Strange things

I've started saying "thank you" to the cadavers after I have finished body surfing/studying in the the anatomy lab. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's my way to remind myself that they are, or were, once humans. I don't know. It's not like they can hear me. Maybe they can, I don't know.

The time crunch and information crit continues. There is no real way to explain it, unless you have actually gone to medical school. Just when you think you might have a handle on the information, you find more somehow.

It's time for sleep. Then, I get up at 5:30 am and do it all over again.

Information Crit

I'm still in some sort of time vortex. I knew that it would be like this, but I can hardly believe the sheer amount of material that there is to learn. It's been barely two weeks and it feels like it's been years. The relationships in our class show it too. We're already joking with each other like we've known each other for years. Only problem is that we forget names periodically. So y'know, my anatomy crew is pretty awesome and we've done a lot of bonding over our cadaver, but half the time I forget their names. I know what they look like though, which is a plus.

A pretty common theme here is information overload, but it comes in waves. During the first wave, you're completely astounded that there could be so much. It's like running into a brick wall, over and over again. Then, you slow down a bit and take a gander at just a portion of the wall. Suddenly, it seems somewhat more manageable. You pick away at it for a week or two, gradually adding to your understanding of the wall. Then, just when you think you've finally got a hold on the massive amount of information in that wall, you see a tidal wave of even more. Rinse and repeat. Most recently, this happened with the upper limb. I learned all of the muscles in the shoulder/back area, as well as most of their attachments enervation, and blood supply. I could, and can, draw the brachial plexus. I felt like I had a tenuous grasp on the upper limb.

Of course, then we started in on the arm and forearm region. And let's not talk about the hand. Seriously.

And who names this stuff? Why is everything so similar? It makes it easy to get mixed up, whereas if we named things like Bob or Jerry, there'd be less to mix up. Bob sounds nothing like Jerry, whereas anterior circumflex artery of the humerus sounds strangely like posterior circumflex artery of the humerus, as well as circumflex artery of the scapula (not anterior or posterior though, just to piss me off).

The other day in anatomy lab, My forehead was itchy. I couldn't scratch it though, because my gloved hands were...gross. Really gross. My lab partner's first reaction was to say, "My elbow's clean! Use my elbow." And I did. I have no shame.

I need to go learn about various polygynal shaped spaces and intervals in the upper limb. Who decided to have the triangular space, triangular interval, quadrangular space, etc? Who's dumbass idea was that? There must be a really special place in hell for those bastards. And you know what's best? the triangular space is near both the quadrangular space and the triangular interval. Just for shits and giggles. Really.

Time Vortex

I have fallen into a time vortex. I basically sleep, exercise, study, eat, rinse and repeat every day. So far, most days look about the same, except some leave me smelling like anatomy lab. I got dead people in my hair last week. Seriously. How is this part of anyone's reality? On the up side, I seem to have found a groove wherein I don't feel like I'm going completely insane and yet I am only slightly behind. I think it's sort of common to be, or at least feel, like you're about two or three days behind. We were learning about muscles in anatomy today, but I haven't gotten to that in my studying. Yeah, I did the reading, but reading is different than studying, y'know? Maybe you don't. I kind of hope you don't. There is a difference.

I realized the other day that I have no clue as to what's going on in the world. I try to keep abreast of things, but I'm failing. Has Obama picked a running mate? Have the Olympics started? Who is Michael Phelps, and why is he such a big deal? I have no idea. I saw a headline today that stated something like, "Utah to close Friday" and all I thought was, "Gee, is it like the Hotel California?" Oh, and apparently Russia is blowing up Georgia (not the state. My gut reaction was to wonder how they got tanks to Atlanta), the air in Beijing still sucks, and John Edwards had an affair, only no one believed it for a few weeks because only the tabloids would report on it.

It's like time has stopped and yet I am still getting older. This doesn't seem fair.

Brachial Plexus

I've just spent the last day and a half memorizing the image to the left. With the exception of a few of the nerves that branch off of the cords, I can draw it, too.

I have no life. Don't get me started on the bones in the upper limb. It's not enough to know that the humerus is the upper bone in the arm. Nope, there's landmarks on it. Ten of them, I think. I'm not really sure. Sort of like maps. Which I can't read. Nice.

I'm going to go spend a huge chunk of my day in the anatomy lab now.

(Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! At least I think they read this...)

My Cadaver

Dear Madam,
I want to take a moment to thank you for your gift. By the end of this academic year, I will know your body more intimately than you did. You have given me an amazing opportunity to learn the intricacies of the human form. I promise to learn all that I can from you, to take full advantage of the time I have to learn from you, and to never come to the laboratory unprepared.

I will never forget you.

The way it is

There is only one way that this whole med school thing is going to work (aside from me waking up with a 500 GB hard drive in my head). I need to have a schedule that I stick to most days. If I don't do that, I'll probably go nuts trying to do everything at once. This is what I'm thinking for the time being.

Weekdays
5:45-6:00 am Get up and exercise (if I don't do it in the morning I probably won't)
8:oo-12:00 pm Class of some sort or another
12:00-1:00 pm Lunch (yay!)
1:00-5 or 6 pm More class
6:00-7:00 pm Dinner with the boy (a must; if I don't get to sit down and talk to my husband, I will go nuts)
7:00-10:00 pm Study time
10:00-10:45 pm Guitar time
11:00 pm Bed time

Weekends will probably be sorta similar, except without class and the possibility of sleeping in a little bit. Oh, and I'm going to try to give myself one weekend day off a week, and use the other one as a sort of full day study session.

This might just work, assuming I can do this...

First Day

Do you remember your first day of kindergarten, and how you felt leading up to that first walk into the elementary school, plastic lunch box in hand? A lot of children are at least a little scared. They aren't certain about being away from their parents for that amount of time, they may worry that the other children won't like them, and they have no idea what it'll be like to learn the curriculum.

That's kind of like how I feel tonight, on the eve of my first day of medical school. Except that I'm thousands of dollars in debt, thousands of miles away from my family and friends, and I have to pack my own lunch. Yes, I admit it. I'm scared. Terrified, in fact. I am about to start school with 120 of my new best friends, only one of whom I've had an actual conversation with. I know it'll get easier, and I am looking forward to meeting new people and (hopefully) making at least a few friends. My school doesn't seem like the kind of school that would admit a bunch of douchebags, but it's possible that I will get a surprise.

I remember on the night before my first day of kindergarten, I spent a while picking out what outfit I would wear. I wound up wearing a jean skirt (I went through an epic phase with these. My poor mother had to wash it every few days so that I could wear it every day), a pair of sandals, a white t-shirt with some kind of design on it, and my glasses. I had a pink back pack. Tomorrow, I don't know what I'll wear, but it'll probably be pretty snazzy for my standards. It might actually have sleeves! It might not involve a comic book reference! Maybe it'll involve khakis.

All I know is that I'm terrified, more terrified of this than just about anything else.

Strangest Date I've Ever Had

In a week, I have a date, of sorts. I will meet a person who will be very important to me for the next few months. We've never met before; in fact, that's generally the way you want it. On our first meeting, they will be naked, although I may not see all of them at once. This person, who I have never met before, is giving me a gift.

They are my cadaver. At some point during their life, they decided that donating their body to my school after their death was the right thing for them. They didn't have to do it, no one forced them to (this does supposedly happen in other countries). They have no assurance that I will treat their gift with respect (I will).

It is very humbling to receive such an intimate gift from a complete stranger. My aunt, who went to medical school at age 30, still remembers her cadaver. She says that she loved him, that she thinks of him every day. I don't know if I'll think of them every day for the rest of my life, but I do think I will develop a deep appreciation for the gift they're giving me.

I wonder if this person will be watching, from wherever they are now. I think that bodies are just containers, albeit containers that we get very attached to for about eighty years, plus or minus.

The Great Hearafter

I'm afraid. It's the kind of person I am. If I were to be another creature, it would be a prey animal with an anxiety disorder. Instead, I'm a human with an anxiety disorder. Being afraid or worried is in my nature. Generally, there's something I can do about it. Talking to husband helps, as does seeing a psychiatrist. Other times, I can go on a walk or do one of my kick boxing videos (today, I've done both, even though it's 85 degrees with 60% humidity). Recently, though, I've found something that I can't do much about. I've been thinking about the nature of living and dying. Not so much the "how" part; that's going to be different for everyone, and I'm hoping for either passing while sleeping or while on the toilet. Rather, I've been thinking about the after part. What happens after we die? Anything? Nothing? Do we just decay?

Bodily, I sort of assume that we decay. I mean, our bodies don't merely disintegrate into nothingness (I will become very aware of this next week, during my first anatomy lab). There's something else, though, something "other" about all creatures. It's pretty difficult to look at my husband, who I love dearly, and think that his quirky personality is only due to chemical reactions taking place deep within his skull. Similarly, my cats are just completely ridiculous, but they clearly have some sort of character that makes them who they are. So what happens to that essence of being, that spark of personality, the sense of consciousness, the soul? Calvin and Hobbes have the following exchange to offer.

Calvin: Hobbes, what do you think happens to us when we die?
Hobbes: I think we play saxophone for an all-girl cabaret in New Orleans.
Calvin: So you believe in heaven?
Hobbes: Call it what you like.

I...am not sure what I believe. I only know that I have this deep certainty that there is something else after this world. My problem is that I desire proof, beyond a doubt, of what comes next. It's pretty hard to scientifically prove whether or not there is an afterlife, especially since bodies decay so willingly when left unattended. I am currently reading Spook by Mary Roach. She goes out looking for evidence to prove or debunk the notion of an afterlife. She says, in the beginning, that she very much wants there to be a place for the soul to hang out in after we're done here. She then quips, "will there be a place to plug in my laptop?" It should be an interesting read. Maybe it'll help my worrying.

All I know is that I watched The Bucket List the other night and bawled my eyes out (I know, not the best movie choice for an existential crisis).

Miscellaneous

Husband and I are now officially broke. Until my loans come in, that is. Then, we're living off of future money. That actually freaks me out more than being broke. Maybe it shouldn't. All I know is that when husband sat down to pay the bills, there wasn't a whole lot left. We're used to there being an "oh shit" buffer and it's just not there. We can rebuild it, but it's scary.

Orientation and classes start next week. I'm apprehensive and excited. It should be quite a journey. My main concern, though, isn't the material (yet). It's that orientation apparently comes along with a dress code of business casual. I've worked in the non profit world for a year and a half, and prior to that, I was in college. I have no idea what business casual means, but it sure better involve khaki pants and maybe some sort of blouse thing or else I'm screwed. I don't even know if I still have the blouse thing. I'd really like to be able to show up in a tank top and my capris, but both my capris and tank tops are borderline...gross looking. Most of my tee-shirts are those cheap knit things from Old Navy or involve comic book characters or jokes (and in one rare instance, both!). Clearly, in a few years, I will be an excellent candidate for What Not to Wear on TLC. Pretty much the only dressy things I own are the suit I wore for med school interviews (hot, right?) and the bridesmaid dress I wore for my sister-in-law's wedding this past May. Admittedly, the dress is actually wearable and the suit makes me look a little like K.D. Lang, so it's not a complete wash. Unless, of course, you don't like K.D. Lang.

I know that I'll have to, eventually, get used to dressing in a non-schleppy manner, but I was hoping to put it off for a few years, so I could pick a specialty wherein I could wear scrubs all of the time. Also, I was hoping not to have to acquire decent clothes as we're, y'know, broke.

Dog Days of Summer

Generally, the end of August is referred to as being the "dog days of summer." I think this is because the end of August is seen as the last hurrah of summer, the time that you have to squeeze in all of your extra fun before it's too late.

My dog days of summer are occurring now. Why? Well, school starts the first week of August, and may I say that it is really strange to start school so early. During grade school, I never started school before the last week in August; often, I didn't start until after Labor Day. High school was pretty similar. The college I went to didn't start classes til the third week of September.

This past week, we had a friend from Jersey visit us. We've known her for quite a while; I met her in 1996 in seventh grade algebra and my husband met her in 1998 in 9th grade German. She's the kind of friend who actually knew you when you had a retainer and went through your poser/grunger/punk rock/backstreet boys/other phase. The kind of friend who has not only met your parents but has possibly done work for your parents. The kind of friend who has way too much dirt on you for you to ever consider running for public office. The kind of friend who has cheated off of your math homework, but you've returned the favor. It was a fun week. We didn't do a whole lot, but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. She was entertained by our new home (it's like "Gilmore Girls" sometimes, I swear) and we were regaled by her tales of being a nanny. Luckily, she now works for a lovely family, but she went through some real lemons a few years ago. Some families, it seems, don't want a nanny so much as they want a slave.

There was a foray into NH to see The Dark Knight, which was excellent. I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did. This has been happening a lot lately. Husband wants to go see a movie based upon a comic he read in his youth and I go along, feeling pretty much neutral. Then, I see the movie and really like it. This means that it's probably good that I didn't read comic books as a kid; I clearly would have gotten even less done at school. I would have been the kid that stared out of the window all of the time as opposed to only about half of the time.

Whoa

In a little over two months, I will be 25 years old. This is strange to me. Not necessarily because it's old, per se (although I am a year or two older than about half of my classmates), but because my life as it is now is nothing like the life I envisioned for myself ten or twelve years ago. Med school? No way. Living 3000+ miles away from my entire family? Not a chance. About the only thing that I accurately predicted was that I would be married and have cats. Yessir, life at nearly a quarter century old is nothing like what I expected. If you'd have told me that I would go to medical school even five years ago, I would have laughed. I didn't even get the idea of medical school until I was 21. It was an accident (literally; my mom's car rolled over and she had excellent health care within minutes). Getting here has been a pain. It took two years of classes, several cracks at the MCAT, and two application cycles. This is probably because the first cycle, I didn't really know what I was doing. I pretty much looked up the top twenty medical schools and applied to those. I didn't look at much information outside of their ranking, so these were research heavy schools. Second time around, I was smarter about it. I read up on all the schools I applied to, looked at their programs, and picked ones that I knew I would be happy attending. Actually, I found my school on accident; I saw its name mentioned in passing on a pre-med message board and looked it up. Funny, how things happen.

So life at 25? It's really weird and completely unexpected. And that's a good thing, I think, as this life is quite a bit more interesting than that which I could dream up on my own.

Reason 101 to wear sunscreen

Apparently, you can get sunburned on your eyelids. This seems like it would be the most excruciating pain ever.

Also, downtown Portland (Maine) is awesome, in much the same way that downtown Portland (Oregon) is awesome. We went and saw some live music and went exploring. It was a much needed excursion from the apartment, which is really, really, hot right now.

I lack intelligent statements.

She's got balls

Part of me has always wondered what it would be like to be super morbidly obese (yes, that is the medical term). I'm not sure why, exactly. I don't want to be overweight or unhealthy. It is a rare person indeed who does wish themselves ill health. I suppose I've always wondered if being obese would be as frustrating as I imagine it to be. Everyone assumes you eat poorly, are lazy and don't care about your health. It is difficult to find stylish clothing in your size. The summer's heat is perhaps even more unbearable. I've also often wondered what happens to people when they get so large. Are they able to clean themselves? Walk? Play? This blogger has something to say about all of this. She's chronicled her journey to the decision to have weight loss surgery and written very well about the surgery and aftermath.

Damn, that girl's got serious cojones. Damn.

To my neighbors

Dear Neighbors with a pool (i.e. not the neighbors who seem to hate cats for some reason),

I have noticed that you have a pool. I have also noticed that it is 90 degrees with 75% humidity. Now, I am a bit shy, but I would like to suggest myself as an excellent partner in pool shenanigans. I cite the following reasons.

• I have a huge collection of sunscreen since I am terrified of UVA and UVB rays.
• I can do really awesome things with seltzer water and a little juice (vodka/gin optional).
• I'm pretty funny most of the time.
• I have double jointed thumbs and elbows. While this is of little use to you, it is entertaining.
• I have all the Harry Potter books, as well as a fairly large collection of comic books that I would be willing to share.
• I'm new in town, and thus have not been poisoned against anyone (except the cat-hating neighbors), so you could mold me as you see fit.
• I'm a med student, so after August 1st, you might not see me again. Minimal effort on your part for a pretty awesome friend.

Won't you invite me over to your pool? I promise to bring tasty cherries.