Jen and Ed's Blog

Back to School

Edgar — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:42:27 +0000

So tomorrow is the first day of the fall semester, and having 8:30 am classes everyday is not going to be fun. Summer was very busy and successful, just a two week break. Now it is time to get back to school, I’m already looking forward to winter break. We’ll see what this semester has in store, tomorrow is going to be a long day.

World Cup Final (Surprise)

Jenny — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:21:08 +0000

After a whole month of watching soccer games the winner of the world cup is Spain. I thought one of the funniest moments (since the game itself was quite boring) was the guy who tried to put a hat on the world cup. Yes, that’s right. He didn’t try to steal it or touch it, he tried to put a hat on it. I guess he thought it was too cold for the cup and so he needed to put a hat on it to keep it warm. Below is the link to watch.

Summer

Edgar — Sat, 29 May 2010 21:40:38 +0000

Well it is summer time, not technically (June 21). Jen and I are sadly in school, getting to enjoy the great summer weather in Gainesville instead of somewhere else, maybe somewhere with a beach. So far the semester is going well, and the class load is not to too bad. We have to balance it with lost of volunteering and we’re pretty busy all week long. Just have to make it until August in order to enjoy a mini break before fall semester starts. One of the biggest things to happen since last month is that we have taking up rock climbing, and we now have our belay cards. Rock climbing? Really? It sounds a little spontaneous, but it is not. We had seen the rock climbing wall before at Lake Wauburg, which is a lake where UF students can enjoying biking, canoeing, climbing, etc. So one weekend we decided to go and try the 50 foot climbing wall out, and we both enjoyed it. So we decided to take a short class so Jen and I can belay each other, which means we can pull each other up the wall. Basically I am putting my life in Jen’s hands, that I don’t fall to my death… Anyway, during the class Jen got rope burn while belaying someone on the wall, it was not very pretty, and she wont be belaying for at least a week. We also got bitten by these annoying bugs and they left us with some very nice itchy and red bites on our legs and hands. Bug repellent couldn’t keep them off, they were yellow and were about the size of a bee. We also mountain bike at the lake as well, it is a nice bike ride through the woods. First time we went biking Jen got some ticks on her. Now that I think of it, I don’t think we should go back to the lake, I don’t know what might happen next time we go, with our luck someone is going to get attacked by a wild animal.

Finals!

Jenny — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:14:48 +0000

Finals exams start monday and it’s going to suck. Pray for us..we have 3 back to back exams.

Wreck.

Jenny — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:13:21 +0000

My father found me.

He’s not my dad, he’s just my father. There’s a difference. He left me once, no twice actually. I have been an emotional wreck since Wednesday afternoon. I got a facebook message at 12 pm with his name. I’ve searched for him aimlessly on the internet but I knew I would never find anything, not on facebook or myspace. I just liked to search for that name. So Wednesday he searched for me and he found me. I have no reason to trust this man but I knew him for the first six years of my life. To me he was good. To my mom he wasn’t. The last time he did what he did he landed himself in jail. But when I was six we couldn’t take it anymore and he couldn’t convince us to let him stay so he left. He took our belongings and sold them at a flea market. Yes that was him, an alcoholic and female abuser.

I don’t like to hate people. I really like to forgive, not forget. I don’t think I can forgive so easily for those people that are super close to me but those that are not as close I can. It takes just as much energy to hate someone as it does to love them. I like to be indifferent to those that have done my family wrong. There’s only been one person that has done us that much wrong. I know writing this is a way of lifting a burden off my shoulders. Of cleansing myself in a way. I don’t get the opportunity to write ever. But because of him we lived like dogs. I worked like a dog by the time I turned 7. I had to be my mom’s new husband and support us, take care of jessy, teach workers the ice cream truck routes my mom had created and maintained, make slushies, do well in school, get picked up in an ice cream truck after school and do my hw in the truck while selling ice cream, eventually selling food on the streets. I went door to door selling food and getting good tips at times. All this for for 10 years, the american dream really. But I learned so much because he left. I learned to work hard. I learned to be a family person first and to never abandon them. If I could do what I had to do my whole life than I could do anything.

When I turned 14 he called after so long. He wanted to know how we had done without him. Well we didn’t live in the trailer park anymore so obviously we did well for ourselves. He called a couple times after that and then he found out he would have to start paying backed up child support fees. He did or didn’t like that. I don’t know but I do know he stopped calling after the government forced him to start paying. So I didn’t hear anything from him when I turned 15 anymore. He had left again but at that time I didn’t really care. It wasn’t until recently that I started feeling curiosity about his whereabouts. Dead or alive? Happy or miserable? I mean I was doing well and where was he? This whole time we had moved on.

He finds me now, Facebook. Wants to establish a father-daughter relationship. I don’t know him. I feel like a traitor for accepting him. I believe people can change. I think it’s the optimism I have for people. But I don’t want to be naive. If you ever saw the Wrestler with Mickey Rourke you would understand why I would want to know as much as my father as I can. Mickey’s character gets killed at the end (by choice) and before that he had tried to get his daughter back on her good graces. He succeeded for a little bit but when realizing she wouldn’t take him back the last time he decided life wasn’t worth living.

I’m genuinely a good person. I can be a little impatient sometimes but I am genuinely a believer in the good of people. I also believe in the bad and tend to get scared of evil easily but I know good always outweighs the bad in people if they really try and care.

All I have gotten are many apologies and of course I forgive. I just don’t forget what’s happened. I don’t want to forget because without my past I wouldn’t be who I am today. I am scared of what’s going to happen. All I know is i’m emotional and afraid. But this is what living is all about, it’s just a roller coaster we live day by day.

Maybe I can be an inspiration to someone one day. Maybe I will never make an impact in the world but forgiveness is so powerful, it can make you feel like a huge boulder has been lifted off your shoulders and make you free. Believing is everything.

School

Edgar — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:52:59 +0000

So we’re just a few days away from our last regular semester exam, organic of course, no better way to end the semester. The very next day we have our first final for microbiology lab. Anyway, I am not looking forward to the next three weeks, Jen and I are going to miss a lot of sleep, and spent many hours studying. I guess we just have to enjoy the next couple of days before we enter the endless cycle that is finals. For the most part everything is going good, just have to make it through the next couple of weeks. We will definitely start eating more Chipotle and other forms of fast food, for now we will enjoy good home meals.

Updates

Jenny — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:58:14 +0000

Last time we blogged it was about my surgery. So much as happened since. First of all, I am happy to say that there were no problems post op. I do have four large holes that are still closing up, the only thing that bothers me is the cleaning that must be done because food just loves to stay stuck.

A week after my surgery Edgar and I got to shadow at a Family Practice. It was awesome! We were there about 10 hours for Thursday and Friday. I had the best time. It was a little funny because about 15 minutes into it Edgar started to lose skin color and started sweating like a beast! The nurse practitioner, who is awesome, said she used to see this happen with med students all the time when she used to teach at a medical school. With the proper care Ed was brought back to life! I really learned a lot about the doctor patient relationship. We had a great doctor, since most of his patients were hispanic and he was hispanic you could see, it’s hard to explain, like a sense of comfort from the patients since he would speak to them in spanish. Although the nurse practitioner was “white” as she called herself she spoke spanish and was very culturally aware. She had been working in the business for quite some time and you could tell that at first the patients would act differently when she was in the room, but once she started speaking spanish and talking about her favorite puerto rican food they definitely felt more comfortable and open, more willing to listen to her. She was truly an inspiration. I got to see a pap test on a woman who kindly allowed me, got to be in the room with a woman who had just gotten a double mastectomy and was having a hard time in her life, obviously. There were a lot of simple cases and a lot of difficult ones but i learned so much. Microbiology helps a lot, especially since we are taking the class now, so when it came to antibiotics and medications we were on the ball!

So then the health care bill passed and now the demand for doctors, especially for our generation, is going to increase. I think one of my biggest fears is that now that doctors know that all their patients will “afford” to pay for their treatments they will perform even more unnecessary tests since insurance companies will just have to pay for them and in that way doctors make their money. This is something that has always made me upset. I feel like health care has become more of a business and I guess in a way it is but it shouldn’t be that way. I did read an article that said there would be an incentive for doctors to provide quality care by giving them a 10% increase in pay. I was thinking about how this might work or how the government would know if the doctor was providing quality care and it seems a bit difficult. It will also be more difficult for people to see their doctors since more people that have not seen a doctor in years will be rushing to be seen. My question is are we going to have to accept more foreign doctors to treat us or are there going to be more medical school acceptance rates, more medical schools? It’s something i’m really curious about, really looking forward to see this big change.

More drilling…for oil? I’m so confused but it’s politics, I just don’t get it. I don’t want to get it honestly.

On a lighter note I’ve really started to enjoy King of the Hill even more than family guy. Edgar loves cartoons and I never really did so since we’ve moved in I’ve found myself watching so many different shows. I really love the “redneckness” of the show and just how simple the characters are.

Edgar is adddddddicted to reddit but honestly thanks to his addiction I get to hear very funny stories! www.reddit.com it’s a little bit difficult to navigate but once you get it, you have a bunch of fun!

This week we have vowed to only eat in the house. No eating out! Unfortunately we failed. Today we had some .69 cent burgers from McDonalds, two each. But that is it. It was hump day (Weds) so we needed a little break. Edgar is a great cook!

Allergies…Edgar suffers and I can only sit there and watch. Very thankful I do not suffer from allergies. For those of you with allergies and have trouble sleeping. Edgar has a netti pot and uses it right before bed, it definitely helps him get through the night. He also takes his medication at night so that when he wakes up he feels great and it (claritin) usually lasts until 7 pm.

We’ve been working every weekend and it will continue! There are a lot of tourists since it’s spring break or “semana santa” haha.

Until the next update.

Surgery

Edgar — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:16:55 +0000

So today I had the pleasure of taking Jenny to get her wisdom teeth taken out, and thank goodness everything went well. We got going early at 7:00 am, I got McDonald’s breakfast, so I could have energy for the rest of the day. Anyway I dropped her off and she was taken away. The procedure was quick, it took about an hour, when I was told to bring the car around I got a little nervous to see how Jen was doing. I got Jen’s prescription and brought the car around to pick Jen up, when the nurse brought Jen around she was woozy and not making a lot of sense. She look bad and had gauze in her mouth, I felt so bad for her. As I was talking to the nurse about what I need to do, Jen was only concerned with getting some money back. She kept asking me to ask the nurse if she was going to get a refund, because the surgery took about 45 minutes, instead of an hour, and Jen paid for an hour of sedation. It was hard to understand her because of the gauze in her mouth, but I was able to understand her. I brought her her home and dropped off her prescription. The rest of the morning I spent helping her drink water, change her gauze, and getting her an cold compress for the swelling. It was a busy morning, and I still had to go to lab. I made sure Jen had everything she needed and then headed out, luckily it was a quick lab and took less than an hour to finish. I picked up some frozen yogurt for Jen. So far Jen is doing well, and the pain isn’t too bad, but I know tomorrow she will really feel it and the swelling will increase. I hope everything goes well and tomorrow we head back home, so for the next couple days Jennifer will be treated like a princess.

Wisdom [Teeth]

Jenny — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:15:20 +0000

I have a wisdom tooth that is coming in or isn’t, really i’m not sure. It’s really infected, that I do know. I’m in too much pain and the pus is just too much (TMI, I know) I would love to go to the doctor, dentist etc but the truth is I can’t afford it. I have no insurance. This is what I have feared ever since I got my insurance taken from me…all because I became an adult. I have no job, just a college student and no insurance, with an infected wisdom tooth with the possibility of the infection spreading to my jaw and throat. I was just at the school dentist where my student dentist looked at my tooth and said everything was fine. Everything was fine but she infected my wisdom tooth or something because only after 1 week the infection started. We agreed to have my wisdom teeth removed in a little more than a month and now this! I just paid about 200 dollars to see that dentist! I have no idea what to do. Perhaps pay another 200 plus to have this tooth removed but right now its the weekend and nothing is open. I have a headache on the right side of my brain only with swollen lymph nodes. I’m scared. I have been doing salt water rinses but with no antibiotics I don’t think it will do any use. The only thing I like to do is push the pus out because when it does there’s a lot of pressure released (TMI) I know. Haha. I’m just hoping for a miracle and that it goes away. I just can’t afford this, no one can.

Olympics!

Edgar — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:08:33 +0000

So this is the final week of the winter Olympics, and it has bee very entertaining to watch, during late night studying we would have something to entertaining to watch. Out favorite sports are short track speed skating and skiing. We have been cheering for Apollo Ohno and Lindsey Vonn throughout the games. As of right now the US is leading in the medal count, but not in gold, let’s hope by the end of the games we’re #1 in both. I learned a great deal about figure skating after watching these games, and it’s not the most boring sport, that, in my opinion has to be curling…but I think it’s like shuffle board on ice. Bob sledding is also interesting, speeding down a little car going 90+mph on ice is something I’d like to try. Snowboarding was also fun to watch, Shaun White for the US got gold. I hope the US team wins gold against Canada, we need the gold and we have a pretty good team, we’ll see how that plays out. These Olympics are are just a warm up for the summer Olympics in 2012! Hopefully we will be done at UF and in a good medical school. So here’s to London it will be interesting to see the games in a city we have been to.