Call Week

2:17 in the morning. I've just got home from the hospital, but I usually need some "unwinding" time before I return to bed.

On the whole, my time now compared to when I was delivering babies and having to admit patients from the practice and the ER is considerably better. Still, occasionally I'll get a nice confluence of events to make for a long day and a long week.

I got to the office at 6:00 am yesterday morning, and worked till 5:00 pm before leaving for the hospital to admit an unassigned "Peds" admission from the ER. After 3 hours in the ER with a very sick 16 year old girl I admitted to the ICU, it was back to the office to finish up my work before finally getting home at 9:00 pm. After that 15 hour day I had 3 and a half hours at home (half of that sleeping) before being paged back to the hospital at 12:30 am for a stat C-section of one baby, an admission of another newborn, and a check on my still-very-sick ICU patient.

My foot's been sore with all the walking around and standing I've done today (it was fun trying to get a shoe cover over my boot for the operating room).

So I think I'll grab a small bowl of cereal, and head to bed in a half hour for 3 1/2 hours before I have to get up and do it all again.

Busted!

For those of you who haven't heard, Dad's (Rich Schieber) hand is, in fact, broken. He got an x-ray the following day confirming my suspicion of a 4th metacarpal break. The x-rays are fairly impressive, especially the lateral shot of the spicule of bone pushing up the back of his hand. I've reproduced portions of two of the x-rays for your viewing pleasure.

Dad is not taking well to having his dominant, typing hand hobbled. And who can blame him? Writing and using his hands is what he IS, and between the restrictions his hand has put on his writing, as well as his activity, the guy deserves some sympathy. I have a hunch he's going to hate this more than getting his prostate out.

I haven't spoken with him yet today. He was going to see an orthopedist to see if there is anything else they may want to do. We'll see how that develops.

Rich breaks one for the team

The West Hills Health Care Clinic's softball team, "The Antibodies" were a bit short today, so Dad (Rich Schieber) graciously stepped-up to fill in.
Unfortunately, while fielding the first ball his way, he fell onto the ground (but managed to get the ball back to the infield). He scraped his knee, mildly pulled a leg muscle and hurt his hand.
He had 4 at-bats after that and several more outfield plays before the game finished. After the game he showed me his hand. It had a large swelling to the back of it, and upon examining it, I could feel bone pieces grating along his 4th metacarpal. So, DAD BROKE HIS HAND.
Now, I am not sure what kind of weird fates are circling over the male Schiebers recently, but I'd suggest soft, gentle activities for Randy for the next couple months.
I took him to the office after the game and got him into an ulna-gutter splint, and made an appointment for him to follow-up with Dr. Nyquist tomorrow. This is his first confirmed (well, I'm 90% sure, he'll get an x-ray tomorrow) fracture in his 70 years of living. So here's to the Schieber men and their brittle bones!
My own toe fracture is doing fine. It has hurt a little more lately cause I've probably stressed it a bit too much. I'm going a bit batty having to sit around and not exercise. I have an appointment with a physical therapist at the office across from us tomorrow morning. I'm hoping he can get me into a bit of a regular strength training program, since that is sorely lacking with me.
Updates on Dad's (and my) condition as they become available.

Google Bombing

This is a random post, I was bored and playing around. Basically it's a bunch of links, "google bombing" is the term. You can click on the links (start with the google bomb one) if you're really interested or really bored.
Google Bomb
A Place Apart
Miracle Drug
Must...keep....going.....
Get High
Blowhard
Salivate
Timeless Classic
Um Ya Ya
Best Place to Live
Schieber (this one's just to help the web site)

Test Drive

We're in the process of deciding whether to keep driving my 12 year-old Civic, or get something with a little more utility, but still small enough to park in the garage next to the minivan (I'm kind of a stickler for that).
So, I test drove a Honda Element today. All-in-all it's a pretty cool car, and it fit in the garage. The next step is to decide if we really want to get a new car at this point.

Other recent "news":
- Antibodies softball game yesterday. We lost. I didn't play, just took pictures. We have a great team, though.
- All 4 Grandparents over tonight for Password. Yes, my life is actually that exciting
- Biked for an hour yesterday because I couldn't stand the lack of exercise. It seemed to go ok (bike shoes have a very hard sole) but my toe's a little more sore today. Otherwise I've been wearing my cast book all the time
- I was the assistant minister at church yesterday, had to give an impromptu talk before the lesson AND the offering.
- Had a cookout last night over a fire in our backyard
- Saturday attended the McMinnville Education Foundation fund raiser at a local winery. It was a good time.

Random News

Happenings this week:

Toe: I saw a Sports Medicine Orthopedic Specialist yesterday for follow-up on my toe. The news was good. They re-took some x-rays and determined that the bone chip was not as pulled away as it looked on the first x-ray. That means no surgery (if it had been too pulled back it would need a wire to hold it in place) and only wearing the "cast boot" for 3-4 weeks instead of 3-4 months. So I'm pleased. It's still a pain getting around with the boot on, but it could be a lot worse.

Weather: Perfect Oregon summer - long, warm, sunny days. The only downside is when you have to work during them, and when your cast boot keeps you from all sorts of summertime outdoor adventures.

Traumatic Mallet Toe

So my toe is broken.

As things go, it's a small fracture and a small problem. BUT, concerned that there was a good chance of a fracture I had an x-ray done yesterday which confirmed an avulsion fracture of the distal phalanx of the first toe. That is medical talk for a chip of bone pulled off the base of the last toe bone by the tendon attached there that pulls the toe up. It's pretty clearly seen on the x-ray of my toe above (that chunk of bone pulled back at the top).

I think I just kissed any running goodbye for the next 2-4 months. Of course, this occurred the day after I laboriously entered a daily running schedule into my Outlook calendar extending to the Portland Marathon on October 5th. I'm kinda pissed that I have this good endurance base and was primed to start training to run a fast marathon and now I'm just going to have to not run at all, possibly even beyond the marathon date.

Life goes on, but this abrupt halt to the kind of regular exercise (and stress-release) I've been doing for the past 5+ years is going to be hard to adjust to.

I'll probably see a sports specialist this week, and I'll have a clearer idea about my limits at that visit.

Hagg Lake Tri and my big toe

Yesterday was the Hagg Lake Triathlon. Coming out of the swim I caught my toe on some loose mat/carpet they lay over the ground, twisting it very hard under my foot. It hurt like anything during the bike, and changing from my bike shoes to my running shoes I saw blood on my sock, but didn't take time to investigate. The run caused even more pain, but I finished the race with my 2nd best time there ever.

This is how my toe looks this morning:

I'm kind of frustrated because I was hoping to begin in more earnest my Portland Marathon preparation this week (yesterday was probably my last triathlon of the year) and this is going to delay me some. I'm hoping it's just a bad ligament tear and not something worse.

Blog's First Post

Regular (anyone?) viewers of our other website will notice that the "News" page is seldom if ever updated. This is not because nothing is happening, but because of the general difficulty to update using an 8 year old Web Design program, as well as my own laziness.

So, I've created a blog page to give more day-to-day information, and to more easily link some videos and other media.

The other web page will still continue, but will be primarily a place to link to this blog and to post and archive photos. This blog will be primarily devoted to random thoughts and posts from me (Scott). Due to the public nature of this blog, I purposefully will not be bringing much detail about other family members or relatives (unless given permission). So you're pretty much stuck with stuff about me.

The title of the blog, Holden 237, is a reference to one of the major touchstones in my life: Holden Village. From our front door to Holden's gathering place (the "kiosk") , is 237 miles.