So here it is...I'm starting a blog. Hopefully I have something interesting to say and people will want to read it. Maybe, maybe not - but that isn't really the point, is it? If what I share here matters, makes you smile, or even just gives you a little bit of a different perspective on family, doctors and the medical profession, being a dad, or breaking stereotypes, then that's all the better.
These posts will probably be pretty random on occasion - perhaps pithy and meaningful sometimes, amusing, thought provoking (but not too much) - but mostly random. This one is definitely going to be random, with some overall thoughts about my first five months or so of being married to a med student.
One of the last things I ever expected when thinking about Bekah being in medical school was for her to come home one night and excitedly start putting drops of blue food coloring onto each of our kids' tongues, so that we could all see the patterns of each others' taste buds. But there we were, everyone with blue tongues, sticking them all out and even taking pictures of them so we could see them better and compare them with each other. Everyone thought this was quite entertaining, to say the least.
I have to say that my knowledge of obscure medical things has also increased dramatically. I learned, in the first couple weeks while she was studying biochemistry, that we have schizophrenic amino acids. I have no idea what this means, but that's exactly what the lecturer she was listening to talked about for about ten or fifteen minutes. I also recently got to watch a video of a white blood cell chasing a bacteria around in someone's blood stream until it finally caught it and ate it. Pretty cool stuff! (available on Youtube - check it out here)
I am a musician; creative and disorganized by nature. I'm not good with remembering details and facts and figures - give me a creative problem to solve and I'll kick its butt, but when I look at what she has to deal with on a daily basis...the first two weeks of this semester her physiology course went through 300+ pages of their coursepack for just the first exam of the semester. And none of it is easy stuff - most of the things I heard and read as she was studying seemed more like a foreign language to me. My respect for what doctors have to learn and how they have to be able to think has increased a thousand fold just from watching her do this.
As has my thinking about the whole field of medicine and healthcare. For a long time, I was pretty much a wholesale conservative, going along with most everything the typical conservative voices had to say about healthcare...but my perspective is changing. Do I like Obamacare? No, but it sure seems to me like SOMETHING needs to be done to fix it. If the church was doing its job, none of this would be an issue, of course - maybe that's a topic for another whole blog post...
All of this being said - here I am, doing stuff that most guys wouldn't want to do, so that she can be able to pursue her dream and God's calling in her life. Thankfully, God has left us in a position where we are able to make this work. I get to do laundry, coupon, grocery shop and cook for the family, serve as taxi for the kids to get where they need to go, clean the house, make doctor and dentist appointments, etc. Because I want my dear wife to be able to focus her formidable mind on her studies and her calling, not the details of running our house.
And I like what I'm doing right now. I still get to be creative (I do, after all, work as music director for my church, which involves a lot of evening and weekend time at the church, as well as working on creative things from my electronic music studio in my basement), I still get to teach a bit (I am actually teaching a course for three different colleges this semester), and I get to spend a lot of time with my little 4-year-old guy.
And I get to watch my wife's eyes light up when she tells me about the obscure medical fact of the week, or the inside joke from her study group. I get to stay up late with her when she is studying for an exam. And I get to enjoy watching her become who she is supposed to be.
Watch for future blog posts concerning such topics as breaking down stereotypes, weird looks I get from cashiers in the grocery store, and couponing. Yes, couponing.
Thanks for reading...
