Found a frog while mowing the lawn (almost chewed him up actually) and brought it up for the kids to see. Sheila wanted to film it but not be close to it, hence the screen in the video between camera and frog. They played with it in the water table a bit to before I set it free in the back field

Sheila with the kids in the cars at Michigan Adventure!!!!

(Here is an oldie post that i found in the drafts and never got posted. Aww, I miss summer)

Summer in Michigan! We got this pool last summer and then it got a hole. I forgot and filled it one more time (like a 90 minue chore in itself) and filled it outback. The kids had fun one last time before I slashed it to bits...TO BITS. Hopefully we can have a pool again somewhere!!!!

Joshua enjoying the fruits of summer.

Well, I guess this is the sign of a good day adventure out. Vacation was good. I started back on July 1st for my fifth and last year of residency. We are very excited about that. I have written boards in September (hurdle one) Night Float (night shift) in October (Hurdle two) and winter (hurdle three) and then oral boards in June (hurdle four will be the studying up to then and then actually taking them) and then the big move home to California. We are excited but just trying to enjoy what Michigan has to offer this last year. Below you will find many pictures and some info about life here for us the past several months. It has been hectic to say the least. I will once again try to be more current so I son;t spend 4 hours in one night updating this madness. Hope this finds you and yours well. Things are on the up and up here in Grand Rapids!

Donald

Sheila and sarah had gone on this once. Joshua wanted nothing to do with it after the previous ride (see the next posting) but after seeing how much fun Sarah had he wanted Momma to come get him for a ride too! He liked it and was waving to me and saying hi the whole time!

Joshua, fresh off his last successful ride on the fire truck-go-round, is ready for action on the motorcycle with Sarah. Little does he know what he is in for when it starts in a minute...

Poor Joshua was NOT happy with this ride, and there was nothing we could do about it. He was just crying for us the whole time.

Two happy kids driving the fire truck. This was close to the end of happy time for Joshua!

Sarah was pretty tough. She went on this thing all by herself. She was a little scared at first but ended up laughing and then went on it two more times afterwards.

Now that is one excited little girl to be driving. They both love to get behind the wheel at home when cleaning cars and such. I guess that is what we get for throwing them in the car all the time and driving all over.

Joshua I think was pretty hot and tired by this point, but still loved getting to drive a real car around the course. I think I will have issues with this kid when he turns 16~~~

I had a vacation this past week, so we took the kids to Michigan Adventure. It is a little amusement park and water park together. Went on some rides and then spent afternoon at the waterpark. Joshua liked this train and the cars the best, as well as the water slides.

Little out of order but very sweet. Sarah and Joshua covered up Momma with their "Special" blankies when Sheila was resting after coming home from the hospital

Sarah and Joshua LOVING playing in the water at the Great Lakes exhibit at Meijer Gardens.

Here you see my little chocolatiers learning all about their favorite sweet treat. As an added bonus, once you saw all the exhibit, you got a free Dove chocolate for your troubles!! Woo Hoo.

Learning how chocolate is made apparently made Joshua very thirsty for his milk! Sarah however is still hard at work adding the milk and sugar!

Sarah and JOshua showing aunt amanda that straight is the way and narrow the gate (and short) that leads to the children's gardens.

Aunt Amanda, Sarah and Joshua in the conservatory at the Meijer Gardens. This place is nice in the winter cuz it is always hot, but miserable in summer. Spring is fun because they bring all these butterflies in and this year they had a clear wing butterfly. Looked weird but cool.

Sarah, Joshua and Aunt Amanda petting the baby pygmy goats at the zoo.

Here is me on my 34th birthday. Angel food cake, yum, my favorite. Not only did Sheila make me a cake, she also made all this little cupcake type ones which are soo good because you get extra parts of the semi-crunchy really sweet crust...yumm. I would like to say I didn't eat all that cake, but I probably ate most of it. I am a Decker, what can I say...

Sooo, an intersting story about my Miss Sarah. First some background. Sheila's sibling are quite voiciferous belchers, and are quite proud of this. Sarah seems to have inherited this skill and so we are working on making sure she always says excuse me. Well, we were driving home, I think from the store, the other day and Sarah decided she wanted to say a prayer. We said great and off she goes with this lovely prayer about how greatful she is for the nice day and getting to play outside, and asks that she and daddy and Joshua can get better from their allergies, and that Heavenly Father will take away her cough and sore through and runny nose "but not my burps" and I had to stifle my laughter so much. Her Aunt Brenda and Uncle Wayne would have been so proud.

When Joshua isn't sick or teething he is one HAPPY little boy. He loved playing with grandpa, especially when they would go to the park. Sleep is better for Joshua, as he sleeps though the night, usually. HE still likes to go to bed late and get up early, which we are not sure what that is about. It is getting better all the time though.

Sarah and Joshua loved having Grandma and Grandpa here. Sarah got VERY spoiled by her Grandma who I think let her get away with murder, but Sarah came through all Sheila's hospitalizations like a champ, especially concerning the tightness that she and Sheila have. Sarah had to spend the night at a friends house one night when Sheila was gone because poor Joshua had a flair of his asthma that was not getting better and he was making me very nervous. Even when was working VERY hard to breathe, he was charming everyone there with his smiles and cooperability. He was playing with the antibiotic hand gel when the doctor came in (who incidentally was the same one we had the night before for Sheila's appendicitis admission) and Joshua made him put the gel on his hands. It was pretty funny. We are really blessed with good kids.

Here you see Sheila getting back to normal, sitting around supervising Sarah and I doing all the hard work! (JUST KIDDING SHEILA!!!)

So poor Sheila went into the hospital when it was still late winter/early spring with hardly any buds on trees, and when she finally recovers, see this out our backyard. As much as we hate winter, we really do again have a lovely view out our back. The field and trees are even much fuller than this now and we frequently see a momma deer and her two babies running through the field after a snack in our neighbors garden!

If you are reading top down in the blog, go to the posting below this to start the Sheila update, then come back here...

Welcome back. So Sheila goes out to eat real food AT A RESTAURANT (after the okay from her doctor) with me, the kids and her parents, and eats a little, but is not feeling great. Goes home to rest while her parents and I and the kids go to the zoo. Next morning her parents take off for a trip to Niagara Falls thinking Sheila is on the mend, only to have Sheila wake up in constant excruciating pain deep down low on her right hand side, around where they did the surgery. SO back to the ER we go, her surgeon comes in right away to see her but is not convinced it is her surgery because everything had gone so well and looked so good at the end and we were several weeks out at this time. SO they get another ultrasound and another CT scan and they found this, which I think really speaks for itself...unless you don't have four years of radiology training I guess. Anyway, the wavy thing in the middle is Sheila's Uterus (Hello uterus!) and all the stuff around it is fluid, and if you look at the bottom you will see that darker fluid becomes somewhat whiter, which is some blood in the fluid. After a day and a half in the hospital on IV pain meds, an OB/GYN doctor comes to see her and says she thinks her surgeon was right, that it is not related to her surgery, but is likely a large ruptured hemorrhagic cyst. Poor Sheila could just not catch a break. So after several days on IV narcotics, she transitioned to oral pain meds, and then was able to finally come home again. Since that time she has made steady improvement and is probably back to normal. My sister (Amanda) was kind enough to rearrange her whole final schedule at school so we could fly her out here to help out as Sheila's parents were leaving (her mom had already been watching my kids for over a month and I think Grandma was ready for the break! :) ) Sheila was recovering well by then, but it was nice to have Amanda visit and to make all our dinners!!!!

So to tell the summary of the past few months, I really wanted a picture of Sheila in a hospital gown, but she wouldn't do it, so instead you get to see what I see all the time, a CT scan of SHEILA! So, this will be the long brief summary of Sheila's experience with being a patient.

On April 21, Sheila was experiencing some abdominal pain, which over the day became worse and that night became much worse. We thought it was the flu or something so I was sleeping on the couch. IN the middle of the night I hear this pathetic cry from her and she is laying on the floor in the hallway between our bedroom and the bathroom, unable to walk with a raging fever, just uncontrollably shaking. We got her cooled off with tylenol and a tepid bath and she felt somewhat better. Next day she seemed mildly better, but then came the shakes again. Even I knew that was not good so we got our friend to come watch the kids and I took Sheila to the ER in town. Long story short ( I know, too late) they did a CT scan and found Sheila had appendicitis, with this long appendix tracking back by her psoas muscle, causing all sorts of back pain too. (Look on the left side of the picture near the bottom and you will see a small little round thing with a rim of whote next to a big long white thing which is her appendix cut in cross section next to her iliac bone) Sooo, Sheila gets to go to Surgery to get her appendix out. The surgeon was great, did an open appednectomy but left like a 3 cm incision was all. Sheila woke up from anesthesia very disoriented but very cute. (Some perks of being a doctor at the hospital is I got to go to the PACU when others just aren't allowed in there) She remembered kissing me goodbye and then waking up (the wonders of modern pharmacology). She had to pull up her sheet and gown to see they had really done anything. She had little pain and recovered quickly and came home after two days I think. Sheila's mom (Doris) was Soooooo kind to change her schedule to come out here to help with Sheila and the kids and was here shortly after the surgery.

So about a week and half after the surgery Sheila went into the surgeon for a post-op check, and they chat and then he says one more thing...There was a small cancer in the tip of your appendix (a carcinoid tumor) and it has spread a little bit so we will have to do another little surgery. She got to see another surgeon and the next day is back in the hospital have a laparoscopic right hemicolectomy performed, which if you don't know (some on folks common knowledge here) means they took out the entire right side of her colon, part of her small bowel and then reattached it. They took out all the lymph nodes next to this bowel and also took a small section of her liver to make sure a little nodule they found on the surface was not a metastasis. Needless to say this was a MUCH bigger surgery even though they did it through several tiny holes in her belly and she had much more pain after this. Clear liquids for like two weeks and then full liquids after that and she was just starting to get out and do something when...(please see next post please)