Its the weekend and we have been a little busy for this place. The temperature backed off to the 110's here so it feels like a cold wave. Don't you think that is true sometimes. When its winter and its really cold and all of sudden its 40 and you think wow what a great day. Thats a little like it is here. Clean up some business that we have been doing. The general surgeon did another appendectomy and instead of helping him this time I actually gave the anesthesia.



I was going to help but some of the physician assistants around here need some experience in the operating room. I am going to put Dean out of work. I actually just held his clipboard like they do and recorded his vitals for about 30 minutes. It was funny b/c he actually did need a little help b/c the oxygen tank ran out and they needed to get another one hooked and so I bagged the guy (helped him breath) through the vent while they did that. You might think that was scary but its not a big deal b/c the kid had plenty of oxygen. At big hospitals they have a continuous line into the room or somebody who checks that every day if it is on a bottle. Here they do it themselves. Plus it took 3 minutes. It was just kind of fun to actually do other things.

This weeks activity gave me my 4th case of the rotation. They have done a total of 51 in 10 months. I think that is pretty good. It was a kid who cut his tendon that runs his finger at home. He came back and in his duty re ruptured it. So Dean and I and the whole FST crew threw together some stitches and pulled this tendon back together again yesterday. I know your not suppose to have fun at the expense of another persons demise but it was good to really operate again. It will be a chore here though b/c I do not have a hand therapist and my physical therapy guy that works here in the clinic with me isn't familiar with rehabbing this injury. It was good timing b/c he had a guy down from Baghdad that knew how to make a splint. Now we just got to get some of these clips for his fingernail and start his rehab in a few weeks. When it comes to repairing tendons in the hand I would have to say its 80/20. Its 80 percent therapy on how good you do b/c it is so very important.

This picture here is of a bird sitting behind my CHU this morning



I want to kill this bird. I had a great normal sleep going this morning. Sleeping in some and no real things to do until 9. This stinking bird chirped and chirped for hours it seems like. If I wasn't such a terrible shot I would of took out my gun and shot him. I did hit 22 out of 30 targets on the range to qualify. I took the picture b/c I just plain giving up on sleeping in b/c of the huge beautiful sunshine here at 5 am and the dumb singing bird outside my window. It was time to go to work and left and thats right where he sat behind my CHU on that little wire.

We had a couple of surgeries, a couple of meetings, a broken arm, and almost a dead bird. The WWS60gsc is doing well. I will tell you that using the elliptical is a good thing. Running is good also but you can use a lot of the same muscles and take a significant load of your joints. When I started I was going about 2 and half miles in 25 minutes. My heart rate easily went up to 170-180. That means you are out of shape. This was on the lowest resistance. After 3 weeks of this I am going about 3 or a little more miles everyday and with a higher resistance for 25 minutes. I know I'm getting better b/c my heart rate is 150-160 and overall just feel stronger. I am telling you it works. If your embarrassed or don't think you can this is good. Its not all about running. You burn calories when your heart rate is up. If you watch that biggest loser show they run but it takes some time to get there. If your goal is to run start with this. Get stronger in your cardio and legs then add in the running. I think the main reason most people stop working out, along with time, is the pain they feel after running. This has been a great and relatively painless way to get going. Go 20 minutes see how far you go. Do the same distance and time and resistance for 3 to 4 days. Give yourself a day off then go longer, faster, or more resistance. Just a little at a time. I am going to move up my resistance again b/c feel like I can run through what I am doing now. Its actually a great thing about being here.

Let's talk serious now. To the business about our topic today. Cutting the hair. I have a proposition for everybody at home. First I want you to know that Dean has come into army code with his haircut.



Then there is me. I had my trip to the barber yesterday also



I have gotten closer and higher with it this time. I forgot why some people called big bird or birdman when I was growing up. Looking at the profile and that pointy nose of mine I can see why. I have gotten it cracked a few times as you can see by the top part of it. The first was at Bible school. Playing softball and a kid let go of his bat and flew over and hit me square in the nose. It hurt and I think I was 2nd or 3rd grade. Funny how you can remember exact things in your mind when there is pain involved. The other times were basically playing too much basketball and it pretty much is inevitable when your a guard roaming around trying to get rebounds. I think I should try out for the wicked witch of the west with that nose.

Here is my proposition. I don't know how many people are reading this and really just glad to have something insightful and fun to plan to do everyday. I have 2 passions in my life. Orthopaedics and basketball. I want to know if the people involved here want to raise some money for basketball. You want to know what you get in return. I don't know how great it is but I am willing to shave my head if we raise some money for 4 organizations in town. This is the background. If it doesn't work then all is good. But I am hoping to do something good for some other kids. The goal is 500 dollars for each organization. The deadline date is June 15. So we roughly have 3 weeks. If we are successful then sometime that week the shave will happen. It will be documented by picture obviously. Here is how we should do it. At my clinic I will have them set up 4 bowls for the organizations. I hope my clinic will help me with this. Im going to spring this on them. At each bowl and at the end of the day we will update the amount to the 500 hundred dollars. I will also on the blog do it if this works. Not so sure it will. Here are the 4 organizations. The first is Hastings TIgerBall. I'm not exactly sure but I believe Dr. Reimers runs this group of kids from Hastings high that play youth basketball. The money I'm sure will go towards uniforms and tournaments. If he lets me know that is not needed it will go directly to the Hastings High Booster Club. The second is towards St. Cecilias youth basketball teams. They have a significant amount of them. Most of them I believe are sponsored by S and J detasseling(not sure if I spelled that right). Tim Farmer has done an unbelievable job of setting up these teams and sponsoring over the years for their youth and I believe is directly related to their success over the past 3 years in high school. The money will go directly to him or their organization to pay for uniforms or tournaments. If you didn't know that the J stands for Julie Bohlen, married to the photographer Bruce. The S stands for Stan Sheets and his great wife has taken xrays for my clinic for many years. The next group that needs it YMCA youth basketball. This ia a community thing. You don't have to be affiliated with a school. I know this would go directly to purchase pullover jerseys for their youth basketball games and obviously help offset some of the cost of running the basketball section. The last group is AC Hoops. Last year the coaches and I came up with an idea along with girls youth basketball coach Darren Fowler to start a organization to see if we can help get all the schools together and put some teams together and help pay for uniforms or tournaments. We are in its infancy with it so not much has been done b/c we are just finishing our first year. The members of the organization did a great job last year and hoping that this will flurish into successful teams that S and J have put on the court, Ravenna, and Beatrice. Youth basketball have driven those schools to be successful year after year.

Like I said I don't know if this will work. I am willing. I have wanted to do something for a long time, not just for my organization, but for everybody. So if your interested help me out and then you can see what a peach fuzz head looks like with a bird beak. If you want to send something in or make out a check this is how we will do it. AC Hoops is a non-profit organization. Well you can't just take in money or make it out to me so make it out to AC Hoops. I am springing it on everybody so I don't know how they run their groups except for the YMCA. I am sure if you write it out to them they will take it as written and do the right thing with it. My point is I need to get this going. Write the check out to AC Hoops but if you want the money to go to the other organizations put a note on it or write it in the memo section so that it will go to them. Being a non-profit organization we can take in money and distribute it from that organization to the other groups when we find out exactly how much. Act like a bank. Essentially try to make this easy and since we only have 3 weeks, simple. I hope this makes sense and forgive my staff at home if you show up monday with a check b/c they might be a little surprised. Thank you so much. Our address is below

Hastings Orthopaedics
2207 W. Osborne Dr Suite 100
Hastings, NE 68901
Attn: AC Hoops

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