We had our annual Family Medicine Conference out in the Black Hills these past 4 days. It took place at the Deadwood Lodge. Friday night Sarah was honored with becoming the South Dakota Family Doctor of the Year! She has accomplished great things in her career of 32 years in Watertown, 35 years as a physician. She has delivered well over 1,000 babies! Babies she delivered were now coming in as moms to deliver their babies! She stopped doing OB at the end of January last year. She always wanted to do at minimum 2 years of just clinic after completing OB. She will decide when she will retire. Doing OB takes its toll physically on you, and she called it a career with this last year. She has been a past president of our South Dakota Academy of Family Physicians. She has spent all of her years teaching other students–medical students, residents, nursing students, etc. We even teach other Family Physicians on topics we have to do to maintain our Board certification. These sessions with the Family Doctors are questions/lectures that can take up to 4 hours at a time. We have done 30 of these sessions.

Our kids were not able to be present Friday night when this award was presented. I had each of our kids write a letter to her congratulating her. I read one of them Friday night. It was hard to choose which one to read, but I chose the one from Molly. She works in the health care field as an Ultrasound Tech, and knows what call is like. She has 3 kids herself and knows the struggles of trying to juggle everything as a mom, with all of the other duties of work. I made it through reading it but had several moments of “choking up”. There was not a dry eye in the house! Sarah had more tears after reading the letters from Megan and Nick! Thanks to all of our kids for doing this!

We are so proud of you Sarah! You have worked hard all of these years with your career. You have left a mark with the lives you have helped take care of all of these years and will continue to do yet. But your mark as my wife, and as a mom and grandma, will especially never be forgotten. We are beaming with pride with you being chosen as South Dakota Family Doctor of the Year!!!

Keep moving everybody!

Dr. Dan

Consecutive Exercise Day of newest streak: # 704