Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

If any of you have been paying attention to my blog posts, the fact that I like hanging out with my  brother should be pretty obvious. He is so darn enthusiastic about everything that it is a blast to be around him. His newly-created friends at BYU can testify to this. But I won't ask them. Just take my word for it. I've been around him longer. The last month has been a sort of 'crunch time' for family time, because we knew Jaron would be leaving on his LDS mission very shortly, and outside of the emails that he can write once a week, and the twice-a-year phone calls, we won't hear from him for two years. So we fixed up and flew a remote-control airplane, composed some music, played some music, went geocaching (unsuccessfully, but nevermind), and generally goofed off. You can bet I will miss him. But you can also bet your britches that I'm dang proud of him (as evidenced by the strange literary expressions). He is a REALLY good, sharp, trustworthy,

I haven't really seriously considered a new year's resolution for this year. I vaguely decided that it should be "be happy." However, I have already cried 4 times this week. Resolutions are so hard to keep. My patient is dying. He has requested that we stop treatment. I support that decision, because the treatments  do little good (in terms of his response) and cause a lot of pain. But it's still hard to watch. I've cried with my manager, with my family, with the palliative care doctor, and with just me. I was telling someone a while ago that it's easier to watch an adult die than a child, which is why I chose to work on an adult medical/surgical floor instead of pediatrics. "Easier" is a relative term here. I can still sleep at night because I know that I did my best to help him get better, and now I'll do my best to ease his death. So I visited him today, and sat and watched part of "Alice in Wonderland" with him, and talked abo