The U.S. Capitol for VIPs

As you could probably tell from an earlier post on this blog, Kinsey and I have a lot of respect from Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska. So much so that we decided to contact him and see if we could meet. Well, it turns out that one of Kinsey's former sorority sisters, Adrienne, is Sen. Hagel's scheduler. She hooked us up with a photo op with the Senator and a VIP tour of the Capitol.

When we first got to the Russell Senate Office Building, Adrienne gave us a quick tour of Sen. Hagel's office. It was quite interesting. The walls were covered with pictures of the Senator and his colleagues and from his many travels around the world. We learned several tidbits about the Senator. For instance, his favorite holiday is Halloween, which was made clear by the numerous pictures of Sen. Hagel dressed up as his fellow Congressmen. The funniest was Sen. Hagel in a Joe Biden mask and "Joe Biden for President" T-shirt interrupting Sen. Biden during a foreign relations committee meeting for a picture. Classic Capitol Hill humor.

We only got to meet with Sen. Hagel for a couple minutes. He was really friendly and very chatty. He kept breaking into random stories, like how he used to sell encyclopedias to stewardesses in Bloomington, MN. Our photos with him were taken by the Senate photographer and we'll be getting those in the mail later.


The entrance to Sen. Hagel's office, which was made up of eight different rooms.

And it was right across the hall from Sen. John McCain's office, the presumptive Republican nominee for President.

In the bowels of the Senate office building, waiting to get through security to take the subway to the Capitol. Those two guys are probably off to do something political and important.

This is the old subway car that was used to transport Senators from their offices to the Capitol.

And this is the new one. It wasn't a very long trip, about 30 seconds. Probably would've been a pretty easy walk. But I guess some of those Senators are pretty old. I'm sure Strom Thurmond sure appreciated this shuttle when he was still alive.

There are hundreds of statues in the Capitol. You couldn't turn around without tripping over another one. Each state is represented by several statues of important political figures from that state. Here is a statue for Nebraska of William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson and three-time presidential nominee.

This is a statue of a former Senator from Minnesota. I didn't recognize the name.

Kinsey and I next to Abe.

The rotunda of the Capitol is amazing. Kinsey gasped when she looked up and saw the dome. It was so large, I couldn't fit it properly into one picture. Our tour guide told us the entire Statue of Liberty off its base could fit inside.

As you can see, the Capitol was packed with tourists.

Waiting to go into the House chamber. For some reason, you couldn't take anything into this space, no camera, no cell phone, no bag, nothing. So if you want to see a picture of what it looks like, you'll have to turn on C-SPAN.

After Kinsey and I left the Capitol, we decided to catch the Metro at Union Station, the train hub of Washington, DC.

It seems to be mainly a shopping mall now, but the Great Hall is still very majestic.

Meeting Senator Hagel was easily one of the highlights of our trip. And the capital was very impressive. Overall, an afternoon well spent.

The Fellowship

Since the fellowship ends in just two weeks, I figure I better get around to posting about what I've actually been doing out here. The experience has been fantastic. Challenging and interesting, I have been learning so much.

My office is in a Georgetown building, and I see patients in a separate office at the hospital. I'm going to miss my office. Its larger than the one I shared with my classmates during grad school, and it has a large window overlooking a forest area and a playground for the British elementary school next door. Its silly, but I love that it has a name plate outside the door; it reads "McKinsey Goodenberger, GC Fellow".

Right from the start the other genetic counselors were very welcoming. They are great at giving me autonomy but at the same time helping to continue my education. The very first week I started scheduling my own patients for two weeks out. In the meantime I observed the other counselors and they observed me. When my first autonomous patient arrived, I was surprised by how nervous I was!! I suppose most new GCs feel this way, but I couldn't believe I had volunteered for so much responsibility. Luckily my first patient was a very sweet elderly woman who was wonderful, so everything went fine. Since then things have been going well, I'm seeing about three to five patients a week. I am astounded by how much time just 3-5 patients take up. During grad school when I heard about my supervisors staying late or coming in on a weekend to catch up on work I swore that that wouldn't be me. But within in a week of seeing my own patients I was doing the same thing. I have to laugh at my nativety. Despite the work, I have very much enjoyed it.

At Georgetown, the genetic counselor are very involved in clinical research as well as seeing patients. Learning the protocols and how to fill out the various paperwork for the different studies was one of the hardest things at first. The studies are looking at different ways and times to provide counseling, as well as exploring different ways of providing information. They take up alot of the counselors' time, but its wonderful the way they can advance knowledge without really hindering the patient's care. I'm also participating in writing the papers, so finally I'll have a real publication to my name!

Since it is a fellowship, I have other responsibilities than seeing patients. I work on different learning activities, primarily a casebook the counselors prepared before I came. I work through these cases (which are very tough) and then discuss them with one of the counselors. Its challenging, but has really expanded my knowledge of counseling techniques as well as using primary literature in the counseling session. I also spend some time observing different areas of cancer care and screening. I've spent two days in clinic with a medical oncologist where I observed women newly diagnosed with breast cancer figuring out their chemo and radiation regiment. I did get to observe a mastectomy with reconstruction, which was incredible. I actually had to "scrub-up" for the procedure. I stood right at the head of the bed throughout the surgery, so I had a great view, being I was only like two feet from the action. It was long (I stood there from 11am to 4pm), but amazing. I couldn't believe how many misconceptions I had about surgery. Fascinating. If you want further details you have to ask in person, because if I start describing it Wade won't be able to spell check for me.

So, things are going well. These last couple weeks I'm primarily meeting with patients to give results and seeing a few new patients that I can do follow up via telephone even after I get back to MN. It really has been incredible, and Wade and I are both having a wonderful time.

TJ and the Pandas

It's been awhile since we've posted anything, but this weekend was the first time in a couple weeks that we did anything exciting.

At this point in our DC trip, we're trying to cram in all the sights we haven't been to yet. Our agenda for this weekend was the Jefferson Memorial, the National Zoo, and the National Air and Space Museum.

Early Saturday morning we headed out to see the Jefferson Memorial. I was kind of excited to see it because I had read in a couple places that was a very beautiful memorial.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is kind of tucked away from the other memorials, sitting between the Tidal Basin and the Potomac River.

Its a really big memorial. Very reminescent of the Pantheon and a lot of Roman architecture, which Jefferson (who I'm going to call TJ) was a big fan of.

TJ standing tall.
Since we got to the memorial so early , there were a lot of interesting shadows being cast across all the columns.

Interesting shot of the Washington Monument reflected in the Tidal Basin. Look at the ducks!

We saw in our guidebook that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial was on our way back, so we thought we'd stop and have a look. It turned out to be a nice memorial with a lot of fountains for some reason.

FDR and his dog, which looks like a Scottie dog.

McKinsey is apparently channeling E.T. to connect with FDR.

Me and my buddy, Roosey. That's what I call him.

We were on our way back to downtown when we came across a WWI memorial tucked away in the trees. It almost looks like a ruin.

While we were in the area, we stopped by the Korean War Memorial. It had these interesting statues of soliders walking through the bush.

And it also had a stone wall similar to the Vietnam Memorial, except this one had images carved into it instead of names.

After we had some lunch and saw The Dark Knight, we took the metro up to the National Zoo. We got there around 6:00, knowing that the zoo closed at 8:00. After we got in, we discovered that all the indoor exhibits and gift shops had already closed for the day!

Luckily, we were able to sneak in to the panda exhibit before they locked the doors. The pandas are the main reason we went to the zoo anyway. Not many places you can see them in the U.S. And just look how cute they are!

This isn't a dead panda, just a sleeping one. I think.

This video shows one of the pandas kickin' back and munching away on some bamboo. It was really tearing into that stuff.


We also saw a cheetah...

... and a gator. That's about it.

Our last excursion for the weekend was the National Air and Space Museum. We weren't super excited for this museum but we figured we were here, so why not. There sure were a lot of excited little boys running around though.

The plane that the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. That's one thing about this museum, it was hard to tell if the planes and satellites were the real ones or just copies.

The Nazi's V-2 rocket from WWII.


I thought this was interesting. Apparently in the early days of air travel, you could buy airline trip insurance from vending machines. Seems reassuring...

The spacesuit that John Glenn wore into space.

The Apollo 11 suit that Buzz Aldrin wore on the moon. The dirt from the knees down is actually moon dust. Sure makes Glenn's suit seem pretty flimsy.

Charlie Lindbergh's famous Spirit of St. Louis.

And finally, as we left, we saw Sputnik, the first manmade object to be shot into space.

A Capitol Fourth

One of the exciting things about being in Washington, DC over the summer is experiencing the Independence Day festivities in our nation's capital. Kinsey and I did some research and found out it was best to get to the area of celebration extremely early. So, at 9:30 in the morning, we headed down to the National Mall for the Fourth of July parade.


McKinsey loves her some America!

The parade finally begins at 11:45.

The parade began with each division of the U.S. military sending out troops in all their formal garb.

These Revolutionary War enacters played a nice little tune on their flutes.

The Daughters of the American Revolution draped in a big ol' flag.

Here's a video of some very talented gents riding about on some old-timey bicycles.

For some reason, giant balloons of Underdog, Garfield, and Hello Kitty were in the parade. Don't ask me why. I guess if you giant balloons lying around you use them in every parade that you can.

The marching band from Alliance in my home state of Nebraska.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln impersonators made their way on a patriotic float. Although the guy they had playing Washington seemed a little paunchy and Lincoln was a lot shorter than you'd think he'd be. You'd think for the Fourth of July in DC they could have shelled out a little extra cash for impersonators who actually looked like the people they're portraying.

A re-enactment of the Marines raising the American flag on Mt. Suribachi in Iwo Jima during WWII. I bet that guy in the back got tired of holding his arms up.

An actual holiday-appropriate giant balloon of Uncle Sam.

There was quite a multicultural theme to this parade, which seems appropriate for America. Different ethnic groups paraded, including ones from Mexico, the Phillipines, China, Taiwan, and, of course, some Hare Krishnas.

After the parade finished up, we took some time off to wander around the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and have an early dinner. Around 4:30, we headed up to the Capitol to get seats for the concert and fireworks.

As you can see, the Capitol lawn and National Mall are both getting quite full of people. And this was two hours before the concert was scheduled to start. The concert, which aired live on PBS, was disappointing. It featured Huey Lewis and the News (pretty good), American Idol winner Taylor Hicks (pretty crappy), classical star Hayley Westenra (decent), Broadway performer Brian Stokes Mitchell (not bad), and Jerry Lee Lewis (OK). But none of these performers sany any patriotic songs. Like Kinsey said, it was like going to a christmas concert and not hearing any christmas carols. The only patriotic songs were played by the National Symphony Orchestra during the fireworks.

Three disappointing things happened during our DC Fourth of July experience: One, it rained a lot. Two, I found out the fireworks setting on my camera sucks at taking pictures of fireworks. And three, my camera battery died. So I don't have a lot of pictures of the fireworks. Luckily, I was able to milk a little juice out of the battery to record the video above. The orchestra is playing the 1812 Overture and that smoke you see behind the concert shell is the cannon fire. Enjoy.