Tag Archives: Shana’s Practice~Cozad

First day of school….ahem, err….new job

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Adam couldn’t resist:

It went great. Everyone is very kind. My nurse, Janna rocks. My day was actually booked with patients (yay!). Best of all, my mama sent me a humongous plant. I think it is a peace lily and it is now time for me to go research on how to keep it alive. My nurse says she doesn’t have a green thumb either. The good news is that it is a very large plant for my very LARGE office. I’m going to get this plant it’s very own stand and Adam and I will pray for its well-being this very evening, poor thing….

strange coincidences leading to reassuring thoughts

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Remember my duckies? How I have been using them as kind of a visual to remind myself to let things slide….slide of my back, keep afloat ya’ might say. I have this one duck that I keep finding on the floor. ALL the stinking time. In my office at the clinic of all places. And as you can imagine these past several weeks have been wearing, ie: saying goodbye to such special and very loved patients/friends. It seems that day in and day out I come in to the clinic and I find this stupid duck that is normally sitting to the right of my computer on the floor.

Last weekend Adam and I went to Cozad to look at a home (the one we are buying by the way: woot, woot!!!) and as we were driving to the hotel we decided to treat ourselves to (normally we would have driven back to Tecumseh in the middle of the night) I told Adam about this stupid duck and how I think it just means that I am done. Ca-put. Over-with. Finished. Officially sunk.

Then we pull up to this random hotel we chose to stay at and we see all of these people EVERYWHERE. Like a huge party was going on. And there was. It was the hotel grand-opening. There were balloons, food, games, you name it. They were so excited to check us in it was awesome. This is what we saw when we pulled up at the party:

After we checked in we went to our “never-slept-in” room, which was beautiful. Adam walked into the bathroom and broke into laughter because this is what he saw:

Not only is there a duck….but it is a nurse. Yes, we took the duck home with us. Adam said he didn’t care what they charged us as it is worth it to remind me that maybe I’m not quite sunk yet!

In the end of May we made this life changing decision and I would be lying if I said I haven’t been frightened since. But I would also be lying if God hasn’t opened doors one after another for us and also shown us repetitively that we have made the right decisions.

To start with we hadn’t even barely come to the conclusion between ourselves that we were going to start thinking about moving elsewhere and a couple of job opportunities that were right up my alley surfaced….one near my sister. Another thing that happened, my partner, and dear friend, also decided to leave our practice…making it more difficult for me to imagine staying in the practice long-term. Next, my mother who was living with us at the time started contemplating more and more about moving to Florida to take care of my Pepe (which she has since done)…and although I wish she were here I now know she is settled.

The job I took felt “right”. The CEO seems kind. While I know there are politics everywhere and no where is perfect the clinic and hospital seem like they will be a good fit. All of the providers are under the age of 40. I will have my own nurse who seems so wonderful. The community is three times bigger than Tecumseh which is what we wanted but is still small. In fact for those of you that know of it, it is the size Whitefish was when we were growing up.

We have only been in our home for 3 years and have put $85,000 into it, mostly out of our pockets as we went but some onto the mortgage so I knew exactly what we needed to pay off the mortgage. It seems NO homes sell here, at least lately. Ours did….in 16 days and for the price we needed. Next hurdle was if it would appraise for what it would need to which is $60,000 more than what we purchased it for only 3 years ago (in this economy…aaaccckkk!!!)….it DID!

What about a job for Adam? We didn’t know what to do. Guess what? His employer decided to let him work from home. He currently spends over 10 hours per week in the car commuting.

Where will we live there? The first home we thought we were in love with we prayed about and for some reason it didn’t feel right so we decided against it….knowing it would mean we wouldn’t have anywhere to live when I had to start my job. The realtor over there said she would keep thinking as there was nothing else in the size range that nice on the market. She thought of a house that was on the market a year ago that never sold and went to the owners to see if they would be interested and they were. It is $20,000 less and fits us better. There is a huge home office for Adam. No we can’t get into it on the first of the month when we are there but guess what? More blessings: our realtor over there has a home she uses for situations just like this. Where a buyer is in between and has no where to go. It is fully stocked with dishes/towels, etc and we will stay there rent-free until October 29th.

So while we have been on somewhat of an emotional roller-coaster ride it is as if once we saw what God wanted us to do with our lives and let Him lead the way the path has been actually fairly clear. I thought I was sunk for a little bit and then He reminded me I was not and we laughed and laughed. Here are a couple of pictures of our new home:

….so, here you are…

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Where to start, oh where to start. I suppose the picture above is one of those that sort of speaks for itself and tells you “HELLO~BIG CHANGES HAPPENIN’ AT THE CARTER’S!!”. Which, there are. And up until today we weren’t comfortable “completely” sharing what is going on as Adam is just now discussing things with his employer.

I have been in this practice for a little over 7 years. I have A LOT vested in this practice and this little community. I love my patients. As you have read in previous posts we have completely (literally) re-done our home. She turned 100 this year, ya know~and I have the paperwork to get ‘er listed on the National Historic Registry. I ran out of time, though. Fortunately we put very little of the renovations on top of the home mortgage. We paid for things as we went, Praise God~which allowed us to sell it thus leading to the fun picture above!

The end of May I received a call from my sister (who lives in Kearney) to casually mention to me that there was a job opening listed in their paper for a family practice in Cozad. 

Hmmm. Well.

We had just returned from Adam’s mom’s graduation and spending time in Mississippi where we visited with his parents extensively about where we are at in our life and what we are doing, etc.  We came  back from that trip knowing that a change was needed in my employment someday but didn’t know when or where. Heck, at this point we still weren’t even sure if we might even go back to Montana! I decided to nose around a bit but this basically hit us like a pizza being delivered. WHAM!

The long of the short is that we are moving to a wonderful new community September 21st. Cozad, Nebraska is only 45 minutes west of my sister, rather than 3 hours southeast. I will no longer be taking call. Both of these will be nice things if we can have a family someday~ya’ think? The medical community is what I would consider “healthy”. Without going into tons of detail, let me just say that there are not as many issues there as there are here. It is always important to remember however that there is no such thing as a “perfect” job (darnit-to-heckola!) but I am hopeful for a more healthy work environment. The physicians I will be working with are awesome. All young with families. There is only one other female and she is prego with her first babe! Excited for her! I will have my own nurse (yay!!) and her name is Janna. We just met her this past weekend and she is going to be just perfect I know it (more to come about Janna~would ya believe that we are actually looking at buying her house?! WEIRD!).

Cozad is three times the size of Tecumseh. It has an Alco people, an Alco!!!! For those of you that don’t know what that is, Alco is like a Super Walmart in rural no-where-villes. About Adam? Not sure yet. Like I started this post out….just now telling his employer. It would be kinda’ cool if he could do some of what he does for them from home in Cozad and still keep his job. We’ll see.

Up until Saturday morning, I couldn’t think past….well, anything really. I was overwhelmed, worrying about where we were going to live. We were planning to rent a place and just have someone keep an eye on our home here while it sat empty. Because, while I may have been dealing with this job deal for awhile, we just finished our house three weeks ago and therefore just got it listed. No stress at our house. None at all.

I have so much more I could say but I am going to end this post now by just saying that by the grace of God….our home sold after being on the market for only 16 DAYS…16 days people!!!! Did we list it too low? Probably. Are we going to be able to pay off our mortgage? You betcha’! With $445.00 to spare baby! We decided when we were going to list that we were going to go for only what we needed, to not be greedy and to pray the house would move. We had a couple of people interested in it Saturday~I sent out a text asking for prayers; Adam actually layed his hand on the house and prayed and by noon it was sold and by Sunday we were house shopping in our new town.

Can I get an Amen?!