Happy Playoff Season!

So today, after taking our biweekly quiz, sitting through a lecture and working through a histology (cell bio) lab, I did something I haven't done since starting medical school. I came home and climbed back into bed (yes, during the day) and after catching up on new Big Bang Theory (which is the 3rd best show ever, after firefly and BSG, Arrested Development and Scrubs come in a close 4th and 5th) I am still laying here under my covers watching the Cards/Nats game. For those who don't understand, this is my version of a nap (I pretty much don't sleep during the day unless I'm sick). And I haven't done this for the last two months.

BY THE WAY, as of today, I'm half way through my first block!!! This calls for a celebration (which will be put off for two weeks until my FOUR DAY WEEKEND).

On the schedule for this week:
-Finish dissecting our cadaver's hemisected pelvis (Tuesday)
-Do my first ever breast exam on a (practice) patient (Wednesday)
-Second anatomy practical exam- thats the one where they put the little tags on the cadavers (Friday)
-WATCH AS MUCH PLAYOFF BASEBALL AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE (ALL DAY EVERYDAY)
-Plan to either wallow in misery on Tues/Wed (If the Giants lose) or celebrate an epic comeback on Thurs (if the Giants win)

In case anyone was wondering, here's how I WANT the playoffs to go (not necessarily how I expect them to go...)
NLDS: Giants beat the Reds and Cards beat the Nats
NLCS: Giants beat the Cards
ALDS: A's beat the tigers and Orioles beat the Yankees
ALCS: A's beat the Orioles
WS: GIANTS BEAT THE A'S IN A BAY BRIDGE WORLD SERIES

Happy Genitalia Week

Warning in advance: this week has been slightly disturbing, and I very much need to get it all out. So the content of this blog might be (will be) slightly (more) disturbing. Here's a list of things I did this week, I'll write about them in this order so if you want to skip something you can (If you'd like to continue thinking of me as a normal human being, I suggest you only read #5).

1. On Monday we had our male GU lecture- so we looked at normal and abnormal penises for an hour

2. On Tuesday we dissected the anal triangle (yes, its pretty much what it sounds like)

3. On Wednesday, I did my first rectal and male GU exam and had a lecture on pelvic and breast exams

4. Today we hemisected our cadaver's pelvis (cut it straight into right and left halves) and removed the right leg from the body (with a hammer and chisel).

5. Tomorrow is my roommie's birthday (guess what we'll be consuming large quantities of after a week like that?)

1. So Monday actually wasn't that bad. It's just that anything male is very un-intuitive for me (being female...). Fun fact of the day: men have a tiny little vestigial homolog to the uterus. (translation for non-science folks: guys have a little tiny womb inside of them. No, it doesn't work.) And women have a homolog to the penis which has some function (sort of...) I'll let you figure out what it is and what it's function is ;-) if you're stumped, you can ask me. And a fabulous direct quote from our anatomy instructor "The pudendal nerve provides sensory innervation to the penis or the clitoris. It also provides motor innervation to the voluntary sphincters of the urethra and the anus. So it's kind of important, you should try not to cut it in surgery" (Translation: One nerve lets you feel your penis/clit AND keeps you from pissing and crapping your pants. It's just a little important)

2. The anal triangle is the space between your ishial tuberosities (if you sit up nice and straight, they're the bones that poke down into the floor) and your asshole. We started this dissection by putting an excessively large tampon up our cadavers ass (my job since my lab partners literally couldn't do it). Which was somewhere beyond disturbing. Then we spent 3 hrs digging through the fat around the ass looking for nerves. Disgusting and unrewarding.

3. So doing an exam (on a practice patient who gets paid... not on my classmates) wasn't as rough as I expected. It's like there's a switch I can flip in my head that turns off the part of your brain that recognizes what you're really doing and just focuses on learning and doing it right. I think the most disconcerting part of the exam for me wasn't actually the rectal exam. It was the inguinal canal exam (checking for an inguinal hernia)... you can google it if you want to know whats involved. anyways, it was disturbing because to me, it really looks like it should hurt (but apparently it doesn't really?). Made me realize I don't really have a good understanding of man-parts and what is and isn't painful

In order to let you all still consider me a semi-normal human being, I'll stop describing this :)

Pelvic and breast lectures were a lot of "yeah yeah I've heard all that before", but apparently a lot of it went over the guys' heads. (The guy next to me didn't know what a cervix was for example, he definitely asked me in the middle of lecture). They also clearly didn't know what to do with the speculums they were passing around.

4. So today's lab was quite brutal. we've gone entirely through the abdomen and pelvis so today we literally took a chisel and hammer and cut straight through L4 and L5 vertebrae and the sacrum, then used a scalpel to extend the cut from the spine horizontally through the posterior wall (aka the cadaver's right lower back). Then we cut straight through the genitalia (yeah, go ahead and shudder at the thought of cutting personal parts in half. It made me shudder). And here's the best part: Stanley's bowels and rectum are really really really full (of poop). So we were having a hard time completing the cut to remove his right leg without cutting his bowels open. So we called over an instructor to help.

Instructor: well, you aren't cutting along the midline, you're too far off to the side

Me: well, his rectum is really full, and we really don't want to perforate it.

Instructor: It is really full, you just have to pull it off to the side like this [pulls].... and I just stuck my finger through his rectal wall, sorry guys, that's poop on my gloves.

[uuuuuuuuuugh]

so according to the instructor, our rectum was so very very full, that rupturing it was basically inevitable. In the end, she actually removed the entire thing which will make future dissections easier. So not the happiest day in lab. It smelled horrible, and it was rather violent. Seeing the sagital section (from the midline cut) of the male pelvis/genitalia wasn't that exciting, the female was pretty cool though, even if the ovaries and uterus are all shrunken in the few old ladies who haven't had a hysterectomy by the time they donate their bodies.

5. So party tomorrow :) One day to relax before we gear up for an exam on Monday, an anatomy practical on Friday and a visit to the "pelvic exam simulator" so we can all practice our pelvic exams on plastic lady parts before we see a real patient in two weeks.... shit just got real :-)

New Routines

Well everyone, it's official. I think med school's finally starting to settle into a routine. I realized its been about 10 days since I've written and I had to think what we've done over the past few days and my first thought was "well, nothing really special happened" (which isn't REALLY true, but that was my first thought). At the end of this week, we'll be half way through block 1 (and I'll be 1/8 of the way to becoming a real doctor!)

So my classes... Biochem spent the last two weeks trying to get us to do "self study modules" then spend class time teaching each other/making up skits and other nonsense. Needless to say, it didn't go well (as reflected by nearly half the class failing the biochem portion of our last quiz). So note to anyone who might someday want to go to medical school: schools are all soooo proud of their attempts to integrate curriculum and offer "group learning experiences" instead of just lecture. Fair warning "group learning" translates to "waste of your time". I never thought I'd say this, but I really wish they'd just lecture to us.

Physio has gotten harder but more interesting. We've moved through cardiac physiology and now to respiratory physiology. Best part about physio: its currently taught by an instructor who looks EXACTLY like Saul Tigh. I really really want him to come to class with an eye patch on one day (I know theres a couple of you who will be tempted to comment on this, but careful with any spoilers, at least one or two people who read this are still in the middle of the show :) )

and now for anatomy... Stanley's abdomen has been.. interesting. The first day we opened the abdominal cavity a TA came over and said "what the fuck is wrong with your guy's abdomen?" It turns out Stanley's had a couple of abdominal surgeries- his appendix and gall bladder were both removed. And after abdominal surgery all the connective tissue in your abdomen creates "adhesions"- which are exactly what they sound like... everything gets stuck together which makes dissecting (without breaking open any bowels) really difficult. The abdomen also smells realy REALLY bad (just in case you wanted to know). And the blood supply to abdominal organs is really complicated (although I did get another compliment on my dissection skills. The instructor said my dissection of the inferior mesentaric artery was "beautiful, even though the cadaver's guts are all stuck together").

Up next: we're learning the male GU system this week. I'll once again refrain from details but basically we're learning the exams for male genitalia and the rectal exam (yes they're exactly what they sound like. No, I don't know why this is one of the first exams we learn and no, we do not practice on each other). So this should  be an... interesting week.