The Best and Worst of our Bend and Crater Lake Trip

I already said this on Facebook, but I’m going to repeat it for posterity (and mainly so that “I” remember in the future), that at least some of my satisfaction with a trip comes from creating appropriate expectations for myself and properly labeling what the trip actually “is” instead of just calling it a vacation (which it wasn’t, and pretty much never is when you travel with kids, unless you travel with a nanny, which is dreaming for us).  “Vacation” is really a lot of pressure to have fun, and calling this trip fun would have definitely been overstating the case.  The correct label is that the first half of this trip was “travel to Bend and care for the kids while Andrew participates in a 100 mile mountain bike race” and the second half was “take the kids to a national park and go for a few hikes in the area.”  Those things I did do!  Every night at dinner with our kids we do a roundtable “best and worst” and here is the consensus for each day of our trip:

Friday Best:

            Well behaved children and baby on a long car trip to Bend!  Everyone took a nap (except me of course, because I was driving)!  A nice dinner with our friends the Warnock’s at the condo we were sharing in Mount Bachelor Village with a beautiful view looking onto the river and hearing it’s gentle roar in the background.  

Friday Worst:

            We arrived slightly later than planned and Andrew Gendler still went out for a ride, leaving the ladies to multitask child care and dinner prep in a kitchen the size of a small closet while the children alternated between running, screaming, harming themselves or each other, and damaging the premises.  Clearly it was less than ideal. 

Saturday Best:

            Andrew Gendler survived his race!  It started at 5:30 am and he rode 100 miles of mountain bike trails on a very hot and very dusty trail at significant elevation!  It was an extremely well supported race the aid stations and volunteers were amazing!  The kids got to go swimming twice and were very happy about that!  Also, I was so lucky to have another mom to share in the torture with me of the whole experience; Sarah was awesome and even took my older two off my hands for over an hour when we were waiting for Andrew in a very hot parking lot.

Saturday Worst:

            I had a lapse in judgement and decided to go to two of the aid stations with the kids to cheer Andrew on when we had originally planned on coming to “maybe” one of them.  I figured the whole point of us being there was for his race and wanted to show him our support.  BIG MISTAKE.  It was hot, really hot, and we were only guessing as to when they might come through the check points, we had no way of knowing.  We ended up waiting for over an hour on the hot and dusty trail with no shade and the kids at both of the spots (after driving 30 minutes to get to each one) and then a long time at the finish too.  I stupidly didn’t bring enough water and was trying to conserve it for the kids so I didn’t really have anything to drink.  The kids were grumpy and tired within the first 5 minutes (in fact Asher refused to leave the car and stayed in there while we burned through a half a tank of gas throughout the day running the car to keep it cool).  I also had not had enough coffee to get me through this kind of day and so I desperately wanted coffee and I decided to go get some before the race finish but when I tried to go downtown I found out the whole area was cordoned off for a criterium race and could not find coffee anywhere.  It felt like a disaster.  Add on top of that that I am already jealous that Andrew spends 20+ hours a week training on his bike instead of spending time with us and then here I was torturing myself and the kids over seeing him for 5 minutes at an aid station and that was it, I was done!  In addition to the difficulty of a grumpy 9 and 6 year old I had toddler issues too; Vivian was repeatedly trying to injure herself.  She tried to drown a couple of times in the baby pool and then kept wanting to jump in (and have Avery catch her) but wouldn’t jump quite far enough and actually hit the back of her skull on the pool deck one time (one of my least favorite injuries from my life guarding/swimming lesson years).  Fortunately she is a tough kid and bounced back from everything really well.  Additionally she kept trying to pull the glass top off of the coffee table in the condo.  It was rather stupidly not attached to the table in any way, and I got so tired of telling her “no!” and having her keep doing it that I finally took it out of the room and put it on the deck.  When we came home that evening it was completely shattered (I thought that since it was in the shade and not getting direct sun light it wouldn’t matter whether or not it was tempered, guess I was wrong about that!).  She also fell down the stairs at one point (she can handle our stairs at home but for some reason these stairs were more difficult) and I just wanted everyone to just hold still and not whine about anything for 5 minutes but that is really asking a lot with 3 kids.  Ok, I will stop with the negativity now, LESSON LEARNED, I will not take the kids to another bike race again (and I probably won’t go myself either, on a scale of 1 to 10 for fun spectator sports watching anything other than a criterium or cyclocross race is somewhere around 0.5).

Sunday Best:

            I had a nice road bike ride in the morning with Sarah, we climbed 10 miles up Mount Bachelor (the Scenic Byway) and then turned around and came back down faster than I normally do (to the point that felt unsafe but it was really fun!).  That road was wonderfully smooth, like riding on butter!  Plus there is nothing quite so cathartic for your anger about how much your spouse rides their bike than riding your own bike!

            Crater Lake was amazing!  We got there around 4 pm and checked into the Crater Lake Lodge.  Andrew and I both love those old lodge buildings; it’s like they are wrapped in a cocoon of romantic nostalgia that is almost palpable.  We took the kids to a Junior Ranger activity before going to dinner and they got badges which made their day!  I was happy I had planned in advance (I made the dinner reservations 3 months ago, on the first possible day you could!) and dinner was really fun, the kids were amazingly well behaved and the food was bland and overpriced but we didn’t care because we had WELL BEHAVED CHILDREN AT A FORMAL DINNER FOR ONCE!  It almost makes me cry to think about it; I will remember it forever!  After dinner we went for a 2+ mile hike to Discovery point which leaves from the Rim Village area and goes out to the high point where the lake was first accidentally discovered over a hundred years ago.  As we were starting our hike we stumbled across a young couple getting engaged and they asked us to take pictures of them, so romantic!  (it caused about 300 questions to come out of Avery’s mouth after we left the scene).  The lake was so blue and so beautiful and the sunset was amazing and the kids did really well on the hike especially for it being at the end of a very long day.  We let them stay up late and Andrew took them down to the lovely veranda for some stargazing before we fell asleep with our windows open to the cool mountain air.

Sunday Worst:

            We forgot our baby backpack!  (thank goodness the Warnocks had theirs and let us borrow it otherwise we were going to have to go buy another one and there is nothing more painful than buying a duplicate large item that is rarely used that your kid is on the verge of growing out of anyway!).  We got eaten alive by mosquitos on our hike because we forgot bug spray!  (seriously, the one time I don’t make a 200 item long organized packing list is the time we forget this stuff!).  I had specifically planned this trip for some really good stargazing as Avery really loves studying astronomy this year in school and it was a FULL MOON that made it bright as day outside that night and not so favorable for stargazing.  Maybe my planning was a little off after all!

Monday Best:

            Planning pays off again!  We had a nice breakfast at the lodge and were able to squeeze in two fun hikes because of my planned-down-to-the-minute itinerary: Annie Creek Trail with a trek into an interesting canyon and some fun time playing in the creek and the Cleetwood Cove trail which is the only way to get down to the actual lake.  As the desk clerk told us it’s “one mile downhill and eleven miles back up.”  It’s so steep that we actually saw people who were coming up while we were going down and then PASSED THEM ON OUR WAY BACK UP because they could barely make it!  We had initially been disappointed because we had wanted to go on a boat trip but they won’t take kids under 3 and in the end it was fine.  We all swam in the VERY cold water (even V got in to her waist because she kept shrieking “SWIM! SWIM!” when she saw her brother and sister get in!) and it was really fun!  We slowly doled out gummi bears and dried mangoes on the hike back up to maintain motivation.  Everyone was tired after the two hikes and took naps as we left the park and moved on to Diamond Lake (again except me, but I can’t sleep in the car anyways).

Monday Worst:

            Diamond Lake Resort was a total disappointment.  It was the worst place I have ever stayed and they should remove “Resort” from the name.  It was dingy, dirty, nasty, old, broken down (the door barely even worked and had about an inch of open air space underneath with bugs crawling in!) and gave me the heebee jeebees.  My planning failed when it came to this place; I had trusted the agent on the phone who, when I was booking the Crater Lake Lodge through the National Park line told me that I was booking rather late (several months ago) and so there was only availability for Sunday but that Diamond Lake was a really nice place to stay and on our way out of the park for Monday night.  LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE!  We decided to make the best of it and took the kids swimming in the lake after I had checked with the front desk staff to make sure it was safe to do so (there wasn’t anyone else swimming…) and they said yes.  The kids had fun playing on the black sand beach and walking in the shallows and as we were leaving I saw the sign saying “Swim at your own risk, TOXIC ALGAE PRESENT”  Say what???  We got the kids in the shower and all rinsed off (no tub in this hotel but crazy slippery showers, everyone was slipping and sliding all over the bathroom, poor V smashed her face on the floor multiple times until we essentially created a wet carpet out of towels) and then tucked them (and ourselves) into very tiny and dingy double beds, the kind that dump everyone into the hole in the middle.  The window air conditioner spewed a steady stream of way too cold acrid air straight in our faces all night.  When Asher woke up at 5 am we all popped up and WE WERE OUT OF THERE!

Tuesday Best:

            Another great car trip with the kids, they are such troopers!  My faith in our ability to travel with them has been restored!  8 hours in the car and they act like it was no big deal!  Plus some nice time for Andrew and I to just chat.  I love him, even if I have to share him with his bike!  (which I will probably continue to bitch about on a regular basis!).

Tuesday Worst:

            The bittersweet sensation of coming home when the reality of everything that has to get done (including unpacking) sinks in.  Maybe our trip was more vacation than I thought after all!

For my Dad on Father's Day

Things get busy with kids and work and everything tumbling all together in the time warp that the speed of life seems to take.  I read a quote the other day somewhere that said, “The days are long but the years are short.”  That seems ever more true with each passing year.  But in that jumble of what seem to be unforgettable moments I often fail to reflect back and piece together the meaningful points but sometimes they jump out of the past and surprise me, which is what happened the other day when I was talking with Avery.  And sometimes there are days, like today, Father’s Day, that despite being commercialized and driven by consumerism, are another opportunity to pause and appreciate people, like my Dad, who has contributed so much to who I am today.

The deja-vu memory that jumped up in my face happened the other day when Avery and I were talking about Italy.  In her elementary school the entire school studies a different country each month as part of their International Curriculum.  She loves this part of school and has learned about 18 different countries/regions since she has been there the past 2 years.  Her favorite country so far as been Italy and she got really engrossed in studying it and still carefully pours over the map.  Once she met someone who had lived in Italy for a long time and peppered the woman with so many questions I was almost embarrassed!  She dreams of going there some day and when she grows up she wants to become a photojournalist and a writer and travel the world telling stories with pictures and words. 

So it is particularly painful for her that Andrew and I are taking our big (belated) 10 Year Anniversary trip to Italy this fall.  She was having a tough month because of her broken leg and being relegated to sitting around a lot and at this particular moment she was complaining about her life and feeling sorry for herself about all of these things.  She was also complaining about how she doesn’t like learning Spanish in school when she really wants to learn Italian.  Without thinking I said, “well, what if you could learn Italian, would you really do it?” and she said, “Yes, but it’s a waste of time if I never get to go there!”  And I said (without thinking it through first), “Well, if you become fluent in Italian I will take you to Italy.”  And she said, “Really?  You would do that?”  I realized at that moment that even though all of the realities will probably never allow it to happen (time, money, effort, etc.) that yes, if she reaches for her dream and actually becomes fluent in a second language, then I would do that, in a heartbeat.

And then I had a flashback to my own childhood. One of those really clear memories that you can see like it had just happened. I remember being out on the sidewalk in front of our house.  I had a little microscope and I was looking at bugs and grass and leaves while my Dad mowed the lawn, I was probably around 10 or 11.  As he was cleaning off the sidewalk I told him about what I had seen and how I wanted to be scientist someday and go to a really good college so I could learn everything about microbiology.  He asked what college I wanted to go to and I said Harvard, but that I didn’t think that was possible; too hard and too expensive.  And then he stopped and looked me in the eye and told me very seriously, “You can go to any college you want to go to, you can be anything you want to be, and I will do everything I can to help you succeed.”  I said, “really?” And he said, “yes, I will sell the farm to send you to college if I have to!”  And that was serious to me, and I remember thinking, “wow, he would do that?  He truly believes I can do it!”  I didn’t have an idea at that time what it is like to be a parent, how desperately you want the best for your kids, how much you want them to succeed.  And now I know.  My Dad could have squashed my dream with reality: what were the chances a Montana girl would end up at an Ivy League school?  What are the chances there would be a way to pay for that expensive education?  But instead he let me come to that crucial point where a dream that floats around in your brain gets the corner nailed down.  And each step forward nails down another section until what was a dream becomes a real thing.  That was a pivotal moment in my childhood and I am thankful for it.  

My Dad is very pragmatic but he allowed me to dream and grow and supported me along the way with words of wisdom and advice (and he still does).   So I am trying to channel him more when I talk to Avery, because sometimes I am too practical with her and give her too much reality.  I want her to dream.  I want her to imagine all the things she could be and the places she could go.  I helped her nail a corner down that day and we’ll see if she can keep up the work to make her dream a reality.  I’ll sell the farm to help her get there if I need to.

Thank you, Dad, for being who you are and for shaping my life in such a positive way.

My Bio

I’ve been procrastinating making my bio for our work website for the past couple of months.  I don’t know why, other than that all the things I wanted to say I knew wouldn’t be appropriate.  The real bio ended up being pretty standard material.  Here is what I wanted it to say:

Dr. Julie Gendler grew up in Kalispell, Montana.  She then spent a really really really long time going to school, longer than the average person even thinks a person can potentially go to school.  She completed her residency in Family Medicine in Boise, Idaho, not that the average person knows what a residency is either other than what they see on Grey’s Anatomy, but it was enough to get her a medical license and that is what counts in the end, right?  She then worked her ass off for 4 years practicing full spectrum family medicine, hardly ever sleeping, and having her soul sucked out of her body via a piece of electronic medical record software appropriately named Epic.  Despite meeting some really nice people and making some great friends in Wisconsin, the alternately freezing temperatures and unbearable humidity as well as the threat to life and limb by all matter of nature’s creations such as floods, mosquitos, tornados, and blizzards led her back to the more temperate climate of Idaho.  After a short stint as a full time mom she joined the faculty at FMRI to escape the incessant screaming of “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” that still haunts her to this day.  She enjoys teaching residents and has a focus in preventive care and women’s health.  She doesn’t enjoy being yelled at by patients or prescribing narcotics but it ends up that is part of the gig.  In her free time she enjoys…  Wait, hold it, she actually doesn’t have any free time, but in the hour of time that she carves out for herself on a daily basis she exercises frantically in hopes that she will either one day turn into an athlete again or shed the baby weight that clings to her body like the monkey on her fucking back.  Outside of work she enjoys spending time with her family, not that her 3 lovely children appreciate any of the sacrifices she has made to act as their personal assistant/chauffeur/chef/event coordinator.  When not wasting time on facebook she stares desperately into the mirror wondering where time has gone (duh, all that school!) and what is the meaning of life.  She gets through the mess of it all by telling herself that things will work out in the end and tomorrow is a new day and any other trite, convenient, positive Jack Handyish statement that comes to mind.

Article on 40 Proven Strategies to Improve Public Health

Yesterday I posted this on Facebook:

So... the new obesity data came out last week, and it doesn't look good: "No state met the nation's 'Healthy People 2010' goal to lower obesity prevalence to 15%. Rather, in 2010, there were 12 states with an obesity prevalence of 30%. In 2000, no state had an obesity prevalence of 30% or more." (big sigh) This makes me feel like a failure; I know it's not my fault, but I talk to people about this stuff every day that I'm at work. We should probably just start putting the metformin and statins in the water supply now.

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

I didn’t really mean to sound defeatist; I do try to look at things positively when possible.  So I have spent the past 24 hours racking my brain as to how to fix this.  I know I’m not the only person doing this, there are far more powerful, smarter, and important people than me who are racking their brains too.  I was also contemplating how hard it is for those of us who are trying to help; how often we see one person succeed and see 9 others fail. And by “those of us” I mean the doctors, nurses, nutritionists, health coaches, spouses, family, friends and really anyone who cares and supports someone trying to lose weight and create a healthier lifestyle.  We’re pouring our daily energy into this problem and not getting a very good return as far as outcomes.  I am not blaming people out there for their weight and I think the evidence above pretty clearly points that there is a problem in our society.  It is escalating so quickly that even though each of us are individually trying to help, we’re not even slowing down the rapid increase in obesity. 

I was feeling a little down about it, and then I saw this, and while it’s no easy fix it is actual evidence based examples of things that have been PROVEN to work (and by that I mean scientifically, not by some ya-ya pseudoscience person on the TV).  So check it out:

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=667787

My First Triathlon: Post Race Analysis

For the first time in my life it totally paid off to be OLD!  I won my age group in the beginner division.  Don't believe me?  You can click here and then choose "results by division" and scroll down to "Female Beginner 35-39."

This was a big jump for me to do this triathlon last night.  I have been thinking about doing one for years, really, years!  But I’ve always had a bunch of excuses and fears about it.  Will my shoulder (that I had surgery on almost 17 years ago) start hurting again?  Will I even be able to run after swimming and biking?  I’ll have to learn how to ride a road bike, how will I do that?  How will I learn how to transition?  What will I wear?  How and where will I practice open water swimming? I have no idea what kind of workouts to do, how will I figure that out? Can I even do this without a coach?  Will I be able to stay motivated?  When will I even find the time to train for one sport, yet 3 different sports?  But given time and help from Andrew I just pushed all of that aside and kept talking myself down from this being a big deal and telling myself it was just a trial thing (it is called “Y not Tri”) so I should stop thinking about it and just do it already!  And I’m so glad I did because it was so much more fun than I thought it would be! 

I haven’t really competed in anything in a very long time (I don’t count that half marathon a few months ago, that was not about competing for me, I just wanted to finish) and I was very nervous about the competition aspect, imagining all these amazing athletes in excellent condition.  I was relieved to find a wide array of shapes and sizes and to really see that shape did not predict ability!  And I surprised myself by getting a little bit competitive as I was racing. As soon as I got in the water I started to feel that little bit of competitive spirit coming back, I kept thinking, “well that person is not that far ahead, come on, work harder, you can pass her!”  And that is a fun challenge! 

I definitely wasn’t prepared for this in the way I would have liked, I feel almost like I was faking it a little bit because of that.  In the last couple of months I have only done a handful of actual rides on my bike and the same amount of swim practices.  I have been running 2-3 times a week so at least I had some running training, which is good since I am truly a terrible runner, I don’t think I’ll ever be fast!  (my excuse is that I’m probably 95% slow twitch muscle fibers, so I have endurance but no speed, at all).  I much prefer to feel over prepared, so being underprepared made me very anxious too.  I was so thankful that Andy really helped me out; he made sure all my gear was set up right and that everyone was where they needed to be on time and gave me a lot of encouragement to just get out there and try it.  He sent me a text message every couple of hours while I was working that day in clinic reminding of when I was supposed to be eating and reminding me to hydrate, it was awesome to have someone play the support crew role!

Even though I was anxious and underprepared it felt good to just go for it, and the way I made it through was to just focus on the part that was right in front of me; before the swim I was saying to myself, “ok, just figure out how to get into the water, ok, so where is the buoy?  Yes, I see it, just get to the buoy, just get there.” And once I got there I was thinking, “just get back to the shore.” And from there I was thinking, “just put on your stuff and get on the bike.” You get the idea.  I don’t know if this is a good strategy or not, it meant that I probably road the bike slightly harder than I should have.  I came out of the water 3^rd in my heat of 40+ people and that felt pretty good, and while biking someone passed me about half way (it was a 6 mile ride, so not very long) and I was annoyed by that and so I kept up with her and ended up passing someone else (which shocked me).  The one thing I was really not prepared for was the way my legs would feel when starting the run because I haven’t done any stacked workouts.  That is a bizarre sensation!  For the first mile of the run my legs felt like they weren’t my own, they were moving but I had very little control over them, they felt like jello, but not in a tired way, just in a weird nonfunctional way.  I can’t really describe it very well.  The run was only two miles and so fortunately during the second mile they finally felt like my own legs again and I could move them a little faster (not fast enough to keep me from getting passed by some people who were clearly very good runners!).

So here is the breakdown of things that went well and things that could use improvement, this is where you are welcome to throw out suggestions that might help me next week when I do a “real” sprint triathlon! 

Things that went well:

-I remembered to bring all of my gear and I even brought back ups for some things!  (thanks to Andrew)

-The pond was not nearly as gross as I thought it was going to be, I pushed thoughts of all the ducks pooping in that pond out of my mind while swimming and pretended it was a lake, which worked.

-I had an extra water bottle at my swim/bike transition and sprayed my feet off before I put my socks on and that helped get all the sand off (supposedly if you’re serious you’re not even supposed to wear socks, you’re supposed to leave your bike shoes clipped into your peddles and put your shoes on while you start the ride, that is WAY out of my ability level!).

-I clipped in fairly quickly without falling down

-The biking portion was flat so I didn’t have to do much changing of gears, I chose to grind up the small hills which I “think” was good?

-I really like the triathlon shorts that I bought, I paid a little extra for nice padding in the butt (like bike shorts) and I was happy I did that, they were super quick drying too!

-I was faster than I expected at both transitions, and at the time I was just wishing I could rest and catch my breath, but I was trying to gain as much advantage as I could going into the run because I knew it would be terrible.

-I wore a number belt/strap instead of pinning the number on for the run, so glad I did that!

-I focused on extending my stride length throughout the run, which always seems to help me when I’m tired (any other running advice is greatly appreciated!).

Things I didn’t expect/could be improved:

-I didn’t know they wouldn’t let us into the transition area during the youth race and so I got anxious about not being able to set up my stuff and had to wait until just before the race to do it (the kids started first and had their own transition area but had to go through the adult transition area to get on the bike course which I didn’t know).

-I need to antifog my goggles, I had to pause halfway and do a little bit of breaststroke to clear them out.

-My shirt could have been tighter, when I bought it earlier this week (paying more money for it than I planned, which means I’m pretty much stuck with it) the woman at the triathlon store told me I might want it tighter but the idea of running in a really tight shirt didn’t appeal to me (I have postpartum flabbiness that I prefer stays hidden under a “partially relaxed cut”), but it did feel like it was billowing around me while I swam.

-I somehow, given my years of not swimming, have gone back to having a 2 beat kick, which is a habit I broke a long time ago, but now I guess will have to work on breaking it again (or should I?)  the good part about a 2 beat kick is that I basically don’t use my legs while I swim, so at least I save energy?

-I could have laid out my transition stuff slightly better so I could have stood on my towel after the swim, this wasn’t totally my fault because a girl racking her bike near me was like, “um, you need to move your bike over because I’m not going to have room to put on my shoes” so she got 3 feet of space and I got 12 inches.  I need to be more assertive.

-I should have had some big gulps of water in the transition area before getting on my bike.  This coincides with the next one:

-I can’t get my water bottle out of the holder without swerving all over the place.  I HAVE to learn how to do this because my mouth felt like a wool sweater from being so dry during the entire 6 miles of the ride (worsened by my total sucking of air).

-I almost missed a turn off into a neighborhood because I didn’t analyze the route enough before the race (assuming there would be a big group of people in front of me and that I would follow them). Fortunately I was not too far off from the girl who had passed me so I was able to follow her.

-I almost hit a person while on my bike, it was another athlete and he was trying to cross (not at one of the designated places and he didn’t even look before he stepped into the road) and I screamed, like a real scream, which I didn’t mean to do, but it made him jump back, so we avoiding colliding.  Glad to know that reflex was there when I needed it but I should probably learn to use my brakes and how to handle my bike better.

-My cadence on my bike was not fast enough, my guess is that it was around 60-70, and Andy has told me it needs to be 80-90 because it’s more efficient, but I really enjoy grinding it out, I like the slow and steady turn of the pedals, is that really a waste of energy?

-I pre-tied my running shoes so that I could just slip them on, and I purposely didn’t double knot them because I didn’t know how well that would work.  Ends up both of those things were a mistake, my shoes felt awkwardly loose AND they came untied, so I ended up wasting 30 seconds retying my shoes about ½ mile into the run.  My husband had bought me some Yankz earlier in the day but I was nervous about trying them for the first time during the race, definitely will next time I run!

-My sports bra was really wet throughout the whole race, anyone have advice on a certain brand or type of sports bra that is ultra quick drying (and relatively tight but also flexible?).

-I drank water (from the little cups they hand out at water stations) while I was running because I was so incredibly thirsty after not being able to drink water on the bike.  Ends   up I’m not very good at drinking water and running hard at the same time because I choked and sputtered both times, maybe I should have just stopped and drank my water?  (I normally carry a water bottle when I run so I don’t know why it was so much harder out of a cup?).

Wow, if you read all the way to the bottom of this then you could totally do a triathlon, it’s less effort, seriously!  And advice about anything triathlon related is totally appreciated!

Follow up on the "no TV on weekdays" experiment

Good news, so far we have adopted this as our new strategy at home and it has been accepted and implemented and is going strong!  The first few weeks were actually harder on us as parents than I think it was on the kids.  I didn’t realize what a gut reaction it is for me when I’m trying to get something done or when I feel like they are irritating me to plop them in front of the TV and say “here, watch something!”  So it was good insight into my own behavior and my own triggers!  They no longer complain about not watching TV on the weekdays, they know the rule.  And they still don’t watch an excessive amount on weekends, typically an hour or two each day.  It feels good that there are 4 solid days of the week that the TV doesn’t come on in our house and I would encourage other people to try it too (I say 4 because Friday is “movie night” at our house and so they get to watch that night).

I am now moving on to Phase 2, which I didn’t know there would be, actually, but now I can see that the TV was not enough.  And I think Phase 2 is going to be more difficult.  What has happened is that because the TV is off limits, the kids have found “the other screen,” the computer screen, and latched onto that.  They have a newfound interest in playing computer games ever since we started the experiment.  The hard part about it is that we already limit them to only educational games (math games, spelling games, etc.) and so technically what they are doing is educational and for Avery it even counts as homework/study time.  So I’m trying to figure out what our limit should be on this type of activity.  I’m leaning toward 30 minutes a day as a limit.  I still think that interacting with a screen (computer or TV) is generally not the kind of “play” that I want for them on an extended basis and so limiting this seems like a good idea.  But I also don’t want to take away educational opportunities either and certainly computer skills are important.  I’m open to thoughts or comments!

A medical test that opens a can of worms!

Despite the rapid advancement of medical technology it is not that common for a new test or medicine or vaccine to really get us (doctors) all riled up.  This week I watched (and participated) in feathers getting ruffled by a new test that will be available in our community next week.  After hearing a talk about it earlier in the day I tried to explain it to my husband, and despite his own large medical knowledge base he was like, “oh, that’s interesting” and I was like IT IS NOT INTERESTING IT IS FREAKING AMAZING AND SCARY AT THE SAME TIME!  

So now you’re wondering what this new test might be?  It is called cell free fetal DNA testing.  It is a test done on a small blood sample from a pregnant woman that is able to differentiate fetal cells from maternal cells and then run DNA testing on those fetal cells.  The results are amazingly accurate (around 98%) even done at a very early gestational age (7 weeks) although it sounds like the commercial tests available recommend testing around 10 weeks, probably to increase accuracy.

Here are the really cool medical things this test will be able to do:  1. Determine trisomy disorders (like Down’s syndrome) at a very early gestational age without any invasive testing (like chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis) with amazing accuracy.  2.  Determine a male or female fetus in cases where there may be a sex-linked inherited disorder.  3.  Determine the fetus’s blood type so that we can make decisions about whether or not to give rhogam or how much monitoring is necessary in an already isoimmunized patient.  4.  Determine paternity for cases of potentially inherited disorders.

Here is the scary part.  This gives us the ability to potentially analyze every fetal gene at a very early gestational age and not in some weird future reality, but very soon.  Right now the information is limited, but it is certainly possible that in very short order, after a single blood draw, you could be handed a multi-paged report with information about your baby’s DNA.  And you could make decisions about that, like, “hm, I don’t think I want a blue eyed, brown haired boy with a 75% risk of developing X, Y, Z disease, I’ll terminate and try again.”  Self-selecting your child based on the genetic make up of the fetus is now a real possibility without much risk.

I’m actually not that worried about the medical community becoming a gateway for misuse of the test; I trust my colleagues and I think most of us feel an ethical obligation to only use medical tests to help make medical decisions.  I’m more concerned that private companies will get in on this, and in fact, I think it has already started for both paternity and sex determination.  I would imagine the only thing really holding people back right now is the cost (around $1500), although I think there are people out there who would shell out that kind of money to find out the sex of their baby at such an early age and with such accuracy.  It will be very interesting to see how all of this plays out!