Brag blog = blag?

My self esteem is faltering due to a "challenging" work situation, so I am here to brag about my life so that I feel better. I mean, blogs are only really good for 3 things: 1. Complaining 2. Bragging 3. Awesome Youtube videos. I might as well be up front about it; this is a brag post.

Last time I wrote was in March...

Since then I:

1) Got back into coaching and loved it



2) Toasted my big brother at his wedding



3) Finished up rotations and became Dr. Reamsnyder





4) Studied my arse off and passed the boards to become Jacob Reamsnyder, R.Ph... and joined a so-highly-esteemed profession



5) And whilst I complain about the stresses of my job, it has allowed us to rapidly progress onto the next Life Project... coming to you ~April 2012, Castle Reamsnyder will be completed



Also went on a crazy vacation with friends, had a blast at the McGinty clan reunion (120 Scottish people, booze, and McKaraoke? Yes please!), and lost 45 pounds.

In fact, just to show how backwards Team Reamsnyder does things, we are down a collective 85 pounds since the wedding-
Before:





Kinda gross, right? I can assure you that I publish the above pictures without Megan's approval. I will be punished for this.

and... After:



Ahh yes, MUCH sleeker
- Some people count pounds or inches... we are both excited to be back down to a single chin each.

Anyways, when I look at where I am in life compared to this same time a year ago, it is rather surprising to see how much has changed. I'm happier, healthier, married, gainfully employed, and confident in my direction in life. Last year I watched my money evaporate from educational costs, while this year I'm... still watching my money evaporate, but at least now its for COOL BIG things that I get to keep.

But as we all know, the further you go in life, the more you end up right back at the beginning...

Facebook role model

So I'm coaching lacrosse for my beloved HS alma mater this Spring, and one of the other assistant coaches just got fired. There were many reasons, one of which included him having a lot of publicly inappropriate facebook photos. This made me immediately realize that I needed to get a more wholesome digital persona, and fast.

Here are some live-blogged "untag highlights"

- 3 pictures of me holding Donny in my arms. While Donny is wearing a prom dress

- 1 picture of me and Katie - proudly holding my sock that Katie bit a hole in during our cruise Quest domination

- More than a few pictures of me either drinking, shotgunning, or drunk-dancing. 2 of me drunk-dancing while holding a beer and wearing a 3-foot-tall balloon hat.

- 1 photo of me posing next to a "Mr. Viagra" sign

- 2 photos of me double-fisting 40s of King Cobra

- A few pictures of me dressed as Harry Potter... not necessarily bad role-model behavior, but not something I want high school jocks to see

- A few photos of us playing the rolling game
(I'm starting to notice I just need to eliminate every photo taken of me while visiting OU)

- Photos of me standing on a chair and screaming (never knew the lyrics...) along to some Wicked song

- I feel like prior to this, my tagged photos over-represented the amount of time I spend snuggling with other men


- Photos of us playing Buck Buck.... actually, some of those are just too awesome. Photos that represent my jumping prowess must stay.

- Now I'm getting nostalgic and more stubborn about which photos *really* have to be untagged. The picture of me and Donny in the baby pool is a keeper.

- Nor am I ashamed of any photo in which I am holding a poodle

- One photo of me skipping down the street. Coaches don't skip.

- That photo from Sweetheart 2002 is just so damn epic. Let's remind everybody that it still exists.

- Can't get rid of that one of me rodeo-riding the tiger sculpture at the zoo

- I don't think my presence in any album titled "Mika Dance Party" needs to be known

- Starting to get really depressed about the 40 pound up and down weight rollercoaster that pharmacy school has been for me

- Drunk Jake 2006 themes included: Standing on banisters, doing the Heisman pose, letting people know that I'm #1, and of course- staring open-mouthed at the camera

- I'd forgotten that Meg and I started to mock some peers when we started titling our albums "**hOcKiNg HiLlS aDvEnTuRe** *~*lOvE*~*" and so on. Too snooty to remove this opportunity to again look down my nose at such people.

- aaand now I'm dancing with an inflatable palm tree

- Man-on-man piggyback rides? totally kosher

- Not at all ashamed of all the pictures where I can tell I was flexing my calf muscles extra hard

- Dancing with a bowling ball

I have now reached the Halloween where I dressed up as Jigglypuff. It would be too hurtful to ever tarnish the glory that was this costume, and therefore I will now stop this untagging business. I figure if I just look like a boring old married dude, nobody's going to look past the first couple hundred photos, right?

I know that linking to another blog isn't really a true update, but I felt the need to share this one anyway:

http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/drug-r-us.html

Dr. Grumpy is one of my favorite blogs to follow, for a few reasons... he's funny, he's snarky, and he enjoys pointing out the general stupidities of the world - everything I dream to be! His blog is also one of the rare physician blogs, while there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 pharmacy blogs (we are, by nature, a whiny people). He also is nice to the pharmacy bloggers and often goes into detail on pharmaceutical issues.

Anyway, the people reading this blog that are actually interested in the pharmacy part of it probably already know about Dr. Grumpy, but in case you didn't, please to enjoy.

In my life, there isn't too much new. I'm stuck at Meijer this month, cramming pills into a bottle as fast as possible and counting the minutes go by as slowly as possible. The wifey and I both hit a mid-winter slump regarding our general place in life (working a combined 80 hours a week, living frugally, and yet somehow making negative money - have I mentioned how much I love rotations?) but we are trying to take back control of what we can and we are doing better now. I got a lacrosse coaching position with WNHS, and I'll be bossing around the JV team along with another guy who I think is going to be pretty cool to work with. Most importantly, I get to boss around Tyler's little brother, which will be strange but satisfying.

And now I'm going to be late going to Meijer... they get what they pay for, right?

Dr. and Mrs. Reamsnyder

It's been over a month since a rather momentous occasion... I successfully tricked Meg into marrying me. Married life hasn't changed me all too much, the day-to-day is very much the same. I have noticed that people treat you with much more legitimacy and respect when you're a married man, which is nice. I've already started thinking of myself as a "family man", even if my only child right now is a 70 pound rottweiler. Gotta take care of my own, ya know.

Just about everyone reading this would have been at the wedding, so I won't bother going too much into detail on that. It was beautiful and cute and sweet and the happiest day of my life. It was great to see everybody there, great to have the family so heavily involved, great to celebrate our relationship with all the important people in our lives. Thanks everybody for making it such a wonderful day.

The honeymoon afterward was amazing. We went to Sandals at Montego Bay in Jamaica, and it was a slice of paradise. Full service, beautiful weather, big long beach, totally clear water, delicious food, free booze, great activities, and pure relaxation. We both felt a thousand pounds lighter having all the wedding planning done and after everything went so perfectly, and it was nice just to be together without anything else bothering us. We got to reconnect and enjoy the beginning of our new life together, and I couldn't have been happier.

In less fun news, I've been really struggling with my pharmacy rotation this month. I'm with the oncology specialty pharmacists at the James cancer hospital at OSU. I didn't anticipate how emotionally draining it would be to interact with such sick and frail people every day.
I'm having a much harder time disconnecting from it than I have in other practice settings. It's especially difficult because every patient and family I meet reminds me of somebody I know, and I feel overwhelmed with much more empathy than I expected. Every single case is a damned tragedy and I can't stop thinking about the problems facing the patients and their families. One patient was a stage 4 (almost always terminal) widowed mother with 15 and 13-year-old daughters. Another patient was a dying 25-year-old guy with his 23-year-old, 8-months-pregnant wife... that one really sent me into a spin. I can't even imagine how I would handle it if I was dying and Meg was pregnant or we already had young kids... it's terrifying.
I can't get all the patients out of my head when I get home and I can't stop putting myself in their shoes. I've had countless nightmares since this month began where I or someone I love is being told they have metastatic cancer, or I'm watching them fade away from the disease.
This is all further made worse by the sinking realization that, given my family history, cancer is probably what will kill me and most of my immediate family, eventually. It's terrifying because I've seen enough young people dying from it to know that it can strike at a frighteningly young age. By no means am I saying that it's more convenient to die when you're elderly, but it terrifies me that it'll come too soon, when I still have a family depending on me.
Most of the patients seem more concerned about the people who depend on them, rather than being concerned about themselves. It's just constantly heartbreaking. It must take a special kind of person to work in this type of setting. With the limitations of what I can do in this rotation setting, I don't feel like I'm making any difference, so there's no fulfillment by making patients happier or more comfortable or more ready. I constantly feel helpless, feeling like I don't know enough, or we don't have the science these people need, feeling like even if we try our damnedest but we still are powerless against so much.

I used to think I wouldn't have a problem, and be able to separate myself and be fine when I got home from a work environment like that. I was wrong.