Life in Minnes"O"ta

Hey this is Troy and I thought that I would put a post out here to let everyone know how my life in Minnesota is going.  First off I have to say that I miss my wife and kids a ton!!  I love them so much and am very grateful for my wife and all her support in helping me finish up this phase of my schooling.  She is incredible and I am the luckiest guy ever!

The title of this post helps to show a little of the Minnesota accent.  Some of the real Minnesotans put a big accent on the "O" and when I hear it it sounds kind of funny to me.  But what can I say I've been told here by someone that I have an accent too!

Here is a picture of the hospital that I am at a large amount of my time:


     
I think it is a pretty awesome place even though I still am lost when we get up on the upper floors rounding on patients.  The doctors that I am with mostly are Dr. Boffeli and Dr. Phannenstein.  They have very different personalities and characteristics, but they are both very good at what they do and I am glad to have this time to learn from them.  I have also spent a lot of time with the residents and they have been great!  It's crazy to think in a year I will hopefully be in that situation even though it is a lot of responsibility.

Yesterday there wasn't much that I had to do for my rotation so I went downtown.  Here are a few pics of what I saw.  The city is so big and lots to see so I probably missed a lot of the cool stuff.

 So from the top left and going clockwise: The town clocktower, Target field (Twins' stadium), the metrodome (Vikings' stadium), the downtown library, and then the last three are just some pics of some of the buildings downtown.  One of these days I'd like to make it to the farmers market downtown because I hear it is huge and pretty awesome!  I've also  been able to keep up the golfing habit, especially because the University of Minnesota's golf course is right across the street from us.
 
The road on the left of the picture is the road I live on.  The hole on the left is the 1st and if you look just to the left of the green that is where we're at.  There have been several golf balls found in the yard and the day that I got here one of the guy's back window was busted in their car and a little white ball was sitting in the back seat.

As a student on these rotations we get to do quite a bit.  We are able to spend a lot of time in the operating room helping out and getting to do some suturing.  I have to say that I think that is probably the best thing we get to do in my opinion.  Many of you will think this is gross, but I think the most common procedure I have seen is an amputation of one kind or another.  If I haven't learned anything else in my time at school it is that diabetes has some pretty bad effects and living a healthy lifestyle is such an important thing.  We also get to see students in clinic and come up with a diagnosis and help come up with a treatment plan.  We also get to spend time on call.  Here we spend a week on call.  I got called in a few times with the resident for some diabetic foot infections that needed to go to the operating room, an ankle fracture, and a motorcycle accident.  It was busy with some early mornings and late nights, but they were some good experiences.

Again I love my family and I miss you dearly!