4th Year Funnies

It's been a few weeks since we last posted here. So to make up for lost time, here's the first installment of a healthy double post!

First, I want to tell a story of a Veteran I've seen a couple times now. Not the funniest story ever, but definitely a memorable one. I first saw this guy about 2 months ago. He lives in a nursing home and came to us on a stretcher (traveled in an ambulance) with two EMS guys. Having someone come to you on a stretcher obviously presents some difficulties when you consider we are trying to test somebody in a relatively small sound booth. Of course this guy is strapped to the stretcher and there was a 0% chance that he would be able to sit in a chair. So I put him in the biggest booth we have, which gave me about 12 inches to walk around him. He was coherent enough to answer most of my questions, but clearly this was somebody who needed an expedited hearing evaluation. Our ultimate goal was go get him set up for some new hearing aids.

Long story short, he was a pretty tough one to test. He needed to take 3 bathroom breaks in 45 minutes, kept yelling "help" for no reason, and eventually got tired of testing and said he wanted to leave. We hurried and made ear mold impressions and told him we would get his hearing aids ordered. We didn't end up getting a full hearing test on him that day so we figured when he came back in a couple months to get the hearing aids we would do a quick recheck of his hearing to make sure what we originally got was accurate. Then we would do the hearing aid fitting.

Not so fast! He came back a couple weeks ago as an inpatient in the hospital! Yeah, we're not talking about coming in on one of those skinny stretchers that go in the back of an ambulance. He showed up in a full-size hospital bed! Yeah, the kind with the big railings on the side. That thing barely fits through our extra-wide door to get into the clinic. There was no way that bed was going to fit in one of the sound booths. So this appointment quickly turned into an exercise in "do the best you can with what you have". We just rolled his bed up to the door of a sound booth and tested his hearing in the hall! Clearly not the best testing environment, but it's all we could do! To say this Veteran was impatient with me would be a huge understatement. About 1/4 of the way through the hearing test, he barked at me that he wanted to leave.

"Tiiiiiim, what's all this racket I'm hearing?"

"Those are the soft beeping sounds I need you to be listening for. Remember, when you hear them, I need you to let me know."

"Well turn that stuff off! I'm ready to go."

His physician told me earlier that day that all the Veteran had been talking about upstairs was how much he wanted to get new hearing aids. So I reminded the Veteran that we were working on getting his hearing aids for him.

"Oh, ok", he said. That bought me a little bit more time! I got 500-4000Hz in the left ear and switched to the right ear. I got 500-1000Hz before he spoke up again, this time much more angrily...

"Tiiiiiiim, I want you to stop those sounds! I've had it with these tests and I don't want to do this any more! Get me out of here!"

"Ok Mr. ______ . We're all done with the hearing test. Let me get you unhooked and we'll get your hearing aids set up for you."

"Well, you'd better not make me do any of that stuff any more. I'm never listening to those dumb beeps again. Got it?"

I should be clear. His tone wasn't overtly angry, but more grumpy than anything.

"You bet Mr. ______. I have your hearing aids right here. It will just take me a few minutes to get them ready for you."

For those of you not familiar with hearing aids, there is quite a process involved in fitting hearing aids. It involves putting a microphone in the patient's ear, playing speech sounds at fixed levels, and recording the amplified levels in their ear canals. This allows us to set the hearing aid volume to a level to match a prescription based to their hearing loss. Of course, this process involves having the patient sit in a chair in front of the speaker that plays the speech sounds. Since this patient was in a full-sized hospital bed that wouldn't even make it into our fitting room, we had to improvise! Again, there we were doing the best we could with what we had. We were fitting Starkey Wi i110 Series ITE aids which we know from experience have a first-fit that is very very similar to NAL-NL1. There is typically very little adjustment to be made. So we were pretty comfortable putting these on his ears and just making sure they weren't too loud. Oh, but hearing aids are typically physically connected to the computer during the fitting process so we can make adjustments to their settings. Mr. _______ had to stay in the hallway during this step since his bed doesn't fit in the room! Fortunately, we were set up to do wireless fittings. Granted, this process usually happens, again, right in front of the speakers that play the speech sounds we record. The patient is always in the same room as me. Not this time! We made this one a long-distance fitting. :)

As I'm getting the hearing aids connected to the computer and getting some settings adjusted...

"Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim!!!!!"

I stopped what I was doing and went over to his bed.

"Yes Mr. ______. What is it?"

"I want you to get ME OUT OF HERE!!!"

"We're working on that. I just need a couple minutes to get your hearing aids ready for you. I'll bring them out to you in just a minute".

"If you don't get me out of here right now, I'm going to sue you for libel!"

Hmm, I think to myself. Does this make any sense at all? Nope! Guess I'll get back to the hearing aids.

After just a minute or two, we got the hearing aids on him. Oh, I forgot to mention that he was admitted to the hospital for low oxygen in his blood, so he came to us that day with an oxygen tank on his bed and he was wearing a mask the whole time. Naturally, when we turned the hearing aids on, he heard the oxygen pump which was sitting next to him.

"WHAT'S ALL THAT RACKET????"

"That's your oxygen pump Mr. ______". It's there to help you breathe.

"Well, turn that damn thing off!"

"I'm sorry, we can't do that. You need that to breathe. Once you get back upstairs, they'll hook you up to oxygen from the central system that doesn't make any noise."

"Well, if you don't get me out of here soon, I'm going to sue you for damage".

"Ok, sir. We'll get you out of here as soon as we can. We just need to make sure these hearing aids are set up appropriately for you".

After a couple more minutes, we got everything set up the best we could. I called the medical transport guys to come get Mr. ______ to take him back upstairs.

" TIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!"

"Yes Mr. ______?"

"I don't want to be in here anymore! Take me back upstairs! If you don't get me out of here now, I'm going to sue you for every penny you're worth".

"I've already called the transport guys and they're on their way. We'll get you out of here in just a minute or two".

"What's the hurry?"

:)

Hungry? We were!

Confession time: I've been known to spend a minute or two every so often browsing the Pinterest homepage. And before you judge me, let me tell you that the food ideas on there are absolutely genius! So if you've never been, go there! Speaking of food, Heather and I thought we would bring you a mostly food-related blog this week.

On Saturday we went to Hendersonville to a gun range to do some target shooting. Not surprisingly, the place was totally packed including a waiting list for the range. So we just looked around and moved on. After a little craft shopping, we went to see the Bourne Legacy. Our rating? We gave it a solid B+. I'd give the first three movies between A- and solid A(+)s. Do they even give A+s in school anymore? This fourth one was a big foggy in plot and character development. At the end of the movie, I still didn't feel totally motivated to root for the lead character. There were a few fundamental elements in the plot that were not clearly explained, and a couple action sequences were drawn out far too long. That said, the essential components of an action movie were definitely in place and it was entertaining! Certainly well worth the $5.50 matinee price per ticket we paid! After the movie, we grabbed dinner at Olive Garden. With a $25 gift card, we spent $11 on dinner. If you don't have a calculator handy, that's $22 for dinner and a movie out on the town! You're a cheap date honey. WHAT'S THAT??? I thought she was hard of hearing so I was like, "YOU'RE A CHEAP DATE HONEY!!"  Haha, Love that Sonic commercial! :)  Yesterday and today were spent mostly at home, and mostly baking and/or watching episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Parks & Recreation. Solid lazy weekend!

Yesterday we made an apple pie with our first attempt at caramel sauce, and today I made a small batch of beef jerky. These things, along with a viewing of Julie and Julia at home yesterday, have put me squarely in a foodcentric state of mind for this blog post. So without further ado, here are some pics of a few of our latest kitchen creations! As always, you can see each picture in higher resolution by clicking on them. Enjoy!


Salami, spinach, and other things all wrapped up in pizza dough

General Tso's chicken and cauliflower

Margarita pizza with garden fresh basil

My first attempt at making caramel! What a great process this is! I've always known that caramel is made by simply heating up sugar, but it is a really neat thing to see!

Here's the caramel in an intermediate state. There were still a few chunks in there but of course it all melts down to pure deliciousness. Unfortunately, I think I had my heat too high because the caramel started to smoke a bit too early (when the last chunk had just melted) and it quickly started to darken. What I ended up with was a rich amber colored caramel sauce that had a slight burnt taste to it. But hey, not bad for a first attempt! Next time I'll go with lower heat and I think I'll end up with something really delicious.

Lastly, here are a few shots of the beef jerky! If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to share my recipe and a few tricks I've discovered after making this a few times!

Henry Horton State Park - Take 2

What's better than camping?! Camping without Draco! Last year, Tim and I vowed that our next camping trip would not include Draco.  Draco, you're a great dog but a really terrible camper!  Our friend and Tim's fellow 4th-year intern, Sol was nice enough to take care of him while we spent some time outdoors this weekend. Saturday morning we packed the car, left Draco, and headed south of Nashville to Henry Horton State Park.    

                                         

Last year we discovered this great campground and this year we decided to return and do a little more.  This campground has 75 camp sites, but you don't know it while your there because they are so spread out.  It is very clean, quiet, and has some nice walking trails along the Duck River.  Beautiful!

We spent all day Saturday playing around, enjoying views of the river, and discovering the outdoors. Check it out, did you know that tree bark starts out looking like this?

                                            

Totally forgot our camera on our walk, so we had to borrow this pic from Google images - we're still camping / semi-hiking newbies!  Anyways, we had no idea that bark started out this way on some trees.  I thought the trees I kept seeing had cancer growths on them. But turns out, they're healthy young trees growing bark. Nature is so awesome!  

Let me take that back, nature is awesome until it falls from the sky and hits you in the chest.  Yes,there I was... sitting, reading, minding my our business when this hard-as-a-rock nut falls from the really tall tree above me and hits me in the chest/neck!  Ouch!  Scared me more than anything - definitely got my fill of "nature"!

Tim built an excellent fire with no trouble at all!  I remember the first time we went camping in Bellingham. We had purchased some wood from a neighbor. As it turned out, the wood he sold us had not been sitting for very long.  You couldn't really tell by feeling it, but we knew as soon as we tried to build a fire! The wood not dry inside. In case you're wondering, wood that isn't completely dry hisses, bubbles, and generally doesn't burn. So yeah, that fire was really hard to light and ever since our confidence in fire building has been a little low.  But not this trip! Tim had the fire going in no time!  "Man make fire"!

We roasted hot dogs for dinner over our excellent fire and relaxed as the sun went down. We ended the evening with some s'mores and listened to some tunes on the ipod. 

Sunday morning we packed the site up in a jiffy and headed out.  What did we do for breakfast you ask?! We ate out!  That's right the campground has a restaurant / breakfast buffet!  I know what your going to say, "That's not camping"! Well, that's our kind of camping.  If I'm going to sweat all day in the Tennessee summer heat and sleep on a far-too-rapidly deflating air mattress in a tent, I deserve to have a really yummy breakfast waiting for me!

This weekend was really a great time for us to spend together, relaxing and enjoying each others company.  We do these things so well! And we're getting better at camping each time!  Maybe next time we'll try winter camping!  

Just Funnies!

Hey all!

As many of you saw, I posted earlier this week to mark a very special date. Our 4-year anniversary was this last Wednesday. We didn't do anything too crazy this year, just went out for a nice dinner. We have already made a deal to spend some money on each other next year. For our 5th anniversary, Heather said she will buy me a gun if I buy her another band for her wedding ring. Not a bad deal I think! The rest of our week went by somewhat slowly but sure enough, the weekend showed up just in time. We had a very nice weekend with friends as per usual. We went out for dinner and drinks on Friday after work, ran our errands and went to a Nashville Sounds game on Saturday, and hung around the house on Sunday (and watched the closing ceremonies of course!) Now Heather is asleep and I thought I would just put a little something together to keep the posts coming. Here's my plan. I don't have any other outrageous stories from work right now, so I thought I would just post a few pictures from around the internet that brought a smile to my face for one reason or another. Enjoy!




Snooze...I dare you

Double Rainbow? Yeah, not impressed...

So true

Parents Adapting

And now, Chuck Norris Jokes!

Big Finale!!

4 Years and Counting

Here we are! 8/8/12. Watching the Summer Olympics. It was just 4 short years ago that Heather and I were watching the opening ceremonies in our hotel room after a great dinner at Whitehouse-Crawford following an exhausting day full of vows, rings, guests, and parties. Four short years ago, today, I married my best friend.

Yeah, the two of us go back a few years! I think we were both 14 or 15 in this picture... I don't want this post to get too sappy. Rather I just wanted to take a few minutes to share a few pictures of us, and tell you that we love all of you dearly. Living in Nashville has been a blessing, but hasn't been without its difficulties. We do not yet know how many more years we will be here, but we know that having each other makes being so far away from you all a bit less difficult.

To Heather, I love you entirely. I've never been happier in my life, and I'm so thankful every day that you chose to spend your life with me.


This picture is clearly made by the lady behind us...   :)

Seeing each other the morning of our wedding.

I swear I wasn't trying to look cool with the jacket thing. It was 100 degrees outside!

Wedding pictures were taken by Wilton Photography: http://www.wiltonphotography.com/index2.php#/home/

4th Year Funny!

Here's another installment in the 4th year funnies series. I'll bring them to you as often as I experience them! I've already shared this story with some of you. For the rest, know that this is the single most ridiculous thing I have seen in clinic to date.


Last week I saw a Veteran who said that since he received his repaired hearing aid in the mail, it has been squealing in his ear. I asked him to put the hearing aid in his ear so I could figure out how bad the problem was, and sure enough. As soon as he put the aid in his ear, the thing started screaming at me! I looked in his ear fully expecting to see a wall of hard earwax blocking the sound, but he had a hearing aid dome in there!! No wonder the thing was feeding back. This alone wasn't the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I have probably seen this happen on 2 or 3 different occasions. We took the dome out and I took another look in his ear to make sure there wasn’t a bunch of wax behind it or anything. I saw some wax, and just solid black down in his ear. I’m thinking, great. Starkey makes black domes. This guy has TWO domes in his ear!? 


Yup. So we took him to ENT so they could take this one out with their scope since it was pretty deep. He took that one out and said he had some squamous debris in the canal so he was going to clean it out. He started taking the junk out… and says, “Guys, I think he has another dome in there…” No way! We couldn’t believe it. But sure enough, the ENT pulled a THIRD dome out of the guys ear. We couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous the situation was! So the ENT said there was still some debris in the canal and he wanted to get everything out. He resumed cleaning and then realized that there was something linear in his ear. “Guys, I think there might be a 4th one in there.” We seriously thought he was kidding. NOPE. HE PULLED OUT A 4th DOME FROM THIS GUY’S EAR!!!!


“Wow, I can hear!”  Mhmmmm.


My supervisor had never seen anyone with two domes in his ear, and this fella had an entire ear canal full of domes. How he didn't notice the 4 domes that went missing is beyond me. I seemed to not be surprised by the first one, but was definitely a bit embarrassed about the other three. I'm sure he'll be more careful and suspicious when he pulls a hearing aid out of his ear that doesn't have a dome attached.

I got back to the clinic and called the next patient back. He said, "Well, my right hearing aid doesn't work, and..." after pulling the left hearing aid off his ear, "this hearing aid doesn't have a dome on it."

NOT AGAIN!!!

I immediately took a look in his ear. Thankfully, this guy didn't have any domes in there. Phew. I don't think I could have held back the laughter at that point!

Until next time...

Casaba Melon

Have you ever heard of a casaba melon? Me neither. One thing I have enjoyed doing for a long time is picking up a piece of produce that I've never heard of and seeing what it is like. Today, the opportunity struck on our trip to Kroger in Bellevue. The sticker said "Variety Melons". What I saw were a bunch of these things.

The sticker said it was a casaba. I am adventurous, but I still had to look the thing up on my phone to make sure it would actually be food. The main thing I wanted to know is how to tell if one is ripe. The good people at www.produceoasis.com informed me that a casaba melon should be large and firm with a good amount of softness at the stem end. It also becomes ridged when ripe. A YouTube video suggested that the melon is similar to honeydew.

So I got the thing home and cut it open! Here's what I found inside.

After removing the seeds

This is just one half of it!

I haven't eaten much of it yet, but it has a nice honeydew-like aroma to it. This thing is juicy like a watermelon! I found the flavor to also be similar to honeydew but with the texture of an overly ripe cantaloupe. The flavor is slightly less pronounced than a honeydew, and it feels like it needs a little something extra. I'm going to put it in with some apples and grapes later for a little fruit salad. I was also curious to see how it would go with some middle eastern flavors. I mixed up a bowl of the fruit with some cinnamon, all spice, and honey. It was really good! It may be even better with a little greek yogurt or creme fraiche.