Most people had it figured out anyway, or at least suspected.

Yes … I’m a nerd.

Judge me harshly if you will, but I’m proud. I’m a nerd, and I shall be heard!

Tim McGinnis … I’m with you, brother! I’m the very first fan of your blog on Facebook.

Little Dragon #5.

Quit old job; started new job.

Trying to sell our current house … UGH.

Trying to find a new house that will fit us all!

And locally …

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition & the Grys family.

Death of Pekin Mayor Dave Tebben.

And more broadly …

Obama.

Blago.

The Economy.

The Cubs 100-Year CHOKE.

Here’s to a not-so-crazy 2009!

I haven’t been blogging as much of late because I’ve been dealing with a lot issues in my personal life. One of those “issues” is a joyous one, of course … the arrival of my fifth daughter. One of the other issues I’ve been dealing with, however … not so joyous.

I tendered my resignation to Pekin Hospital on Friday, October 10. I will continue my duties there until my contract expires on November 28.

I will keep my reasons for resigning to myself, other than to note that I am the fifth primary care physician to partially (Mike Honan, Gail Williamson, Page Settles) or completely (Greg Moskop and myself) sever their ties with Pekin Hospital in the last year.

I am deeply, deeply saddened to have to make this move. I have many wonderful families in my practice, and I’m so sorry that they’ll now be forced to find a new pediatrician. I’m sad to leave two wonderful colleagues – Terry Tosi and Erika Hunter – and a fantastic group of nurses and support staff in Suite A (the office I share with Dr. Tosi) and on 5 South & 8 North (Peds & OB, respectively). Finally, I’m sad to leave this community. Pekin has been my home for the last two years, and I feel strongly that this is a wonderful place to live and raise a family. M’lady, the Little Dragons and I are very sad to leave the friends that we’ve made here.

However, I’m also excited about the new opportunities offered by my new practice at OSF Holy Family Medical Center in Monmouth, IL. I will be the only pediatrician in Monmouth, since the previous pediatrician left in August due to family circumstances. In fact, I’ll be the only pediatrician in all of Warren County. As a part of the OSF Medical Group, I’ll have built-in connections with the Children’s Hospital of Illinois and the pediatric specialists there. Monmouth is an hour drive to Peoria, 10-15 minutes to Galesburg, and less than an hour to Macomb, Burlington (IA) or the Quad Cities. It’s all a little frightening, but very exciting as well.

BTW, playing with my thingy was precipitated by Billy playing with BlogPeoria’s thingies. Blame the Blogfather.

The day starts rather unremarkably. I shave, shower, dress for work, and kiss the girls goodbye. All pretty standard so far.  At work, I actually get a chance to sit down and eat some breakfast & scan the JS because my first patient cancels.

Then around 9:30 or so, it begins.

L&D calls my office as I’m seeing patients. One of the nurses needs to talk to me about a C-section. That’s never good. The nurse’s description of the situation makes me cringe … this could be bad. They really need me there at noon. Schedule rearranging ensues due to the C-section, knowing I’ll likely be up there for 2-3 hours, depending on how things go.

Then the wife calls. Little Dragon #5, still in utero, is misbehaving. She’s heading to the OB’s office to get checked out.

I finish my morning patients and head up to L&D for the C-section.

While I’m up preparing for the C-section, the wife calls from the OB’s office. She’s getting admitted for observation at OSF because she’s 28 weeks gestation and the OB thinks he might see a small abruption on the ultrasound.

*&#%!

The C-section goes better than expected, and after a long wait the OSF transport team finally arrives. I head out to meet up with my wife at St. Francis, all my office appointments now rescheduled.

On my way out my secretary tells me that Little Dragon #1’s school called. LD#1 was struck in the face by another kid swinging a racket around. It cracked off about a quarter of one her left maxillary central incisors … one of her adult, permanent front teeth.

*&$%!!

The wife likes Starbucks – iced mochas, to be exact. M’lady requests one. Since she’s in antepartum hell, stuck in bed on a monitor, I dutifully spend $4.10 on a gigantic cup of iced coffee and hit the road to Peoria.

My vehicle has despicably shallow cup holders, and those are really big cups of coffee. Kinda top-heavy, too … the cups flare up from the bottom, and all the ice makes it heavy. Thus, given this marvelous day, the coffee is now decorating the floor of my car after a sharp turn getting on the highway.

*&$%!!!

Fortunately my string of misfortune for 5/12/2008 ended with the coffee spill, but what a day!

I should count my blessings, though. My wife is stuck in the hospital, but at least she’s stable and not contracting (and no abruption per the perinatologist … phew!) . The C-section I attended went about as well as could be expected given the circumstances, and the baby was transferred safely. My daughter only has a chipped tooth … not a broken nose or a skull fracture.

It could be have been a lot worse. However, I must say that I’m not anxious to have another day like this one … and my car reeks of coffee!!!

Thanks again to all those in the local blogosphere and local media (especially Michelle Teheux at the Pekin Times and Nishi Gupta at WHOI) who helped me shine a spotlight on this bottom feeder.

Hey, jerk-weed … I’m still here, and I’m still blabbin’.

I went to bed early last night – around 8:30, right after putting the girls to bed. I was just tired yesterday for some reason. I awoke to my alarm around 6:30 this morning, and Little Dragon #2 was up early and crawled in bed with us. I stumbled out of bed and into the shower. Nothing unusual so far.

Showering and talking to myself. Again, nothing unusual.

I get out of the shower and dry myself off.

Huh … I feel something in my mouth. Weird … did I miss something brushing and flossing last night? I knock this piece of material loose with my tongue and spit it out onto a piece of toilet paper.

Huh.

That has legs.

(Feeling around my mouth with my tongue a bit more … finding something else … spitting it out).

Yup, that’s another leg.

It was a spider … with 2 legs still attached and four more loose in my mouth. The other two? Ahhh well … extra protein!

Mr. Spider must have thought my mouth looked like a good place to spend the night and crawled inside. He was mistaken. He either drowned in my spit or was crushed by nocturnal bruxism.

My wife has vowed to never kiss me again.

I began my blog anonymously, but came out in the open half way through my first year.

My first controversial stand involved rhetorically taking on Jim Mangan and Mike Noyes in the school district consolidation debate.

My commentary on the local Pekin political scene, notably the exaggerations and deceptions of mayoral candidate Bill Toel, garnered some attention … both positive and negative.

Most importantly, I’ve had the opportunity to call attention to the great blessings, wrenching heartbreaks and lingering malice within my new home … Pekin, IL. I’ve grown to love this town, and most of the people that I’ve had the opportunity to meet – online and off – have been fantastic. Pekin is a wonderful community, and I hope to see it grow and evolve into an even better place.

Cheers also to my fellow local bloggers & regular commenters. You’re a unique bunch of folks, and I appreciate both your support and your criticism. One of these days, I’ll even show up to a blogger bash.

I look forward to seeing what the future holds for us all.

Brought to you by Janina Koppel at SP-Studio. Drop by and make your own South Park avatar!

I didn’t announce my departure beforehand because someone doesn’t like me very much, and they obviously know where I live.  I didn’t think that would be wise.

Looks like I have numerous comments to look over. Fortunately I got Akismet working again just before I left … otherwise I’d have 1577 spam posts to manually delete. Ugh!

I’m really not dissin’ you guys, I swear. I know, I know … I’ve been blogging for close to a year now, and I still have yet to attend a bash. Unfortunately I had a meeting at work that started at 5:30 and lasted until after 9 tonight. It was important, honest. I had to intubate and do chest compressions on a plastic baby doll.

OK, let me explain …

Part of my meeting included renewing my Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) certification. Being born is one of the most dangerous times in your life, and someone with the proper resuscitation skills needs to always be available in case something goes wrong. Sick newborns are scary as hell, even for pediatricians, so it’s good to keep your ducks in a row and stay up on current guidelines.

So one of these days I’ll share libations with my fellow bloggers. Tonight, however, was filled with exploring the wonders of the Neopuff and the intricacies of emergent umbilical vein catheterization.

Aren’t ya jealous?

Here, in no particular order, is why mild-mannered Matt Weidman became the blogger A Knight in Dragonland …

1) I’m an opinionated S.O.B.

2) I enjoy talking to myself. A blog is a much better forum than my previous favorite location … the shower.

3) As several others have stated, it’s good to actually sit down and compose your thoughts and think about the positions you take on various topics. You generate more effective arguments that way.

4) It’s good for me to be told I’m full of it occasionally (by someone other than my wife). The shower head never told me that. Of course we had interesting conversations on other topics …

Kidding.

5) This blog is a good forum to call attention to issues I find important. While I don’t generate very many hits myself, I’ve been fortunate enough to get some stories picked up by more widely read bloggers or local media outlets. If that helps to make the world a better place for someone like Jake Grys, then this is worth all the headaches, the name calling, the threats and the attempts of a certain holier-than-thou physician to get me fired.

I now will “break the chain” and assume whatever curse is attached to it. I don’t mind being tagged myself, but I refuse to tag anyone else. Pretty much everyone in the local blogosphere has been tagged already, anyway.