A Burst of Speed

"Life is just like an old time rail journey . . . delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed." (Gordon B. Hinckley)

This week, amidst the travails on life's proverbial train ride (including a lower-than-hoped-for grade on my Blood and Lymph test), I had a brief glimpse of one of those occasional life-affirming vistas.

During a class on immunohematology, a professor was discussing Rh(D) blood types and pregnancy. Explaining the situation (namely, the steps that are taken to protect the future children of an Rh(D)- mother after she gives birth to her first Rh(D)+ baby), he drew the following picture for us:

As I chuckled at his rudimentary drawing, I was suddenly filled with a feeling of tremendous excitement and anticipation, akin to that of a six-year-old at 5:30 on a Christmas morning - heart racing, chest warm, head giddily dizzy. Sundy is pregnant, I thought. She is going to be a mother. I'm going to be a dad. In less than 2 months our little baby will be in our arms, and we will hold her, comfort her, talk to her, sing to her. One of the greatest desires of our lives will soon be realized.

Then it was back to immunohematology. But in our near future there are bursts of speed sure to thrill us.

On Bus Stops and Samaritans

On days when Sundy has early work, I have two choices: have a rushed morning, leaving with her at 6:15 to catch a ride to the bus stop, or enjoy a more leisurely morning, with time to read and exercise, leaving an hour later to walk to the stop. Recently, I have been habitually choosing the latter option, opting for a few more moments in a warm bed to compensate for the brisk 0.8 mile walk to the bus stop.

Generally I enjoy the walk, as it provides me an excuse to exercise less later in the day and gives me a time to clear my head before starting school. However, the bus schedule has the unfortunate disadvantage of not lining up with my school schedule. One bus gets me to class about 30 minutes early; the second, because of rush hour traffic, usually causes me to arrive 5-10 minutes late. I usually shoot for the first bus, but often I end up rushing because I don't allow myself enough time.

That happened to me last week, when I was running late and speedwalking to catch the bus on time. As I passed an apartment complex, I noticed a familiar-looking woman walking out towards me. I recognized her as a woman who had attended church a few times two months ago, but soon stopped coming and answering her phone. I tried to catch her eye to say hello as I sped on past, but she never looked my way. I thought that I should stop and talk to her, but I was worried about missing the bus. I debated for a few seconds before my introverted, time-conscious side won and I hurried by. Three minutes later, after she had caught a different bus, I saw my bus drive through the intersection where I was to catch. I missed the bus anyway.

The next day, I was running late again, though not as much so. I hoped to see the woman come out again, resolved that this time I would talk to her whether I missed the bus or not. But she wasn't there. As I continued on by, disappointed that the day was not one of redemption for my previous oversight, I saw the bus approaching and started running to the intersection to catch it. Just as I rounded the corner, the bus pulled away, leaving me behind a second day in a row.

I resigned myself to being late, and started pulling out my notes so I could study as I waited. Just then, an old red SUV stopped in front of me and the window rolled down. "I saw you running," a West-Indian inflected voice said. "Can I give you a ride to catch the bus?"

I gratefully took the man up on his offer and jumped in. He quickly passed the bus and dropped me off a few blocks ahead.

As I rode the bus to school that morning, I pondered the two days' experience, comparing my and the driver's attitudes. The hurried Levite did not compare well to the helpful Samaritan. Next time I will stop; getting to class on time, however important the material, does not justify passing by the "fall[en,] . . . stripped, . . . [and] wounded."

30 Weeks

Last week, we got back from our Christmas trip to Utah and realized something: Sundy is now 30 weeks pregnant. As it has been filled with uncertainty from the beginning, this pregnancy has seemed at times to progress at an excruciatingly slow rate. The second trimester, especially, lasted forever.

Hitting 30 weeks, then, is a big deal. Right now, our little girl weighs 3 pounds. Her lungs are functional, if not fully mature. Her heartrate is around 150 beats per minute, and she is an active little chick (maybe a future tennis player?) - I've felt and even seen her trying to punch and kick her way out of the womb multiple times. In seven short more weeks (after I've made it through only two more exams), she will be considered full term. Our pregnancy is looking more and more like it's turning into parenthood.

Which carries with it another set of anxieties. As much as we like to think we've done to be ready as parents, we still feel woefully unprepared. Even after watching diaper-change instructional Youtube videos, Duntson Baby Language DVDs, and weekly parenting examples during sacrament meeting, even after Sundy completing a master's degree in family therapy and counseling multiple children and me with 18 years of experience babysitting 5 younger siblings, Sundy and I are not quite sure we know what kind of parents we'll be.

But we're doing what we can to be prepared. Including organizing the nursery (though there's still more work to be done...):

10 more weeks (cerclage coming out on February 25)!

Christmas Letter 2012

Christmas 2012 is our fifth together, and before every one of those holidays Sundy and I have debated the sending of Christmas letters to our friends and family. (Any guesses on who advocated which position?) This year we finally reached a compromise: blog a Christmas letter and leave everyone the opportunity to either seek out or ignore the accounting of our yearly accomplishments.

Somehow the task of writing the letter fell to me. And here it is:

Our year started in Durham, Oregon, with us living in Paul and Bev Roberts' beautiful home while they served a mission in Finland. We knew that our days in Oregon were numbered, because I had accepted a scholarship to the University of Colorado School of Medicine, but we were in denial about the move. Oregon was the place we had come to call home and experienced the joys and sorrows of our first four years of marriage.

The two of us at the Roberts' house

During the early part of the year, I finished up my master's thesis, evaluating a buprenorphine-assisted opioid dependence treatment protocol. I continued managing the medical department of a drug and alcohol treatment center. Sundy, meanwhile, was in high demand as a child and family therapist at Western Psychological. In our free time we would go jogging through Cook Park and began visiting all our favorite Portland locales for the final time.

My (Tyler's) completed thesis. Technically I graduated with my MHA in August, though I didn't attend graduation as I had already begun med school.

In July, Grandpa Maestas, my mom, and my brother Sage drove to Portland to help us move. With their help we packed what belongings we had left into a truck and drove to Utah.

With us in between jobs and homes, we spent an obligation-free July with family in Utah. While there, we watched Katherine Jenkins perform, ran our first 10K, watched multiple softball games, and, most importantly, got Sundy on a horse for the first time:

She looks like a natural, doesn't she?

We left Utah for Aurora, Colorado just a week after the mass shooting made the city famous, this time with the help of Bob and Nancy Peterson, Sundy's parents. I started school in August, and our new life in the Denver Colorado area began.

The adjustment from Oregonians to Coloradans was not easy. It took Sundy several months to find a job, before she finally ended up managing a before-and-after-school program at Ponderosa Elementary School. We also finally ended up in a house we love, attending a church congregation (the Peoria Ward) where we have made great new friends.

The most exciting news of the year: we are again expecting a baby, a little girl due in early March. This pregnancy has progressed further than any previous, and as Sundy enters her third pregnant trimester we are grateful and excited for the new addition to our family.

Though we don't want to jinx ourselves, we are grateful that this year has been one of dream fulfillment. For our entire marriage we have been trying to get into medical school and expand our family beyond the marital dyad. One of those finally came to pass this year and the other looks to be happening early next year. Rest assured that once our little one arrives there will be plenty of pictures up on this blog...

Merry Christmas, everyone! We wish you a happy and blessed holiday season, and hope that your coming year is filled with joy and growth.

The End of an Era

Three or four times a week, Sundy has to be to work by 6:25 am. As we are a one-car household, this leaves me with two choices of how to get to school on those mornings: have her drop me off at the bus stop at 6:15 or wait and walk the mile to the bus stop an hour later. I generally (well, make that always) choose the latter option. This gives me some time to work out, though lately I've been using the time to get some extra sleep (as my Thanksgiving-altered waistline can attest).

Usually the bus gets me to campus a few minutes before class starts, but the first two days of last week the bus was running late and I missed the first few minutes of lecture. On Wednesday, then, I left twenty minutes earlier, planning to catch an earlier bus in order to make it on time.

It was a beautiful morning, the sun coming up over the eastern plains, the late fall air crisp and clean, the traffic on Mississippi Avenue light and quiet. I took it all in and enjoyed the walk, listening to the latest This American Life episode on my iPod and appreciating the fact that it was most likely the only exercise I would be getting that day (it was one of those days I elected extra sleep over working out).

As I cut through a parking lot, I noticed the bus waiting at a light just before my stop. Concerned about missing it (rendering the loss of extra sleep vain), I ran to catch the bus. Which I did (and discovered that even though I've picked up a few extra pounds, I'm still in shape enough to run to catch the bus).

As a bit of a news junkie, I take advantage of the bus ride to catch up on the day's headlines. Sundy and I got smartphones for our jobs when we lived in Oregon, and though we no longer have a data plan, the phones have WiFi capability. I take advantage of that to load up the digests for Slate and the BBC before leaving home, in preparation for reading them on the bus. That day had been no different. After settling in my seat, I reached in my pocket to pull out my phone, but it wasn't there.

I searched my other pockets, then my backpack, but found nothing. I remembered grabbing my phone before leaving the house, so I was fairly certain I hadn't forgotten it. Then my heart sank. What if the phone had fallen out of my pocket when I was running? I got off the bus at the next stop and began the long walk back to the parking lot to search for it.

And I found it. Face down in the parking lot. But when I picked it up, this is what I saw:

Spiderweb screen.

Forlorn and dejected, I started walking home. I was already late for class, and I knew that Sundy wouldn't be able to get a hold of me to coordinate picking me up after school. My class lectures are recorded and broadcast online, so I decided that rather than go back to school I would head home and mourn the loss of my beloved phone.

Before moving, to break our phone contract and get rid of data on our phones, we had to purchase another phone at full price. I bought the cheapest phone they had, and we kept that little phone with us through all our moves. Fortunately, then, I had a phone I could use (as much as I'd like to do it, it's hard to imagine life without a cell phone in this day and age):

My new, bottom-of-the-line phone.

When Sundy got home and heard the sad news, she said, "It's the end of an era." Smartphones were the last relic of our DINC (dual-income, no children) days. It's unlikely that we'll have the money for another smartphone (and the contractual data plan that comes with it) before finishing medical school. So I guess I'll have to find another way to read the news on the way to school. I wonder if I can find any good deals on newspaper subscriptions...

Autophagy

I finally figured out why I didn't get into medical school until this year.

We are currently studying cell physiology. Organelles, membranes, endocytosis, cellular respiration - mostly information we covered in high school and college level biology. Last Wednesday, though, we were introduced to a new topic. After a clinical vignette on cholera (to get us ready for our Thanksgiving feasts, I'm sure), we covered the process of autophagy.

We learned that autophagy is the process by which worn out or dysfunctional proteins and organelles are delivered to and degraded by lysosomes. And this is cutting-edge information. In his deadpan Irish brogue, Dr. Thorburn told us that this was the first year autophagy had been taught as part of the med school curriculum at UC Denver, "so those of you who could have gone to school last year but decided to wait a year made a good choice. Look what you would have missed out on."

The first picture of autophagy ever taken. Published in the Journal of Cell Biology in 1962

Yep. There's the reason. My medical education would have been incomplete without a lecture on autophagy. Who knew?

It Feels Like Home

The title of this post (and this blog, for that matter), come from our wedding song of the same name. Original, I know. But it's truly amazing how all the places we settle into can become our "home"--our refuge, our happiness.

When we moved to Colorado, we knew we wanted to live in a house. We knew it couldn't be like the mansion we house-sat in before, but after spending so much time without neighbors bumping our walls or the smell of smoke wafting in on a summer's day, it seemed like a necessity, not a luxury, even on a medical student budget.

Bless Mississippi Ave. It's a huge street with lots and lots of sirens and traffic, and probably the only reason we can afford our stay in this 900 sq. feet of a house. My personal favorite amenity is the garage. (No picture available).

Tyler's favorite is the yard, which thankfully is long enough to somewhat block the noise from the chaos of traffic. He loves it so much he took TWO pictures, but I will just post one :). I think he loves the potential of this weed-covered place. He's already talking about raised bed garden plots with all his spare time:

Our lovely bedroom with its yellow hue--yes, that is Aurora sunshine sneaking in through the window:

The kitchen/dining area was our biggest challenge, but since adding some IKEA counter space, this area is totally functional, minus a dishwasher. We do, however, have two dish washers :)

Our living room, complete with happy red couches from my parents, brought all the way over the mountains by Tyler's family:

A glimpse of our office/workout space/library. You'll notice how preposterously large my masters diploma looks next to Tyler's masters diploma. I promise, I didn't pick the size.

Yes, it feels like home. We'll post a picture of the nursery when there is anything that resembles a nursery in that room. Right now it just feels like storage in there.