Ben’s “Doctor for a Week” Experience

Ben & Dr. Dan

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Isaac, Ben and Jennifer spent a week in Orange County.  In Ben’s high school, seniors are required to complete a senior project.  The idea is for each student to choose a profession that they would be interested in pursuing after high school, find a person who has that job and be “mentored” by him or her for 30 hours.  After the mentoring is completed, the student then is required to write a paper and deliver a power point presentation to the school board members about the experience.  One of the doctors who have monitored Ben since his diagnosis of hyper-mobility syndrome is the physician’s assistant at the orthopedic office.  Ben and Jennifer call him Dr. Dan.

Since the beginning of the year, Ben has  been thinking of becoming a physical therapist.  After his contact with Dr. Dan, he felt that spending time with him as a mentor would give him some good insight into this type of a profession.  Accordingly, during a visit to the orthopedic office, Ben asked Dr. Dan if he would be his mentor and Dr. Dan replied that he would need to talk to the management to find out if such a thing could happen, but if so, he would.  Management said yes as long as Ben followed HIPPA laws.  Since the boys are off for 3 weeks during winter break, it was decided that the last week of the break would work.

In the time leading up to Ben’s week of mentoring and in conversations with Dr. Dan, it became clear that for this idea to work, Ben would need to shadow Dr. Dan throughout the day and would need to be at the clinic at 8 0’clock every morning.  Jennifer and I talked it over and came to the conclusion that traveling up and down the hill early in the morning each day would be impractical.  To alleviate the potential problems, we decided that it would be best to find a hotel near the orthopedic offices that would allow Jennifer to take Ben to the clinic at the agreed upon hour in the morning and give her a place to stay while she waited for him to finish his day.  I was able to find such a reasonable Days Inn only 5 minutes away from the clinic.

Since we are dealing with the financial repercussions of Ben’s appendix episode (a topic I have avoided because it does not put me in my “happy place” L), Jennifer’s parents helped us out in order to secure a week’s stay for Ben and Jennifer (we are very grateful to them for the help as well as my parents and siblings who have assisted us in dealing with the medical bill).  Isaac and I have held down the fort while Ben and Jennifer have spent the week in Orange County.  Thankfully, this arrangement has worked very well and Ben really enjoyed his opportunity to spend time with Dr. Dan and Dr. Wagner, an orthopedic surgeon, at the clinic.

They arrived home today, and Ben told me about his experiences.  He’s been taking a sports training class at school and said he learned more on his first day with Dr. Dan than he has in the two semesters of this class.  The great part about this week of mentoring was the hands on experience.  For the most part, Ben would watch and not say anything, but every once in a while, either Dr. Dan or Dr. Wagner would ask him questions.  Also, the doctors would not stifle him when he felt impressed to say something.  Ben told me of a time when he felt impressed to mention his experience in the pain management program to one of the patients.  He also had conversations with a couple of other patients when he felt a need to speak up.  There was another time when a college student was also shadowing the doctors and Ben responded to a question correctly after the college student did not.  He said that he felt really good about that moment. J

Ben & Dr. Wagner

The reason why he worked with Dr. Wagner as well was because there was one day when Dr. Dan had to leave early because his wife wasn’t feeling good.  Dr. Wagner took over the mentoring and allowed Ben to continue with the day.  After Thursday, Ben had 32 hours of mentoring (2 over the set limit), but he wanted to finish out the week.  Unfortunately, Dr. Dan wasn’t feeling well on Friday and Dr. Wagner wasn’t in the clinic that day.  Apparently the other physicians weren’t as keen on having a high school senior shadow them, so Jennifer and Ben went to some places in the area after checking out of the hotel and came home a little early.  This was a great experience for Ben; so much so that he’s thinking of modifying his physical therapist idea and perhaps becoming a physician’s assistant like Dr. Dan.  I’m glad that these doctors gave him the opportunity to see this profession close-up and allowed him to expand his horizons. J

Isaac’s Football Decision

When Isaac finished up the JV football season, he was able to get in for a few plays at the end of the game.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the video camera and it was too dark to get good pictures with the regular camera.  When he came off the field, he didn’t look to happy and wasn’t all that interested in staying to watch the varsity team play.  We were staying because Ben wanted to be on the sidelines with the varsity team for their last game.  As I recall, after the first half with our team getting manhandled … again, it was decided that Isaac and I would go home while Jennifer and Ben remained.  At the time, I don’t think Isaac’s decision to leave early meant anything other than a desire to not watch another blowout.  The varsity team didn’t win a game this season while the JV only lost two; it was honestly very difficult at times for me to sit and watch the varsity games.  However, it could be that Isaac’s desire to leave early that evening was the beginning of the conversation we had earlier today.

Jennifer and Ben have been spending the week in Orange County in order for Ben to fulfill one of the requirements of his senior project—being mentored by someone in the profession he has chosen to focus his project on (more on this in an upcoming post J).  I wanted to take a couple of days off work to spend with Isaac during this time.  Today, we went bowling and then went over to Steak ‘n Shake for lunch and conversation.  I will preface this by saying that overall, I think Isaac’s football experience was a good one.  One of the immediate impacts I noticed was that it helped his confidence tremendously.  Jennifer and I have been happy with the way he’s been keeping his grades up and how he is improving in other aspects (he went to his first church dance a couple of weeks ago and had a great time).

However, as we were talking during lunch, Isaac told me he doesn’t want to go out for football next year.  When he said this to me, I couldn’t help but remember the time after my freshman year when I told my dad the same thing.  I had spent my freshman year being nothing more than a glorified practice dummy.  I think I spent more time face planted into the ground than I did standing up that year.  Thinking these things, I asked Isaac his reasons, prepared to give him much the same pep talk that I received back in the day.  My pep talk stayed in my head.  Isaac’s reasons for not wanting to continue were much different than mine.

His biggest reason for not wanting to continue was that he didn’t like the raunchy talk that went on in the locker room during the season.  I also remember that some of the talk in the locker room during my high school days weren’t the greatest.  However, being that he is one of the few Latter-day Saints on the team, the things being said are much worse than what I heard.  He doesn’t want to be a part of that.  I told him I would support his decision.  The only thing I asked was that he pray about it before he made the decision final.  He did and later told me he still felt the same way.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say there is a part of me that is relieved by this decision.  After dealing with Ben’s injury and watching Isaac’s teammates get their bells rung and get injured in other ways throughout this last season, I’d like to keep our youngest son in one piece.  Just like the decision to play was totally his, the decision not to is his as well.  If the only thing he gets out of his one year of playing is the confidence I’ve seen grow in him; I’ll take it.  In fact, he’s recently had the opportunity to share the gospel with two of his friends during 7th period at school.  This was awesome to hear.  Isaac went on a teaching appointment with me a few weeks ago.  I think this was a good eye opener for him as to what a mission is all about.

Happy New Year!

We rang in the New Year last night with our annual New Year’s Eve party.  I’m not sure how it happened exactly, but at some point 7 or 8 years ago, this party ended up at our house and we’ve hosted it ever since.  This year the Graham’s, the Martinez’s and Jasmine Fregoe joined us.  We had a pot luck of snack food and played our usual games of Apples to Apples and Catch Phrase.  At about 11:45 we turned on the TV to Rockin’ Eve and waited for the ball to drop.

Over the last two New Year’s since our day in New York City during our 2013 vacation, the ball drop has taken on a little bit more significance for us since we know where it is located.  During our visit to Times Square, we saw the ball.  It looked a bit smaller than it does on TV (I figure it’s because the camera crew zooms in on the ball as the countdown begins).  Having a frame of reference is fun and it’s nice to be comfortably standing in the living room of our house while the people crowding Times Square were in the chilly elements as the ball dropped.

Nick Martinez was able to get a case of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider (half apple-cranberry and half apple-grape).  There was enough for everyone who wanted sparkling cider to have their own bottle (Isaac doesn’t like carbonated drinks so he substitutes a glass of milk ☺).  After passing out bottles to those who wanted one and toasting the New Year, we realized that as a group of practicing Mormons, we looked pretty silly holding open cider bottles.  What else to do but take a picture of everyone as they took an extra swig from their bottles!

2014 has taken a bow and scurried away; 2015 marches onto the stage.  We’ve had a year of challenges and rewards; setbacks, surgeries, and amazing blessings.  Now we prepare ourselves for the known things that 2015 has to offer and wait for the unknown challenges and blessings the New Year will serve up on our plates.  As usual, we’re probably in for another interesting ride. J