Marshall T. Steen

Marshall T. Steen passed away at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on the morning of December 2, 2007. Marsh was 86 years old. Born in Superior, Wisconsin on July 8, 1921, he leaves behind his loving wife of 63 years, Cora, four children and their spouses, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Marsh proudly served our country in the Pacific during World War II. He was loved not only by his family, but by all who knew him, including hundreds of students he taught as a public school teacher in Minnesota, Colorado and Arizona. Marsh taught science at Cocopah junior high school in Scottsdale for twenty years before retiring in 1986. He will also be greatly missed by his friends at Calvary Church of the Valley where he and Cora have been active and dedicated members for 36 years. A public memorial service will be held at Calvary Church of the Valley, 6107 N. Invergordon Road in Paradise Valley at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 . A family graveside service will be held at The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona.

granddad will be missed

Marshall T. Steen passed away at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on the morning of December 2, 2007. Marsh was 86 years old. Born in Superior, Wisconsin on July 8, 1921, he leaves behind his loving wife of 63 years, Cora, four children and their spouses, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Marsh proudly served our country in the Pacific during World War II. He was loved not only by his family, but by all who knew him, including hundreds of students he taught as a public school teacher in Minnesota, Colorado and Arizona. Marsh taught science at Cocopah junior high school in Scottsdale for twenty years before retiring in 1986. He will also be greatly missed by his friends at Calvary Church of the Valley where he and Cora have been active and dedicated members for 36 years. A public memorial service will be held at Calvary Church of the Valley, 6107 N. Invergordon Road in Paradise Valley at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, December 4, 2007 . A family graveside service will be held at The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona.

Wingsuite mountain swoop

Remember

Flickr interestingness

I've recently discovered Flickr's interestingness algorithm for photos. Wow, there are some really neat pictures out there! Many more hours than I care to admit have already been blissfully spent perusing the fascinating content that Flickr's formula has deemed "interesting". If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend you get hooked as well!
I've been using a feed I found of Flickr's interesting stuff to automatically change my desktop every couple of hours and populate my screen saver with neat pictures. However, the downside is that what some people might consider artistic can sometimes be a little more risque than I would like to display on my laptop. The solution? I found a blog by a guy called Alaeddin who feels likewise and has made a favorite's feed of Flickr's interestingness and promises to exclude the iffy shots at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AlaeddinFavPhotos. Enjoy!

Coast Guard celebration

We enjoyed an afternoon of fun and fellowship at Kaylee's place in Grand Haven followed by a splendid evening of fireworks by the lake, courtesy of the US Coast Guard. I might have to say that those were the most impressive fireworks to date that I have seen in person! They are shot off from a hillside across the channel; apparently, this hill has a history of catching fire from all the pyrotechnics! I did see a couple small flames start licking the brush but they were quickly extinguished. What a blast - and it wasn't even the fourth of July!

The gang waiting for the show to start.
This grassy knoll was overrun by slugs!

To pass the time we played scum.
I never made it to king but I was scum - twice...

Fun times

Chris just got a MacBook and we had some fun with its built in iSight camera!

May this be a lesson unto you all!

What the lessons are may be up to your interpretation... :o)

Day at Wolf Lake

Here are some pics from a post-July 4th get together we had at my place in Muskegon by Wolf Lake. Could not have asked for a more beautiful day! To top it off I caught the biggest large mouth bass I've ever caught in that lake. We enjoyed fishing, swimming, kayaking, paddle-boating, board games, snoozing, a bonfire, and fire writing! Thank God for friends and His beautiful green earth!

(from left to right: Jon, Meg, Lauren, Kaylee, Chris)

BTW, the item Lauren caught from the lake is a dirty sock! :o)

Decisions, decisions...

The time is rapidly approaching to start applying for residency. Why on earth is it so hard to figure out what I like? I like medicine; I like working with people. I've enjoyed just about every rotation I've done so far but no single one really jumps out at me as an area that gets me passionate. I could see myself as a surgeon, a pediatrician, an anesthesiologist, an internist, an obstetrician gynecologist, and a family doctor. Just about the only area that has been ruled out so far is radiology and that's mainly because I don't foresee having access to the technology on the medical mission field.

Certainly doing something in surgery seems the most obvious when it comes to medical missions. "A chance to cut is a chance to cure," as they say. You get definitive and nearly immediate results, which is great, and I am perpetually blown away by the fact that we are working on someone's insides! On the other hand (literally) my manual dexterity seems to be lacking, not something that couldn't be overcome with more practice, but it is disheartening when I'm trying to make a major career decision.

Anesthesia is really neat. Just about the only pharmacology I actually enjoy has to do with the autonomic system - sympathetics, parasympathetics, and the like - and it is really satisfying to see the immediate effect of pushing a liquid through a syringe to adjust the heart rate, blood pressure, consciousness level, etc... it's like magic! The downside is that you get relatively little interaction with conscious patients. To contrast with surgery, you see your patients in the office before and after the operation but, in anesthesia, you introduce yourself and then knock them out. As they say in anesthesia, "the best anesthesiologist is one the patient doesn't remember", because something likely didn't go so well if they do remember you.

I liked pediatrics because you are working for the most part with patients who are generally healthy save for whatever infection they are currently battling. You may give them medication but it is usually only temporary and they will go back to being their normal healthy selves before long. Also the pediatric population has not yet had a chance to cause their own medical issues through poor lifestyles. On the other hand, I have five fingers. :o) Seriously, though, I really dislike dealing with genetic diseases and most of them crop up in the pediatric population. I also don't know that I could emotionally handle the mortally ill children.

Obstetrics was a blast! I had so much fun and was so honored to be delivering babies. I enjoyed the variety of clinic, delivery, and surgery. However, I didn't get much exposure to the prenatal and gynecologic side of the profession and I don't think I would like that as much. Besides, here's a blinding glimpse of the obvious, being a guy I can't relate to my patients from personal experience. I can understand why the profession has so many female physicians although I have met a couple excellent male ob-gyn doctors.

I think, internal medicine probably exposed me to more consequences of poor lifestyles and got me to feeling more jaded about it all. The patient on oxygen who still smokes and the awful outcomes of unmanaged diabetes are just a few examples. Also, internists have a butt load of patients to see and do not seem to get much time to spend time with each.

Family medicine has the most potential for developing relationships with my patients. You get to take care of their overall health, which gives a nice broad subject matter. Unlike peds, I was frustrated though by how many troubles are caused by poor lifestyle habits. It seems like you are fighting an uphill battle with a mediocre arsenal of advice and drugs when the best cures are healthy eating and exercise. To be fair, I am probably honing in on a relatively smaller subset of patients with this complaint and most people really do take care of their bodies.

So, I'm still stuck. I like and dislike aspects of everything in medicine. Perhaps I should just stop waiting for that perfect area and pick one... perhaps God will give me some guidance soon!

If you read all of that, kudos for sticking with me and please send out a prayer for direction in this decision.

Evolution of Dance YouTube video

Instant nostalgia!