Happiness is...

Getting sealed in the Boise, ID LDS Temple to my amazing wife on December 28th, 2010!!!



We got the last signature from the Stake President last night, so there's nothing left but to get to our date!

Summer 2010

With a few weeks off from school this summer, my wife and I drove... a lot. In fact, this much:

I don't recommend that many miles in five weeks to anyone, but we did have a ton of fun. Though we are somewhat terrible picture takers, we did get some from Boulder, CO.

While there we got to see a lot of my old haunts, a few friends, and the Pearl Street Mall.

Along the way, we put the car over the 100,000 mile mark.

The place seemed somewhat apropos give the dozens of times that I have seem this mile post over the course of that 100,000 miles.

Through the whole of the trip, we got to see a lot of friends, both mine and my wife's families, and just generally enjoy a lack of schedule for 5 weeks. So, nothing terribly exciting, but a really good break from the mental exercise that is the first year of medical school. Oh, and for those interested, I did shave the osteo-stache.

Red Tape

I've talked about sleep apnea a couple of times, and specifically about how the military is not a fan. Well, despite having known that this diagnosis no longer applies for a while now, the military finally had acknowledged that fact. The trouble is that they are currently out of scholarships for this year, so I'm left out on the alternate list. Fortunately, this list is based on merit, and now that I don't have sleep apnea, I'm now a top category applicant. The thing that is most irritating is that when I originally approached the Army, already having lost the weight, they told me that sleep apnea would easily qualify for a waiver. If they had just said, "we don't know, you might need another sleep study" this whole thing might have been resolved months ago and I might be reporting that I am on Army scholarship... guess I should just get used to this sort of efficiency.

So nine months ago...

Nope, its not what you think. Its going back to this thing. Turns out that to get an Army Health Professionals Scholarship you can't have sleep apnea. Since I learned this fact I have lost 50 pounds, so I had a follow up sleep test over spring break. The results came back today and I no longer exhibit the signs of sleep apnea!

Christmas Break A Week Later

We tried to take our own picture while we were in Galveston over Christmas. It took a few tries:





It was easier the second time we tried:

Its much easier to just get someone else to take the pics:

And then here's one from Christmas eve service back in Houston:

What We Did For Thanksgiving

My wife and I weren't planning on leaving Kirksville for Thanksgiving, but she went snooping around for plane tickets while I was preoccupied with finals and found great fares to LA where my family was gathering to see the new addition to my brother's family. Here's the pics we took while we were at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

 

 

Mom hiding behind the camera.

 
Still hiding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
A fuzzy rhino for good measure.

 
Now mom is hiding behind a hairy gorilla.

 

Long Time, No Post

I suppose one should expect a med student to be terribly busy, and in that sense my lack of posts means that you, dear reader, are getting some good insight into the actual life of the med student. Among the ways I've been spending time on things other than blogging is applying for the Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program (HSPS). One of the major obstacles for my application is getting down to military weight, which is 225 lbs for my 76 inch height. I don't really have any before and after pics, but this is the 280 lb version of me that started med school:

So losing 55 lbs is a bit daunting, so I asked about an alternate way to meet the physical requirements. The answer is body fat percentage measured by belly girth minus neck girth plugged into a height formula. Essentially for me, it boiled down to needing my widest girth to be within about 21 inches of my neck. At the 280 lb version, a favorable set of measurements put me at about 28 inches. Seven inches doesn't seem that bad, except that typically, a person will lose inches off the neck before off the waist. I basically decided that with the work required, getting to either goal would likely accomplish the other, so I started working on a plan. During the first week, I just attacked my foods. Breakfast went from a ginormous bowl of cereal to a granola bar, lunch went from large sandwiches or leftover pizza to a single bratwurst with no bun and limited ketchup, and at dinner I cut down to only a first helping. I also went to all diet soda, no exceptions, and changed snacking to 100 calorie packs or the little 60 calorie Jell-O pudding packs. I estimate that the average daily caloric decrease was around 1000. The next step was exercise, which I'm getting a much better amount of. I play intramural basketball and flag football, which are an hour each every week, and I've gotten back into running to the tune of about 3.5 miles in about 30 minutes. Its not Olympic caliber exercise, but I'm getting consistent exercise six days a week so that my caloric use has increased along with the intake decrease. It remains to be seem whether or not I will reach the 225 lbs in time for the scholarship, but so far... I've lost 33 lbs and my pants are falling off!

What Have I Been Doing The Last 2 Months?

So this might be a long post, as I haven't actually put up anything about my actual life in a while, though I did make a brief reference. Summary version goes like this: got married on the 17th of July (picture me doing some version of a happy dance); honeymoon for a week; back to work for 2 days; driving to Boise, Seattle, Semiahmoo, and Victoria for 5 days; my wife flying to Houston without me for 4 days (probably the hardest thing I've ever done right there); me flying down to join her in Houston for the weekend; one week of me working while my wife packed all my stuff (since we never really had a chance to unpack her stuff); babysitting for 2 days, including on the day we checked out of the Utah apartment; 24 hours of driving (which we split up over 2.5 days to get to Kirksville; starting med school orientation 3 days later. I'm kinda tired just from writing it all down.

I'm not a huge picture taker, but I know I have pictures of some of the described events, so I'll post them later. For now, I'll post some wedding pics at the end.

Since the end of the first paragraph, my life has been all about med school. Orientation here at KCOM was stretched out over 3 days (Fri, Sat, Mon) and the Tue that classes started was mostly non-testable ethics and professionalism lectures plus one hour of BioChem. After that, they turned up the speed and it feels like we've been cranking along non-stop since then. I keep thinking they can't feed us information any faster, but I get proven wrong every week so far. Despite the speed, so far I do seem to be doing relatively well and getting good scores on most of my graded assignments.

And now for what people really want:

Some Huge Thanks

The open house last Saturday turned out very well, thanks to some really great help. So first off, thanks to Paul & Laura for letting us piggy back on their Costco membership and knowing exactly where to find everything we needed; secondly, many thanks to Patricia at Patch Tailoring who did fantastic work on a rush order; next, Aubrey for taking a 3am emergency text in stride and hunting down missing items of importance; and last but not least, Ashton and Zarah for showing up first and asking if there was anything they could do! Thank you all!

A little explanation about the tailoring is in order. A friend of a friend had been asked to sew a shrug for Christa's wedding dress, with a specific fabric and theme based around a yellow (One of Christa's favorite and therefore wedding colors) shirt and tie combo of mine. This was a few months ago and it seemed the easiest solution to getting the exact right shrug without spending eons hoping to find it shopping. Well, it turns out the friend of the friend is a procrastinator that will not be recommended by us and the shrug was not yet completed the day before the open house. Christa went down to the fof's house and spent several hours there while sewing was hastily done. In the end, Christa walked out with a shrug that had a passable body, but the sleeves have thus far been best described as 'balloon animal sleeves.' The material was cut completely straight, so the cap sleeve became a tube and cloth was folded back over itself with no seem at the end of the sleeve to keep the fold in the cloth from making the sleeve balloon. The world came very close to ending that evening. Not even a slight exaggeration. Fortunately, when I started calling tailors, Patricia was still at her workplace and answered my phone call, despite it being after her regular hours. We did pay extra for the rush order, but Patricia gave Christa exactly the right shrug the next morning at 10:30 and world got to live another day.

Open House Tomorrow

Hope to see you there! If I've failed you miserably as a friend and this is the first you're hearing about this, I apologize profusely, but still hope to see anyone who is Utah Valley local. Its at my apartment on 7/11 from 1 to 5 and if you need directions, sent me a note at gjcox13 at gmail.

You'd Think They Thought Something Was Wrong With Me

So this is some of what they hook you up with for a polysomnogram. These pictures aren't going to win any photography contests, but that's what you get from a cell phone camera I guess.

I'll Start With An Apology

This apology is directed toward anyone who has ever had to sleep within a hundred yards or so of me. Even if that entire space was filled with sound proofing insulation, I'm sure my loud snoring has managed to wake you up. My youngest brother recently told my fiancée that my snoring has woken him from two or more rooms away on more than one occasion. Needless to say, she had some concerns about trying to sleep through my private deforestation imitation, so a couple weeks ago I went to ask my doctor what the real deal with my snoring is.

The doc set me up to get a preliminary sleep study from which I learned that I snored 800 times that night and stopped breathing 11 times. Though he was pretty certain that this pointed to sleep apnea, he still sent me to a specialist to verify this fact. The specialist (ear, nose, and throat) is also fairly certain of that diagnosis, but also told me that my heartburn is frequent enough its eating my throat (Omeprazole is now one of my favorite chemicals ever). So this gets things up the present moment and my scheduled full sleep study tonight. The idea is that they will measure my brain function, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, breathing, and a bunch of other stuff for the first half the night, and provided sleep apnea is the correct diagnosis, they'll start up a CPAP machine and spend the rest of the night figuring out the minimum requirements to overcome the problem.

Can't say that I expect a terribly restful night tonight, but here's to hoping that outcome of it all is better sleep in the near future!

Four Weeks

That's right, four weeks until the big day! Its amazing how all the excitement and anticipation makes it feel like four weeks is an eternity away, but that the last several months has been so much fun that it feels like they've only been the blink of an eye.

And I'm a total slacker, so congrats to Dano & Sarah, Jenny & Blair, and Jake & Jennie, all the newlyweds that beat me to the altar!

Engagement Pics