Yoga, tomatoes and other adventures

Gotta love the shuffle feature on the iPod. The Ramones are singing about how The KKK Took My Baby Away, Erikah Badu just wrapped a ditty on Afros preceded by a jam by the Wayward Monks (my brother's band - he just turned forty the other day too! Happy b-day Jason!) Check out the Monks at http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/monks.html)

Today I applied to residencies. Scary and exciting.

In the morning, after rounds, I had “group”, a prenatal care-type thing - like group therapy and education for pregnant women. They meet 10 times in their pregnancies, the group of them. They learn about the changes of the body, what to expect, about labor, delivery and the newborn. Here at Zuni it is not acceptable to talk about the baby before it is born. There is no such thing as a shower, you do not buy clothes for the baby nor know its sex until it is born. They appear to get very good prenatal care here, regular ultrasounds and check ups. This group is great - the women weigh themselves, take their own BP's and dip their own urine. They record all this in these binders they have - a tab for each of the 10 groups. Then the doc checks fetal heart tones (with a Doppler - that doesn't read out the rate so you actually have to listen), fundal height and does Leopold's (maneuvers to see what position the baby is in). Today there were only two women in group - the others having already delivered and home with their babies. We talked about sex, STD's, domestic violence, and brought up (briefly) the subject of the next visit where all those with babies should be coming and they will learn baby massage. Then we did prenatal yoga. I have to admit, I was laughing a bit as I did kegel exercises on the mat in the dark room. We squatted and stretched and downward-dogged for about 20 minutes and then had a session where the women were invited to ask any questions or address any concerns. It was overall interesting. I learned a little about pregnancy and child birth that I hadn't known before.

In the afternoon, after submitting my residency application I went to physical therapy. Here PT sees everything, from strokes to bowel concerns to wound care. The visits I saw today were predominantly wound care. Not very exciting for me. However the patients were interesting folks.

I am house-sitting for one of the John's this next week. I went over to get a lay of t he land as they showed me around. I can do laundry - which is great. They have a hot-tub which is awesome! They don't have internet access but they do have a TV (no reception but they have a VCR and DVD player) and best of all they have a huge vegetable garden that has beans, edamame, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, corn, and so much more! I ate a million tomatoes while they were picking them, trying to keep up, stuffing them in my face one after the other. I devoured raw beans - deep purple and traditional green ones. The bed is twice the size of the cot I have in the trailer and has a real blanket, not the thin scratchy thing from the hospital I've been huddling under each night. Plus, their neighbors are other docs so I may actually socialize with things other than crickets. Woo-hoo!