We Are The Thorsons: February 2011

Monday {2-21-11}
I got to sleep in {yay!} I can't remember what I did Monday morning - oh yeah - I was planning on working on my presentation for Friday, booking our tickets to Maui for next Monday and booking a rental car for Maui as well. I had good intentions to do that, but instead I went through all of my pictures so far from this trip. You don't even want to know how many pictures I have taken so far and I've even deleted a bunch too. Having a nice camera makes taking pictures easy.

Once people got home from their morning classes, we grilled a feast for lunch. It was soooo delicious!

Look at our grub! Yum!

Sean's first time grilling on a gas grill. Good job Sean!

Monday afternoon, I was in Waimea with an acupuncturist. I thought that it was actually really interesting. I saw two patients with her and then she did a treatment on me. I've never had this done before so I was a little nervous but once she started placing all the needles, I couldn't feel a thing. Well, I take that back. There was one needle she placed between my thumb and pointer finger which ended up hitting a bone which really flipping hurt. I had needles in my feet, legs, knees, hands, arms, neck, shoulders and head. Once they were all placed, she turned on this infrared heater over the ones in my knee (aka my bad knee which I made even worse by smacking on a rock while surfing), placed an eye pillow over my eyes, turned on some soothing music and let me lay there for nearly an hour. At first, it was hard to relax knowing I have all these needles in me and that it would hurt if I moved. But that didn't last long as I was sleeping within 10-15 minutes. When she woke me up, oh.... my...... gosh..... I felt like a million bucks. Seriously, like I had just had a 90 minute massage except there was no massage. I was so relaxed! It felt so good. I had my camera with me but I forgot to have her take pictures of me all needled up - oh well.

Our last patient of the day got a combination of acupuncture and cupping. I had previously heard of cupping but have never seen it. Talk about something that looks super relaxing. She had two little cups which she held a flame under to make them warm and then transferred them onto the patient's back. Immediately the patient's skin was sucked up into the cup. Sometimes cupping can be a stationary thing or, in the case of this patient, she moved both cups around his back. It's sort of like an alternative form of deep tissue massage. It leaves these massive bruises though since these cups are essentially giving the patient big hickeys - ha! It was very cool to see the cupping procedure. Maybe someday I'll have it done on myself. But as for Monday, I just had acupuncture which was awesome.

After leaving the acupuncturist's office I drove to the same ocean sunset spot I talked about this past Saturday. There was nobody but me there. It was so nice to sit there, think about things {such as my residency rank list, etc} and clear my mind. There is something so peaceful about sitting on these huge lava rocks, listening to the waves.

Tuesday {2-22-11}
Our entire group spent the entire day with Dane Silva down on the south part of the island (nearly to same location we drove to over the weekend for the lava experience). Dane Silva is a traditional Hawaiian healer. It was interesting to hear some of his stories and he took us to two fantastic places, of which, I only got pictures of one :( I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Kelsey and Kathleen participating in a tradition hawaiian healing ceremony. The things we are wearing around our necks are tea leave leis. These leis are wore only by healers.

Dane Silva is guy in the red shirt.

When lava devastates an area, it takes years and years for plants to grow back. Dane Silva has been working with the U of M medical students for a number of years. Every year, they plant something in the lava to help bring life back to the area. These palms trees were planted by fellow medical students over the years.

These have to be pretty hardy plants! You plant a coconut and the palm tree grows right out of it.

People have been planting things for years to help make this as beautiful as it was prior to the lava flow.

The three rocks making the triangle shape represent mind, body and soul. The rock in the mind represents us.

The waves at Kaimu Beach were huge and really pretty!

The beach is jet black sand.

Sorry, still haven't taken the time to figure out this rotation thing. I probably won't while I'm here in Hawaii either.

One of the absolute most gorgeous black sand beaches I have seen. The sand is so black compared to the other black sand beaches we have seen. So beautiful!

This might be one of the best wave pictures from this vacation yet and I didn't even have to zoom in to get this detail!

Part of our group meditating while taking in the beauty of mother nature.

After leaving Kaimu Beach {I literally could have stayed there all day - honestly}, we drove maybe 15 miles to Isaac Hale Beach Park. There were huge waves and a bunch of surfers {I think all of us we dreaming about surfing on waves bigger than the 16 inch ones we learned on - ha!}. We walked back into the woods just a little way to this little warm water pool which is called Pohoiki. This was such an awesome place and I'm bummed I don't have any pictures of it. This pool is natural and it fills depending on the tide. It is soooo warm. Not quite like a hot tube but nice, warm and relaxing. Anyways, here's a picture I pulled off the internet of this pool.

http://hotwaterslaughter.com/content/pohoiki-warm-spring

So we all hung out here until our fingers and toes were all wrinkly. It was awesome! According to Dane Silva, these warm pools and considered healing pools to traditional Hawaiians. Healers would bring people here and massage them and preform healing ceremonies on them here. This is such a unique little place that is not well known to many tourists. I still wish we would have gotten some of our own group pictures on this little swimming hole. You have to walk down to get to it, so it is not visible from the walking path above.

After leaving the warm spring, we ate dinner which consisted of turkey sandwiches, diet coke and cheese balls :-) which we brought with us in a cooler. Once we were feed we started the 2 hour trek back home. Some of our car rides are the best. We talk a lot and laugh a ton. Having a van that fit everyone really helped bring out group closer together. We frequently talk about medical school and residency (because we are medical students and those two things are consuming 99% of our thoughts lately - ha!)

I'm gonna miss being down here in Hawaii with my classmates when this is all done and over. This has truly been a once in a lifetime opportunity and I have so many memories that will last forever. Okay, I'm getting sentimental and I'm only on Tuesday - moving on!

Wednesday {2-23-11}
Wednesday morning, I left the house before anyone was up and moving around to head into Kona {this is the most boring drive after you have done it a bajillion times like we have} to meet up with a naturopathic doctor. These doctors treat patients with herbs instead of pharmaceuticals like traditional doctors due. It was kind of interesting. The first patient of the day was someone on the other end of the island so it was a phone consultation. Anyways, the patient had blood pressure problems. I'm not really sure what I think about treating certain conditions with herbs. It's fine if these herbs work, but in the case of this patient, their blood pressure was still elevated in the 140s/110s and the doc told her that her blood pressure was doing good. Good?! Seriously?! That's way to high! I understand some people don't want to take pharmaceuticals but if it were me and I were taking herbs to lower my pressures and they were still that high, I think I would take a pharmaceutical instead of stroking out. But that's just me. It's interesting to see different approaches to medicine to say the least.

This naturopath also does manipulations. He was working on this patient's back and then he worked on his neck. Once the patient's neck was all relaxed - BAM - the doc cracked it to one side and then the other. I just about blew chunks :-x I absolutely hate high velocity manipulation of the cervical spine. Ugh - gross. Nobody is ever going to be wiping my neck around like that. He had two patient's he did high velocity cervical spine manipulation with that morning and gross...just gross. That can't be good for your neck.

The naturopath used to work with obstetrical patient's in labor at the hospital. Since I am going into OB, he wanted to show me this maneuver I can do on patient's to get the baby's head to drop into the pelvis. Basically it is pushing on the patient's posterior ischial spines to open up the pubis symphysis which widens the pelvis and then allows the baby's head to progress downward. So anyways, he does this maneuver on me. Ouch, holy man, that hurt. I'm pretty sure I have big bruises from this. Then he asks, can you feel that? Yeah, I can feel you hurting me {I didn't actually say that. I said 'yeah, I can' and then thought to myself 'now please stop asap!'} The difference between me and a pregnant person in active labor is the laxity of the pubis symphysis. Mine = not lax. Preggo mom's pubis symphysis = lax. Point taken, we'll see if I ever incorporate this into my practice.

Wednesday afternoon we were all with an MD who practices both tradition and Chinese medicine (aka: uses both pharmaceutical and herbs). This is the second time we have met with him. This time he talked to us about the medicinal properties of a whole bunch of different plants and herbs. It was a lot of information and I'm not completely sure how much I absorbed. Although, we did do some qi gong again. Man, I have the hardest time doing some of these forms of meditation in a group. Sean and I normally end up laughing because some of these positions are so awkward. I feel bad holding in my laughter but I just can't help it sometimes.

Check out the bathroom at his office! Yes, it is open to the outside.

Nothing like being one with nature while emptying your bladder. At least there was running water!

After class, we all went and got ice cream. The lady at the ice cream counter was kind of crabby, but whatever, I still had really good Tahitian Vanilla and Macadamian Nut ice cream. We all then stopped at the ocean sunset spot {up to this point, only Wade and I had been to this spot}. It was a little chilly and the sunset was good considering their was a storm moving in.

{Dang it, I'm out of photo storage space already - I have no idea why?! - so I just got some more but it's not letting me upload my sunset pictures :-( I was also going to post a picture of what I'll be doing this afternoon. Oh well. It will just have to wait I guess.}

Ryan, my parents and my in-laws are all in-flight over the ocean right now coming down to meet up with me!!

~Ashley

PS: our residency match lists were due yesterday. We'll see where Ryan and I are heading for residency come March 17th!

Time flies when you are having fun!

Saturday
We had a busy, busy day! We started at 10am by having surf lessons! Surfing is sooo much fun. After some really short instructions, we were all given our boards and we paddled out in the ocean to catch some waves. Surfing, believe it or not, is not that hard. I'm not super good at it, but it is rather easy to stand up on the boards. Keeping my balance was another story though. All six of us were able to catch waves and stand up on our boards. We had so much fun! There were even sea turtles surfing with us :)

We were giving instructions to bail off the board if we were coming too close to shore (there was no beach, it was all lava rock - ouch!) On my second wave, I actually rode it in for quite a while and then realized 'oh, crap, I'm gonna slam into lava rock!' So I belly flopped off the side of my board, ending up cutting my thumb and smacking my bad knee right into a rock. Oh....my....gosh...did that ever hurt. It took me a while to even straighten my leg out afterward. My thumb bleed for the remainder of our surfing extravaganza :( Nothing like rubbing salt in your wound!!

We all survived. Wade cut his hand as well so I wasn't the only one and Sean had a bleeding knee by the time we ended. My knee had a goose egg which has now turned into a nice bruise. Battle scars - ha! There was someone taking pictures of us surfing but we have yet to get any pictures from that. When I do, I'll be sure to post them here (but only if I don't look like a complete fool!).

After surfing we went to turtle beach. This is a tiny little beach that not many people know about. There is a sign that says 'public shoreline access' but the get to the beach, you have to walk between these two houses on a sidewalk which many probably mistake as private property. Anyways, you walk down a little sidewalk and then cross over a bunch of lava rock to get to this little beach where a bunch of sea turtles come to hang out. The sea turtles did not disappoint. They were there, waiting for us. We saw three different turtles during our time there. They are really friendly and swim right up to you. Sea turtles have a special coat on there shell that keeps them healthy so we didn't touch them but they most certainly touched us with their legs while swimming around us!

Hello!

After we got home from all of our activities, I was feeling stir crazy (that's what happens when we never get 'me' time). So Wade and I hopped in the car intended to go grad a drink (yes, it was one of those days) but instead we drove up the coast to go check out a snorkeling beach. We didn't quite make it to the beach as we turned off the road where there was a little 'public shoreline access' sign. We drove down this bumpy little dirt road. When the road ended, we hiked a little trail down to the ocean. We both sat on the lava rocks, talked on our cellphones and saw an amazing sunset. It felt really good to get away for a bit. I didn't have my regular camera with me so these next pictures are all from my cellphone.

Dirt road leading to the ocean {disregard the big bug smear - ha!}

Of course we did some yoga :-)

After heading back home, we grilled shrimp and potatoes and had a little family dinner before heading out to the Blue Dragon for some live music. The Blue Dragon is just down the road from us and is actually a neat little place. You walk 'inside' but it is open air. We had some good drinks and fun times people watching! It is funny what people do on vacation sometimes - ha!

Sunday
We packed up our stuff and headed for the volcano on the south part of the island (about a 2.5 hour drive). When we got to the national park, we stopped at the steam vents and then drove to and hiked a lava tube. A lot of the locals had recommended we go and see the lava at night time. So we borrowed flashlights from our landlords and drove to the night lava viewing area and then found out - nope, you can't walk to the lava unless you pay $50 bucks :( It was a huge disappointment. We ended up staying in the viewing area until it got dark and only got to see like tiny 'campfires' in the distance :( We were all kind of bummed we spent a gorgeous day in the car going to do something that we wouldn't be able to do. Oh well.

This is Mauna Kea (where the observatory is).

We stopped on our way to the volcano to see pe'epe'e falls.

We didn't stay long - locals like to break into vehicles here so we took a couple pictures and headed back to the car as there were some sketchy people there (yes, we profile).