Disconnected ramblings

(FYI: pictures are from my hike on the 10th) Last night the dogs in Zuni were barking. All of them. Every night I wake up to a few here and there, but last night it was a cacophony of barking. Some started howling. I imagined every reservation dog barking, every single one of them. Hundreds. It was really neat and I wasn't annoyed, just amazed. I also am managing to fall asleep quite well through the sounds of mating cats and barking dogs.

I've started my chart review. The charting system here is old. There's an online component but it seems to only compile face sheets with demographics and appointments.

I realized the charts were antiquated when I was flipping through them, looking for the lab results I needed for my study and found myself looking stuff from the 60s that indistinguishable from the recent stuff. I have to pull most the charts myself from medical records - another tedious task, but surprisingly, I'm not all that grumpy about any of this. I feel like this is something I need to learn to do. Plus, it's sciency and public healthy and makes me feel like I'm doing something really useful and important. Hopefully after this is all said and done I'll be able to make recommendations to Zuni Health that can be implemented and may decrease the incidence of colon cancer in Zuni women.

When I got home, exhausted but wired, I watched the movie, Alive, on John's DVD player. Fast-forwarded the plane crash part. Funny how the “doctor” on the plane is a guy who's been in medical school for all of 6 months. He manages to take care of the whole planeful of injuries - frostbite, lacerations, head wounds. If I was in that situation after 6 months of medical school I would be about as useful as a doctor as my textbooks would be useful for nutrition. But really, it made me think (dangerous, I know). I imagine I would be pretty put-together in that kind of situation. There was this one guy in the movie who was obsessed with getting a non-transmitting radio to work. I also thought there was a small chance I might be that guy - escaping from a horrible situation like that by getting a useless piece of plastic to work. I won't even begin to contemplate if I would ever eat people... anyway, the movie was more awful than I remembered.