpse of the type of Medical Student housing that I have grown oh so fond of over the past 2 years. We were given 2 adjacent rooms in the dorm style housing unit. Luckiny, mine had bunkbeds in it so at least we could be in the same room.



We spent all week driving streets in areas that we liked. Apparently, the schools are very good in the Toledo suburbs. There are TONS of homes for sale, but everyone needed to sell their homes. Since I am only signed to a 1-year intern contract, we are not comfortable buying a home with the prospect of having to sell it again in a year. So we were just looking for a 1-year lease. We could not find anything good to lease the entire week we were there. It got pretty discouraging (not unilke everything else in this process). THen on Thursday evening, we looked at a property that was owned by an orthopedic surgery resident who will be doing his 4th year out of state. He and his family need to find renters for 1 year while ther are away. When we went to look at this house, we thought that we were in th wrong neighborhood. It is a beautiful country club. All of the hopes were huge and buautiful. We got there and walked through the house. We were in love. It is a fantastic house and the proce is affordable. It is at the limit of our budget, but still affordable.


We will be heading out mid-June. It will be warmer then (and more humid). We are excited for this adventure and looking forward to getting on with this stage of my training.

Going once, Going twice....Not Sold!

Oh well. I guess that it was not to be. We counter offered the low offer we received and they walked through again. Ultimately, they decided to offer on another house. I am somewhat relieved. You see, if I don't match in Utah next week, I will have to scramble. I am going to try to scramble into a local program. If I get one, we may not have to move after all. Granted, we still would like a bigger place with a little more room, but we can honestly wait a little longer if need be. We certainly do enjoy the curent payment.

I can hardly believe that next week is the match. Neither Audrey nor I has been sleeping very well lately. Hopefully we will do better after next week. The following week is the Kids' and Audrey's spring break. Since I am on my anesthesiology rotation with a friend of mine (he told me to take the month off), we are planning on traveling to wherever I match to look for homes. There cound be a few big changes in the works for us in the next few weeks. We are excited though to get this process done. I am not a very patient person and this process has been killing me. At least I will know on Monday whether or not I matched.

Going once, Going twice....Sold?

Well, we officially put our house on the market last Monday. It is a pretty cruddy time to be selling, but even if by some freak chance we stay here, we need a larger house. Our kids are getting bigger and we could use some extra space. Well, in this market, it is taking forever to sell homes, so we wanted to get it listed sooner rather than later. It went up on Monday, we had 2 realtors bring clients through last week, and got an offer yesterday. Granted, it was about 10% below what we were asking, but it was a start. We countered and they would like to walk through again tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be crazy if we sold quickly?

If we do sell quickly, we are planning on moving in with the in-laws…again.

Match is 3/20 and the following week is Audrey’s and the kids’ spring break, so we will be traveling to wherever I match for residency to look for a new home. Then, I have 9 ER shifts in April to do back here in Phoenix and 1 exam left before graduation. I might therefore move our stuff and do any maintenance/customizations to our new home during that time. It is all just flying by and seems like there won’t be enough time to get everything done.

Our Little Family

We took a recent trip to Sedona, AZ for New Year's and had a wonderful time. After the trip, we continued up to Utah to interview at the Family Medicine program in Provo. This was a picture taken by Audrey's sister during a family hike at a state park in Sedona.

Match results

Well, the osteopathic residency match happened on 2/11.  They were not the results that I was hoping to see.  I did not get an orthopedic surgery match.  I still have 1 orthopedic program ranked in the allopathic match scheduled for 3/20.  However, I feel that one to be a long shot.  I also have a family medicine program ranked in the allopathic match.  It is in Provo, UT.  When I interviewed there, I was very impressed with it.  In many ways, I prefer it to the orthopedic surgery position I am also ranking.

 

Let me briefly explain the match and ranking.  Medical students need to do a residency.  Hospitals need residents.  Students apply to residencies in fields of interest.  The hospitals interview candidates that they feel are qualified and are potential residents.  The students determine which programs are preferable and rank them 1, 2, 3, etc.  Those rankings go into a computer.  The hospitals then rank their preferred applicants 1, 2, 3, etc.  A mouse is enticed with a big piece of cheese and it runs in a big wheel.  That wheel powers a giant computer that tries to match students with programs based on their rankings.  It weights the students preference over the hospitals assuming that the hospital finds the particular student acceptable.  It is a complicated and expensive process, but a necessary evil.

 

Unfortunately, in the competitive fields i.e. orthopedic surgery, there are many more applicants than there are spots.  The 2 places that I was most interested in had 3 and 2 spots respectively.  The first ranked me 8^th and the second ranked me 3^rd.  both had over 150 applicants and interviewed 12.  Either ranking could have been fine if enough individuals ranked above me had preferred other programs.  But that was apparently not the case.

 

As it stands, I am still waiting to find out what field of medicine I will be practicing and where I will be training.  We should know everything on 3/20.  We hate waiting!

 

As a side note, our house will be going up for sale tomorrow.  We hope that we can get it sold in this market.  We are pricing it aggressively, so we are optimistic.  We’ll see how far optimism gets us.