Ok, major events in chronological order (because I like things to be organized):
1. On Saturday I volunteered in a free clinic that's run by my school. The clinic is staffed by doctors, med students and PA students. Undergrad students do all the office work. Everyone is a volunteer, no one gets paid for their time. The clinic I was at last week is located in a neighborhood that's primarily African American (this weekend I'm volunteering in one in a Philipino neighborhood and next weekend I'm volunteering in one that focuses on harm reduction for IV drug users). So Saturday was my favorite day of med school so far. I like seeing patients, I like helping people. I didn't do any patient interviews or physicals. Mostly I was just shadowing to get the feel for how a clinic runs. Although I did get to take some blood pressures, heard a really distinct heart murmur, and palpated a mass. Basically, I really liked clinic and want to get more involved as I learn more and am able to do more (I really want to do a blood draw!)
2. We had our first quiz on Monday, which means I didn't go outside all weekend which was somewhat distressing but it was also excessively hot outside so I wasn't toooo distressed. Let's just say I rocked my first quiz (can we say 100% on the multiple choice? :) Does that make me a gunner?) My school has one big quiz every two weeks that covers material from all five classes. But the first quiz covered only one week to sort of ease everyone into the testing format/question types etc. So we'll see how well the next one goes...
3. Today was cadaver day two. Our task was to reflect (or fold back) the chest wall (skin and the fascia underneath) to expose the muscles for later work. We also had to remove all the skin from the arms. One arm we did a superficial dissection to find veins and nerves that run just under the skin (for example: flip your arm over and look at your elbow pit. See the vein that they use to draw blood? We dissected that out so you can follow its path all the way up into Stanley's shoulder). The other side we were supposed to go deeper and expose the muscles that are under the fat and nerves and such. It turns out Stanley has really nice big veins but he also has a lot of subcutaneous fat, which made his nerves hard to find so we didn't get very deep on either side. But thats fine, just more to do next week.
[skip this paragraph if you don't like squeamish details] Part of what I was tasked with was to remove the skin from the middle of the upper arm to the wrist in one big sheet (apparently I was dubbed the most precise with a scalpel in my group). Once I got the skin completely separated from the tissues underneath, it was really surreal. Rigor mortis prevented us from completely straightening Stanley's arms, so when I took the skin off, it held the shape of the bent elbow, which was just a really weird feeling. Holding human skin that maintained the shape of a joint in my hand... was even more bizarre than I expected.
Anyhow, the rest of this week is jam packed with lectures and next week is really lab heavy, then we'll have quiz #2 and then the week after is Labor day and I'm already looking forward to 3 days in the mountains :)
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