Dave visits Spencer's class

Spencer's class just finished a chapter about medicine in their reading book at school, and his teacher asked Dave to visit. I went along to help out and take pictures.

I thought he did an excellent job, and the kids were really captivated. He talked about proactive versus reactive medicine, and what they can do now to prevent diseases. They had written questions ahead of time, and he interspersed the answers to those along with interesting cases he has seen.

He spent a lot of time talking about the food pyramid and brought in a sample day of food for their age, so they could see how much a serving is of each group as well as good food choices. Spencer said no one wanted to eat their white bread sandwiches that day.

Then they broke up into groups and went around to different stations. Spencer manned the X-ray station. Yes, this X-ray is backwards. Of course Dave put a plug in about the dangers of smoking, especially since at least one of the X-rays showed serious lung damage from smoking.

I showed them how to use stethoscopes to listen to their hearts and lungs. They had a lot of fun with that. Spencer's teacher did the food table, Dave told more interesting cases at another station, and then the last table had test tubes showing the different amounts of fat and sugar in various foods. I told Dave he should hold onto his notes - he may be doing this again.

When it rains it pours

We're finally getting a little rain around here. Although we've loved the warm sunny weather, what we really needed was cloudy and wet. The boys were all excited to be able to use their umbrellas this morning.

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My family is keeping the medical community in business this week. Kristen is coming home from the hospital today. My mom had a stent placed to allow her many kidney stones to pass. My father-in-law had two surgeries in a week. My sister Emily had surgery on Monday. And my grandpa was admitted yesterday with a dangerously high calcium level. Our prayers have been rather lengthy this week.