Bone Box

The second block is upon us. We're still doing all of the same subjects (histo, embryo, physio, anatomy, OPP, EOM) and now we've added biochem. Clearly, we didn't have enough to do. Clearly. We've moved on from the brachial plexus to its evil stepsister the lumbosacral plexus.

Oh, and I have a femur. In my house. That's not mine. That is all.

Geologic time

Someone informed me that 25 years is the smallest unit of time that geologists will use (i.e. a quarter of a century). I don't know if this is true, and I am far too lazy to look it up. I kind of hope it's true though, just because it's interesting. At any rate, today my age can be measured in geologic time.

Happy Birthday to me. Twenty-five seems really old, but I know it isn't. Maybe it's just that I never thought about actually getting here until now. One thing is for certain. Time goes quickly. It feels like just yesterday that I was doing really silly Shakespearean plays with my friends and watching silly shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. My how things change.
I have biochem (ick) and a preceptorship at a substance abuse clinic (yay!).

Nurse Ninjas

Most nurses are ninjas, at least when it comes to respiratory illnesses. I have chronic asthma, which I have had since childhood. As such, I am normally quite skilled at managing it and rarely have symptoms. When I do have symptoms, it's usually due to upper respiratory infections or other illnesses. Currently, I have such an illness. Yesterday, I went to the school clinic to get a refill on my albuterol (I know, I know, I shouldn't have even let it run that low) and to have the nurse practitioner listen to my lungs to make sure I wasn't dying. I walk in and she's talking to a drug rep, but the RN is available. I basically say, "Hi," and before I can get anything else out, the RN has whisked me back to a room and is taking my vitals, listening to my chest, etc. It's like she had a weird nurse spide-y sense when it comes to asthma. It was quite remarkable.

I've had that happen before. Once, the nurse did it over the phone and demanded that I be driven to the clinic within the hour.

I don't know how they do it. Freakin' ninjas, I tells ya.

Post Block One Fortunately/Unfortunately Game

It's time for another game of fortunately/unfortunately.
Fortunately, I seem to have survived the block exam.
Unfortunately, with regards to histology, this seems to be based upon a technicality.
Fortunately, I am willing to accept that technicality as a "pass."
Unfortunately, this means my histo barrier is pretty weak.
Fortunately, I was not in the group in my class that had the upper respiratory infection during exam week.
Unfortunately, I have it now.

Post Exam Weekend

I have officially survived my first exam week. I'm a little thrilled, really. Every day was hard, no doubt, but I feel pretty good about how I did on my exams. I am pretty sure I passed everything, and there is a slight chance that I high passed a few things. That wasn't my goal this first exam cycle. My goal was to get my bearings, figure out what works and what doesn't, and then apply it to future exam cycles to do better and to use my time more effectively.

Also, this weekend has been awesome. I've done nothing school related, except for a memorial service for our body donors. The service was nice and respectful, except for the MSII that was wearing a mini skirt that was just barely longer than her short white coat.

I think I may be getting the upper respiratory thingie that's going around in my class. I am happy to have had it miss exam week, but I feel like crap right now and that's horrible. I wanted to go to church today, for the first time in a month or so. I feel gross though, so I may have to go next weekend. I'm sitting here with a glass of water and seeing if I feel better. Mostly, though, my church has a lot of elderly folks and I don't want to get them sick.

Either way, today I do have to do a little bit of work to prepare for classes tomorrow. I think I'm ready to move forward.

Sleep deprivation

This week has been, and will be, an exercise in sleep deprivation. The goal is to sleep just enough to function properly and learn things but not so much as to lose a lot of time to it. Time spent sleeping is valuable and could be used to study. Granted, I have been sleeping about six hours a night, which isn't horrible. It's also not good. I'm a gal that likes massive amounts of sleep, usually like eight or ten hours.

Oh, next week is exam week. That may help explain things. I have a block exam on Friday, Sept. 12th. Prior to that, I have an OPP practical exam on Tuesday, a Histology lab exam on Wednesday, and an Anatomy lab exam on Thursday. It sounds like a lot, and it is. There's a lot to know, although I feel pretty ok about OPP. OPP is a very active class. You are doing things to patients, like soft tissue manipulation and range of motion exams. As such, it's a little easier to learn this stuff. Anatomy is less active, but you can kind of multi-task in the lab by studying for the practical portion and then making sure you think about stuff that might come up in the written. This can be done in Histology too, so as far as those classes go, I feel ok.

Physiology is just a more in-depth version of the physio and cell bio classes I took in undergrad. I can spend some time with the notes, internet, and book and get it.

Embryology is horrible. I mean, it's interesting. It's just so complicated. Once you get to like day nine or ten, it's completely obtuse and you have to have a really good sense of what happens visually, since there's so much folding around that occurs.

Tomorrow, we welcome tropical storm Hannah to the northeast.

Forgetting school

Every now and then, it's necessary to take a day and forget that you're in medical school. Yesterday was one such day. I woke up leisurely, had a lovely brunch with my husband, went to an art show on the coast, and had a wonderful dinner with friends.

So it wasn't a complete success. I kept trying to remember the muscles in the extensor compartment of the forearm, as well as the muscles of the thenar and hypothenar eminences of the hand. Also, I kept finding bony landmarks on my husband. It was weird. Even on play days, you're never really away from it.

The downside, of course, is that yesterday is gone, and now even though my husband has today off and I theoretically have no classes, I am going to go study at school. All day.

Oh yeah, and we're less than two weeks away from our first block exam. Not that I'm stressed or anything.

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.