Brno Clinic and Hotel

The clinic we are going to in Brno is called Reprofit. The website is very informative, here is the link:  http://en.reprofit.cz/reprofit-international/about-us
If you make it to the "our team" page, our Doctor's name is Štěpán Machač. He looks very young, but has a MD and a PhD apparently.  Based on my limited knowledge of Czech diacritical marks, I think you pronounce his last name Makach, so its very similar to ours. I'm taking that as a good sign.

From the photos it looks basic, but with new equipment and I guess that is what matters. From the outside it is a pretty nice looking, recently renovated late 19th / early 20th century building.

We will be moving around a bit, but most of the time will be staying at a little hotel one block from the main square in the city center. Here is the link: http://www.penziondvorakova.cz/

I have requested one of the corner rooms, so I'm hoping that since its the off season  I'll get my request.  I'm really looking forward to sitting at the little table in the turret and looking over the street while I work or read. We will also have a little kitchenette, which will be great for breakfast and snacking. Hopefully we'll save a little on meals that way.

And finally, I will be visiting Dr. Helena Čutová in Brno a couple of times for acupuncture. Her website is mainly in Czech, but there are a few pictures of the building: her office is in an old monastery.

scarface

This morning I had a basal cell carcinoma removed from my forehead. Fortunately they got all the troublesome cells on the first slice so it didn't take very long.

After 24 hours I can switch to a normal band-aid - which is good because the bandage they put on today makes it look like I had "real" surgery. When I got home Miran wanted to wrap a gauze around my head before the photo.

I'm feeling very vain and not planning to leave the house for a few days.  I know this is no big deal (and Mom and Dad seem to have these cut off right and left) - but I've only had stitches once before and I'm quite worried I'm going to have an ugly scar on my face because the ones on my belly are pretty big.

And I can't resist getting gory and sharing a photo of the stitches themselves:

Azra's Permit ... a month late

Another development I didn't blog about in January was getting Azra's learner's permit. She took a driving course and got a license in Bosnia when she was 18, but literally hadn't driven since, so we decided to start from scratch.

She has been practicing driving whenever we can ever since, and is just fine. She thinks she is ready to take the street test next week: we just need to practice parallel parking this week-end as we haven't really done much of that.

Miami for New Year's ... a month and a half late

I never posted after our spontaneous trip to Miami for New Years - when we hopped in the car with our friends Goran and Dijana from DC and stayed with them in their friends condo for a couple days. Of course it turned out more expensive than we had hoped - but it was also more fun. And we both really loved South Beach and want to go back sometime for a longer stay.

Many of you saw some of these pictures on facebook, but I wanted to go ahead and make a post here - for the record!

Us on Ocean Boulevard enjoying the lovely weather!

Miran reflecting at the pretty impressive Holocaust Memorial in South Beach (I knew about this project and dragged Miran and Goran to see it one afternoon - a bit of a downer on our fun trip, but I'm glad I got some pictures and got to see it.)

On our way to dinner on New Year's Eve ...

At dinner, with Goran and Dijana ...

Miran enjoying himself and his new hat ...

 

Blog Privacy ... for our Baby Quest

Hello family,

I've made our blog private and by invitation only because I want to start blogging about the "Makas Baby Quest" (title borrowed from the Andersons).

I already had our blog hidden from search engines, but now you'll have to log in to read it. We don't want the whole world to know every intimate detail (and I'm trying to downplay the whole trying to get pregnant thing at work), but we did want to share our experiences on this latest adventure with our close family.

As most of you know, we are off in two weeks to the city of Brno, in the Czech Republic, for an IVF treatment. Brno is about 2 hours southeast of Prague  and is actually closer to Vienna and Bratislava.  We'll be flying in and out of Prague though and renting a car to get to Brno.

We don't leave for the trip until a week from Saturday, but today is an important day because I started my medications this morning. Lucky for me it just involves a lot of pills, but no injections.

We're feeling optimistic and keeping positive, but the success rates for these treatments are only about 50%. So we're also mentally preparing ourselves for a possible unfortunate outcome!

Finally - a little snow for us !

We just has a rather sudden blizzard. In the past twenty minutes we went from freezing rain to where we can barely see the grass. We are excited to finally be getting a little snow - here is Miran enjoying it right after it started.

And a few more pictures like 20 minutes later