Annual tradition, let’s go!

Winston

Our son was born! It’s been utterly transformative, as expected.

He grows up so fast. I still remember Katie and me tag-teaming his first diapers, marveling at his frequent, golden, and buttery poops. Now diapering is as dull, smelly, and routine, as expected. He was akin to an immobile houseplant for months, then one day he learned how to roll; since then, has been rolling himself into tummy time nonstop and then complaining. He used to do the classic newborn “squeezy face backbend” stretch, then stopped for a while, and is now employing the toddler backbend “get me outta here!” maneuver. Full circle already!

As a neuroradiologist, I’m endlessly fascinated by his neurological development. I played a little bit with his primitive reflexes like rooting, Moro, and Babinski. I’m watching his visual processing evolve. from light-dark differentiation, to motion tracing, to facial recognition, to social smiles. I’m noting developments in his motor skills, sensory processing, logical brain, and even the semblance of a personality.  

Fatherhood makes me think more deeply on my own childhood. It reminds me of how extraordinarily lucky I was to have my devoted parents, especially my mom who sacrificed her career to raise the three of us herself. That’s a big part of why I wanted to be so hands-on with the actual mechanics of raising a baby. I want to watch him grow! I want to learn the motions myself, to do the diapering, feeding, bathing, playing, and shuttling.

Parenthood—the way we’ve done it so far—feels like a full-time job, a third atop the two Katie and I already work. We want to give him plenty of attention and engagement, but it’s, like, all the time! I find multitasking difficult, too. When on dad duty, I struggle to accomplish much beyond groceries and food prep. The demand for attention is even at night when we need to sleep. Katie has incurred an immense sleep debt handling overnight duties for six months straight, and I still feel guilty for being nigh useless overnight; I sleep heavily and I handle the sleep toll terribly. We’re so lucky to have Katie’s mom swoop in to help with childcare (and baby styling), and we’ve leaned heavily on her since returning to our jobs. Soon it’ll be time for daycare or a hired nanny.

There’s lots of wondering if we’re doing it all wrong. We’re first-time parents, and I’ve had so little exposure to young kids before this. We’re guided by books, internet wisdom, facebook groups, nuggets of familial insight, my medical training, and our own instincts. I vacillate between keeping faith on Winston’s baby inborn physiology to guide his development and worrying that we’re not optimizing enough to stay afloat in the aggressively escalating world of NYC private preschools. I don’t know if that doubt will ever subside.

Oh, by the way, it’s been a storm of dragon babies this year. Amongst my friends and acquaintances, I’ve seen birth announcements and pictures for 34 babies. If you’re reading this and also have a young kid, congratulations!

Radiology

I graduated from Yale Neuroradiology fellowship, which concluded my medical training in its entirety. Wow! I started work in Queens, which necessitates a lengthy commute (55 minutes on average). We cover NewYork-Presbyterian Queens, which is where I did much of my clinical training during medical school, which is a sweet throwback. 

Reading independently as a full-fledged attending is trippy, but I’m growing into it. As a young practicing physician, I’m mulling over my strengths, weaknesses, and targets for focused improvement.

• I’m easily frustrated by technical and ergonomic shortfalls in my workstations, and I’m annoyed at myself for being so easily frustrated. I want to make my diagnostic abilities resilient to changes in environment.
• I’m overly reliant on external memory (i.e. live internet searches) for differential diagnoses, and I need to commit differentials to my own long-term memory. 
• I lack regularity in my search patterns, usually jumping around my report template and listing findings as I encounter them. I need to read with better discipline.
• During training, I trained the habit of manually hanging brain MRI sequences in a preferred layout (Post, FLAIR, DWI, GRE; T1, T2, prior, prior), but I’ve now surrendered to default hanging protocols of viewing sequences in order acquired. It’s faster. I should commit scan orders to memory. 
• My longtime obsession with reporting templates has given me a headstart in efficiency, but now I recognize that habits I established as a first-year resident are hurting me long-term. Templates built for education are different from those built for ease of construction. Both are distinct from either a mature collection optimized for my own efficiency and also different from a collection built for widespread rollout to an institution, and I’m not sure which I should target next.

Running and Climbing

I’ve logged 493 miles, down from 700 miles in 2023, but up from preceding years when I didn’t crack 400 miles. This year, a heavy winter call schedule alternating with dad duty days leaves little time and energy for dedicated runs. Thus, commuting runs to and from the hospital (0.9 miles), to the climbing gyms (0.7 miles or 2.2 miles), comprise the lions share of my running now. I don’t log all my commute running, so ~500 mi is an underestimate.

Instead, now I sink virtually all my fitness time into climbing. I started bouldering in commercial gyms in February. Before this, I’d only had a short stint of sporadic climbing in 2014, but this time I committed with gym memberships, my own climbing shoes (on my second pair already), and having fun with it. I leveled up from barely managing V2s to sending all V4s and select V5s, though I’ve been at that plateau for six months now. In other words, fatherhood keeps me busy… In the winter, I switched my focus from crimpy small muscle strength to shoulder intensive big moves, campuses (no feet), and dynos (dynamic moves), which are more applicable to real world strength applications. I’m at peace with my plateau, for now.

Beer

This year, beer has become my big hedonistic splurge, and having a purely hedonistic splurge is novel. I treat beer as a tasty food item with a vast rich culture to explore; getting a bit drunk sometimes is an acceptable side effect. I’ve had great fun with it, and I think it’s trained my palate to be sharper, even beyond bitter carbonated beverages. 

Using the app Untappd, I logged 182 distinct beers in one year, which is a lot of beers! A gigantic majority of beers are IPAs, followed by various Belgian ales and wheat beers. Trader Joe’s and Pioneer nearby let me break up 4- or 6-packs without a markup. Prime 16 was a taproom with an insanely good half-off happy hour, letting me try quality craft drafts for $4 each, probably my average cost per beer this year (like I said, I let myself splurge on beer). Because it comes in smaller quantities, beer is easier and cheaper to explore than wine or liquors. 

Some recommendations from my personal most sampled breweries (particularly for tristate area folk) are Broccoli, a double dry hopped IPA by Other Half; Lumen, a smooth American IPA by Grimm; and Gnommegang, a Belgian Tripel by Ommegang.

Travel

We spent half a week in January with my family in California. In March, I dropped by Seattle to visit two friends for a baby shower and for some running. Katie and I had a babymoon in Belgium and Amsterdam in April. In November I flew to San Diego l to attend a high school friend’s wedding.

When Winston was three months old, we took our first international trip as a family to London. That was plenty more work than just traveling as the two of us though still lots of fun. We made several dedicated stops to celebrate Winston’s almost-namesake: Churchill’s War Rooms, Blenheim Palace (Churchill’s birthplace and family estate near Oxford), and even a pub named Churchill Arms. The rest of the trip was filled with museums, parks, pastries, and eating at popular restaurants during off hours.

Audio

On my Spotify Wrapped, Laufey and Lizzy McAlpine were my surprising #2 and #3 top artists. I also logged 69,666 minutes (average 3h10m/day), which I’m recognizing is quite a lot of listening. 

By the way, my Spotify time doesn’t count podcast minutes, since I listen on Apple Podcasts. Notable podcast series I listened to were:

• Sold a Story, about an absolutely insane way of teaching young kids how not to read.
• In the Dark Season 3, about war crimes.
• Normal Gossip, generally.

This is in addition to my regular stable of podcast subscriptions: Gastropod, The Sporkful, This American Life, Radiolab, 99PI, Planet Money, New Yorker Radio Hour, Revisionist History, Song Exploder, and 20k Hz.

I have a silly number of audio playback devices: over-ear noise-cancelling headphones (Bose 700), exercise headphones (JLab GO Air Sport, terrible), wired headphones (Apple EarPods USB-C), desktop speakers (AudioEngine 2+), bluetooth speakers (Sonos Roam), home speakers (two Sonos One units), and electronic piano headphones (Sony MDR 7506). I use most of them almost daily, except the piano and the wired headphones, which are backup for Zoom.

We saw Jacob Collier play Radio City Music Hall in April and Hozier play Forest Hills Stadium in June. 

Misc.

We settled the lawsuit surrounding the car crash from August 2022. I’m glad that’s behind us. It seems we already have long-term health consequences: I have a bone bruise on my right second metacarpal base that makes axial loading in wrist hyperextension (think pushups) painful. Katie has left shoulder issues. 

I got sick a lot. My immune system has to get it together, or I need to figure out how to help my immune system hold it together.

Okay, that’s it for now. Happy New Year!