Chasmo’s Place
Just a biomed, ma’am, just a biomed.Archive for B/C
Photography
Lately, actually since Thailand in November, thanks to Chet Gordon (http://chetgordon.blogspot.com/), my photography roommate there, my joy of photography has grown leaps and bounds. I find myself listening to TWiP and Nikonians podcasts all the time. I am playing in Photoshop, just having fun taking pictures all the time. I know one reason is because I can’t wait to start to take picts of B/C, and I want to be ready. I am very much still an amatuer, but I think I am getting better slowly but surely. This week its all about creating panaramas(the current banner at the top is a panorama of SW entrance to Washington Square Park, taken with photos from my iPhone). Right now I am building almost always from pictures from my iPhone, because they are smaller files and I always have my iPhone with me, I can’t really say that about my Nikon D300, its just too heavy to carry with everything else in my pack daily, but this weekend I plan on taking some more with it, maybe the Battleship NJ, and a skyline of Philly shot. We will see what mess I get into. Check out my photos on my flickr acount: http://www.flickr.com/chasmo
Another Day
Baby Doppler Heartbeat(not B/C, generic)
The other day, Tuesday, Squish and I went to Dr. Ufberg’s office for her second visit. I like him, quite positive and still able to give you the what-ifs. I have found usually the positive Docs choose to forgo the what ifs until they become a reality. I just like knowing what could happen, but dwelling on the good that has actually happened. So I find Dr. Ufberg great. After some probing with the Doppler, we got to hear B/C’s heart whoosh-whoosh. Squish cried, I smiled. Doc told us it was a rate of 160, which according to the old wives tale, means a girl, so B it is. Still smiling. We really don’t care what it is as long as its healthy. I still tell Squish its going to be a monkey, still want a monkey.
As most of you know I am usually a Mac user. And recently I have noticed that my MacBook Pro has been acting funky. So last night I decided that I would back it up, and do the reformat and reinstall of Leopard. That is usually an easy thing. Just boot up the Carbon Copy Cloner and do a full, fresh back up overnight, and then the following day while working have it reinstall and restore my mac. So far the back up worked well, as far as I can tell, I can boot from that HD so I am trusting it. It does what I call a file for file backup not the vault back up that so many back up programs do. So I can actually browse my files and see that they are there, which I prefer since I have done the other and found that it wasn’t a good back up only when I try to restore. And take it from me that sucks worse than Comcast customer service. What’s worse is when I rebooted, my Vista side booted and realized it needed to update 12 things, so I let it do it, and it seems to have worked, although I haven’t really done anything with it, other than play games, its what windows is worth. Thank God it didn’t give me the usual, you have changed you computer we need to reactivate…not valid please call India for help, note I usually get for no reason, but thats a whole other rant. Anyway, I booted up to my leopard DVD, here at the office, and and it got thru about 3/4’s of the install and crashed. I took the DVD out, cleaned it and tried again, no such luck. Luckily I have access to other copies here, so we are trying again with another DVD, wish me luck.
Tramatic Monday
So yesterday I had a consultation with Barix about getting gastric bypass. After talking to Martine for a week in Haiti, I am kind of excited about giving it a shot. I say that know that there is no turning back after doing so. I really want to start my new life with wife and baby on an upswing, really can’t get any lower on a down swing, so no choice there either. Anyway, we will see what the insurance company says, I have to get an psych eval, and also want to talk to Dr. Kautzky, knowing in advance she is not gung ho about the possibility. But diets don’t seem to work well with me, and something has got to give. Anyway, afterwords, Squish and I walked around the mall and sat in the massage chairs for our dollar’s time (3 minutes). Now I am not a huge massage fan, and infact quite wimpy to them. I hate deep massages, they are just painful and I don’t seem to get anything from them. I like the bumpy stuff on my back and the neck and legs. Now here is the tramatic stuff, the seats seem to give you a deep butt massage. Yuck, Scary prison movie stuff. Was that needed? I need my blankey!
Day 2 of Haiti Surgery
So we are deep into our second day of surgery here in Hinche Haiti, and all is going well. We have decided to up the ante to 66 patients instead of the planned 40, by adding a local table. All is going well. I had my first fatherhood tingling in my stomach today. I was sitting in the PACU watching a mother and baby and it hit me how that will soon be my reality. Scary stuff. But I soo look forward to it. Love B/C already.
So our first day of surgery here in Hinche, Haiti. All is going well. The biomeds on staff were very helpful getting their Bovie up and running so that we could use it on our local table. Of course after they spent half of the day repairing it, the OR decided to wait until tomorrow to start using it. But all and all things are going very well.
I haven’t heard from Squish today, she is never logged on when I go online, and as it is surgery week, I will have little time to check. I miss her a lot and am worried about all of the crying she is doing because of her raised hormones. Read her blog today, and she says she is crying constantly, and is worried about the extra stress the baby is going to put on our lives, but that is just normal. I know its going to be quite stressful for sometime, but I also know how much love this child will have and how happy we are going to be having B/C.
Well my break is over. Hope all is well up north.
Sunday…and I am in Miami
Well the day started out in Philly, and its ending in Miami, and tomorrow off to Haiti. Are we there yet? Got to PHL at noon, and finally got to MIA at 5:40. All I had to eat is 2 biscuits until about an hour ago, but then I had Ribs and Martine bought, so I guess I am going to like having her as a trainee. Although I really don’t think I will be doing much training of her. She is VP of PAMIA (the biomed trade society in Philly), so I think we will be doing ok.
After Squish dropped me off at the Airport she went and bought a new bed, much needed for us, and now we will have a king size so maybe I will have some space, she likes to hog the bed, but don’t tell her. LOL. I am a bit worried about her, she had a bad bout of morning sickness this AM, but seems to feel better now. Rissy, just says that means B/C will be a healthy strong baby, so thats good.
Tomorrow we leave for the airport at 4:45am, and its 9 now so I think I will get to sleep. Have a good night.
Lazy Saturday…so far
Just thinking…
So I am walking to work this AM, and listening to Nikonians podcast, trying to ignore my runny nose (if there is one thing I hate about cold, its runny noses), whom are talking about one of their recent trips to the Galapagos. And all I could really think about it how great its going to be to explore the world thru B/C’s eyes. I really can’t wait, and really have to start saving, because I want to go to Beijing, Masa Mara, London, the Galapagos with B/C and Shannon. Not to mention the Cabin. I want to see minds explode with fascination. I really hope that B/C shares that want. I never really wanted to travel when I was growing, then I took a trip to see my cousin Wendy in London, and all I could think about is travel for a while, although never really got into actually doing it until OpSmile, another blessing it has bestowed on me.
On another note, yesterday some ignoramus decided to publish that Prince Henry was actually serving in Afghanistan. They thought, well this is news we need to tell the world, didn’t think twice about how it actually effects people. Now the Prince, along with is platoon have targets on their heads, more so than they did before. The media gave the enemy, effectively, a high powered night vision scope, in the name of free press. I do not believe in censorship, but I highly believe in self-censorship. Think before you print. Does this story have to go out now? Today’s media is much more concerned in the profit instead of the story. That, my friend, is not journalism, it is selfishness. Journalist, do not care about reporting anymore, its solely about lining there pockets and editorializing the story. News is supposed to be unbiased, and today it ALL very biased, and really very little should be covered under freedom of the press. Those laws were written to protect reporters not editorialists. When I started writing today, I was thinking of how great the main stream media was about keeping their promise to the UK, knowing that he was there, but keeping the secret. But then I thought the second the story broke they all jumped on it, they still should have waited until they could say that he was safely away. If not for his safety, for the safety of his platoon.
Hello Baileigh Rose/Charles Ryan!
Well as I mentioned, a few weeks ago we found out we were pregnant! As I am sure most first time parents to be feel, I feel overwhelmed, scared, happy, scared, happy, overwhelmed, proud, wierd, happy, scared, overwhelmed…well you get the idea. I really am happy for the most part, scared a little less, and overwhelmed all of the time. I don’t know where the money is going to come from, I don’t know how we are going to fit in our little home. I don’t know…I think that is the problem, I don’t know. I can ask my friends, whom are all in different areas of parenthood, babies, infants, school kids, college kids, well out of the house kids… but I really am the kind of guy who doesn’t really understand anything until I get my hands on it, wrap my soul around it and dance with it. I am ready blogs, websites, books, watching videos and I still really just can’t believe it is happening. Really the only thing I know is if its a boy his name will be Charlie Ryan (the men in my family are all CRS, I am Charles Richard, Dad is Christopher Robert, Didi was Charles Raymond…), and if its a girl she will be Baileigh Rose (I am not really sure where the name came from but Squish and I like it, its a nice Irish sound, and it reminds us of a Vietnamese bakery near us called Ba Lei, which we always say with a strange Asian accent when we pass). Anyway, I plan on putting stuff here about B/C for now, later about Baileigh or Charlie. I will keep you posted, and don’t ask we don’t want to know before 10/15, B/C’s ETA.
