No yoga today. An imposed day of rest. I'm at the hospital for the next 24 hours. Where I work, we stay in the hospital when we're on call. I actually take call at two different hospitals. The one I'm at today, I'm the only OB doc for our group here. That's great if it's not busy because there's no one there making sure that any free time is spent doing busy work. It can be tougher when it is busy, there's no one else to help out. All in all, I guess I prefer this hospital, with the solo coverage, to the other one where we have any where from three to five docs on call. When I'm here, I sometimes get the time to do stuff of my own, like try and figure out how to work this blogger stuff. Or surf the net looking for ashtanga related things. Or try and find an MP3 of the soundtrack to "The Fairly Oddparents" cartoon that my daughter needs for her sock hop skit. Important stuff.

I have tried doing yoga here while on call a few times. I don't like it much. I don't even try it if I have any one in labor. But even if there's no one here, the nature of obstetrics is that anything can happen and will. When it does happen, you have to be able to respond immediately. I once had to do an emergency c-section in the cardiac cath lab on another doctor's patient who's baby had a deceleration in the heart rate while they were doing a study to find out if the mom's coronary vessels were blocked. We didn't even have time to move her to L&D. We opened her right there. Some people even go so far as to sleep in their scrubs so that if they get called, they don't have to waste time getting dressed. If I try to practice here at work, I could be in the middle of trying to avoid faceplanting in bhujapidasana and I might get a call from Labor and Delivery because some lady who just walked in needs an immediate c-section because she's in labor and her baby is breech, or has a low heart rate, or whatever. I can't just shower and freshen up a bit, I've got to go right then. It's kind of poor form to be dripping sweat when you walk up to the patient and family and advise them that you're the one who is going to be responsible for safely delivering their baby. So, even if it's a slow day at work (SDAW), mentally there's always that possibility, that distraction that pulls you back from a good focused practice. Plus, my call room is too small to allow me to do a lot of the postures without some major shuffling around to fit my body into the available floor space as needed for a given posture. It's not very warm either. It's twice as bad as trying to do hotel room yoga. I may just be making excuses but I just haven't found it real productive to do it here. I do throw in a few forward bends in the shower though.

And just like that, I get paged to the ER. I hate the ER. Gotta go.