Strongest Woman I Have Ever Known

This is a video I made for myself, my family, and my grandma's friends. It was very satisfying and enlightening to look through all of her pictures and try to travel in her footsteps. Those who knew Verona Emma Becker Vogt will count themselves lucky to have been part of her long, fruitful life. She was an amazingly strong woman and spent her 94 years full of love, faith and hard work.

http://youtu.be/WJN2XCZXnDI

Old Kili tribute

While I was looking through some old YouTube videos today, I found this oldie-but-goodie that also never made it to the blogosphere.
At the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. January 31, 2009.
Keep in mind this was my first trip to East Africa (only a month in at this point), I had just hiked 9 hours without sleep and with very little food, and was oxygen-deprived at 19,000+ feet elevation. So I was a little emotional.
Click on the title to view the video on YouTube.

Cryptococcal Meningitis

David Meya, my Ugandan PI (aka principal investigator, aka boss), is talking about Cryptococcal Meningitis and our research in Kampala.
They have made much progress since I left, not surprisingly.
I was recently informed that the current refusal rate for lumbar punctures is now 1.5 percent!
And, I was contacted by an epidemiologist at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) who wants to replicate my work in South Africa! Now, if I could just finish that bloody manuscript...
Click on the title to view the video on YouTube

A day in the life... A year later

Look at me in a short white coat!
This was a med school recruitment video I was asked to be involved in. It went live 9 months ago, but I had neglected to post in on my blog. When I was back in Minnesota this summer, someone applying to medical school at the U actually recognized me from it.
It may very well be my first and last starring role, so enjoy.
Thank you to St. Johns for allowing us to film "on location" and to Jack McTigue for all his fabulous work making me look good.
Click on the title to view the video on YouTube.

New Digs

I did a bit of research and made some calls before leaving MN on our road trip to SoCal, then spent one exhausting day looking at houses before finding The One. It is an older gigantic 5 bedroom home with 3.5 bathrooms near the community college in town and about a mile from the hospital. Located close to Arroyo Verde park, I see great trail-running in my future.

View of the front of the house. The balcony belongs to the guest room!

View of the back of the house and part of the yard.

I really should be an artist...right. This probably makes my architecture friends cringe, but I was just trying to make some sketches for my roommates. All the rooms are huge.

The house was originally built on a nearby site, then cut in half and moved to this location in the 70s. Since then, it has belonged to the Green family and with Mama Green recently moving to an assisted living residence in the area, we are the first renters. It has great character and the place is perfect for entertaining with a big yard and various producing trees – avocado, orange, apple, peach, kumquat, parsimmon, macadamia nut, and likely others. I will be living with 3 of my fellow interns in a little community but with plenty of our own space, perfect. It also means we have a sweet guest room with a balcony ready to host visitors in sunny Ventura!

Some of these pictures are from prior to move-out, hence the furnishings.

Empty living room, what you can't see right now are the fireplace

and the doors out to the patio on the left. This room is 18 ft x 24 ft!

Breakfast nook

My room, complete with king-size bedroom set

Visits encouraged! I would suggest flying into Santa Barbara. But if you prefer driving, I hear it is a great road trip choice :)

Road trip...back...

Heading out east from Southern California, through a piece of Nevada, we stopped at the Hoover Dam on the border with Arizona. Quite the site, I have to admit. We first checked out the new bypass bridge – The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. Until this bridge was built, all traffic on US Route 93 had to drive across the 2-lane road on top of the Hoover Dam, a bottleneck and accident-prone area. The bypass bridge just opened in 2010, and is the second highest bridge in the US at 840 ft above the Colorado River – a little anxiety provoking as you walk across, with 4 lanes of traffic zooming by on the other side. Another fun fact - it is the first concrete-steel composite arch bridge in the US and the longest arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere. And the Hoover Dam is pretty cool too.

View of the The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge
from the Hoover Dam and then the other way around.

We made it to Williams, Arizona that first night with plans to check out the Grand Canyon the next day. I decided to do an early morning hike down into the canyon, while my mom opted to check out the sites on the rim. With just a sweatshirt for warmth, I was pretty well-chilled after my not-strenuous-enough hike 1/5^th of the way down into the canyon via the Kaibob trail. Despite the cold, it was pretty amazing. And after chatting up the ranger that led my hike, it is now my goal to do an in-and-out hike one day. Who’s with me?

A beautiful drive through Utah got us to Grand Junction that night where we stayed with Caroline Knox and Mike Lindow. It was great to catch up as they are planning a wedding for later this summer, preparing for their chief year and try to figure out what to do post-residency. I hope to make it back to Colorado again soon, winefest or music festival possible, and Jodi’s wedding for sure in June.

Early on the road, we fortunately hit no snow in the mountains and made it to Denver in time to get an oil change and grab some lunch. Then right back on the road – we didn’t want to be late for South Dakota. We did stop at Mount Rushmore, but it was raining and we tried to snap a few pics of the guys in between clouds. We skipped Crazy Horse due to the rain, and I wonder if and when they will actually ever finish it, 63 years and counting.

After we finished 3 audio books, we turned to our music collections – with ABBA and Vanbot making the cut! We spent the night somewhere in the middle of SD, because my mom vetoed a straight-through effort, and as we were making our way back the next morning we called Dad to make sure lunch would be ready when we arrived. Right. Good news, though, they finally made it in the field while we were gone – mid-May – and were busy.

It was a fun, and productive trip. I found a place to live, met new friends and caught up with old ones, explored tourist destinations in my own country, and shared it all with my mom!

My mom and I in Ventura

Road Trip!

I know, I know…. a lot has happened since Boston and I have yet to write about a short but very intense trip to Israel, my amazing and influential time in Sweden, and my momentous medical school graduation. It is coming, I swear, but I never claimed I was a responsible blogger.

After flying in on Wednesday night and graduation on Friday, I loaded up my mother’s Chevrolet Equinox with most of my worldly possessions (thanks for the packing help Dad!) and the two of us started across the country early Tuesday morning. Armed with a few audio books, my trusty GPS and some initial healthy snacks (I instituted a no-junk-food rule that made it to Nevada), we headed south from Sauk Centre with yours truly at the wheel. Somewhere in Iowa or early Nebraska I turned the reins over to Sally who, for some reason wasn’t listening to Mrs. Garmin, and after 10 minutes of sleep I awoke to, “Was I supposed to turn there?” But, “recalculating” got us back on track and we made it through an incredibly long and boring Nebraska, listening to Benazir Bhutto’s Reconciliation – I have to admit that the Sauk Centre library’s audio book selection was slim-pickings a day prior to our departure. The book was an example of many books I start and never finish – deep and informative and impossible to read; but surprisingly easy to listen to. And we did make it to Denver at the end of day one and spent the night at the house of newly engaged Jodi Marthaler and Jeremiah Ervin.

We awoke the next morning to rain in Denver, which we soon discovered was decently heavy snowfall in the mountains as we toiled through the Rockies to Grand Junction, where we stopped for lunch at a great Indian restaurant recommended by Ms. Caroline Knox. Denver and Grand Junction reminded me how much I love Colorado and why it was high on my list of residencies; but the snowy drive up and down the mountain slopes may very well be why it was not my first choice.

Our second night was spent in Las Vegas, at a casino-hotel off the strip. No gambling for us, but I did drive down The Strip on our way out of town for my mother to see, and photograph, the imaginative monstrosities that line Las Vegas Boulevard.

We took our time and made it to Ventura in the early afternoon. It was an incredible relief to unload the contents of the vehicle into Nicky and Kyle TePoel’s garage. The vehicle had been packed to the gills – no rearview mirror action, no reclining the cramped front seats, suitcases on top and bike on the back – and we had been unable to leave it unattended up to this point.

Nicky and Kyle had family in town and so we stayed with Amy Dilbeck. A dear Kampala friend, John Napier, had put me in touch with one of his best law school friends when he learned of my stupendous match. Amy is a recent graduate of Pepperdine Law and has set out a shingle as an expert in wills, estates, and trusts, in a beautiful historic house in downtown Ventura. She is a truly amazing person and a practiced hostess. I hope she realizes we are going to be spending lots of time together in Ventura.