Last week Lyle and I went out to eat for his birthday and decided to take a quick picture of the two of us.....and I thought it was hard getting a good pic of the kids:) What was my problem??
Lyle is currently in his third year of his general surgery residency. It is a total of 5 years so we have two and a half to go. He rotates between three different hospitals doing different rotations each month. Right now he is doing vascular surgery at the VA. Last month he was on transplant at the main hospital. He loves getting to do the surgeries but gets bogged down with the paperwork and patient management sometimes. He is doing great though. It is ALOT of work no doubt but he handles it great and NEVER brings the stress home to me and the kids. I'm amazed at how calmly he handles it all. Residency is just how we expected it to be. We were not blind or naive at how hard it was going to be which was a benefit for us because I think it has helped us handle his crazy schedule better. Some rotations are better than others but it is not uncommon for us not to see him for about three days straight. One rotation though he was able to pick the kids up at school every day! That rotation went too quick!
Lyle wants to do a fellowship which is where he will specialize in one particular type of surgery so after these five years in AR, we will be on the move again. At the moment a transplant surgery fellowship (kidneys and livers) is what he is leaning towards. He will start applying this time next year and we should find out where we are going by March of 2014. His fellowship will be for two years. After that he will apply for attending positions. Who knows where we will end up!
I am doing a post doctoral fellowship at UAMS, the same place Lyle is at just in the research buildings. It is super flexible and allows me to take off when I need to for the kids. Right now I drop the kids off at school in the mornings and pick them up at 3 everyday. I really have a great schedule.
I got my PhD in cancer biology so I have continued that interest here doing cancer research particularly in pancreatic, colon and thyroid. I work in a lab that specializes in a technique called Mass Spectrometry which is a method that allows you to look closely at the expression of proteins and their modifications within cells or tissues. I do a lot if tissue culture work where I have reduced the expression of a particular protein (ATAD2) in cancer cells and am determining how that effects their sensitivity to chemotherapy. I have made an interesting finding but am now facing the hard part of making sense of it. I love the work but get frustrated with how painstakingly slow it can be at times. I am still learning to be patient with it.
Lyle and I are actually getting to do some research projects together...something we have always wanted to do. We wrote a grant together and got it internally funded! It deals with identifying histone modifications induced by over expression of the oncogene RET that may drive the development of thyroid cancer. So far we have identified a couple modifications that could be interesting andare just trying to confirm them. We are also doing a side colon cancer project that we are hoping leads to some publications. Lyle and I work really well as a team. I say he is the brains and I am the muscle:) He is great with coming up with the ideas and I am great with doing the experiments to test those ideas. It has been really fun doing this together. In the future we would like to run a lab jointly. I will stay in this position until we move though and will then look for a similar job where ever we go. I am also working a part time job from home being a content writer with a company called Sigma-Aldrich. It just brings in a little extra money for us right now but usually takes up most of my nights. So if I am ever slow getting posts out you can pretty well guess its because I am doing Sigma. Luke will ask me at night, "Mom can you snuggle or do you have Sigma?" Makes me laugh!
Outside of work, what little time is left, we make sure we are spending time together. We struggle with balancing our time between being parents and work but we are managing. We are having a blast with the kids! They are so much fun now. We play soccer or football in the yard...always boys against girls:) We go on walks either around the neighborhood or down by the river. We try to sleep in on our mornings off and love having big pancake breakfasts. It is great when Lyle is home with us! One thing about being so busy is it really makes us appreciate whatever little bit of down time we can find.
Tonight, Lyle read the kids a chapter in their Percy Jackson book and they are now asleep (in our bed of course). Lyle and I are on the couch watching Monday night football as we work on our iPads. He is studying for a test he has tomorrow and I am doing this...updating the blog. I have just made us some tea because we are both going to be up late trying to get work done. Seems like our jobs never end but we are really really happy!
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