the anvil.

so its been a while since i updated, and this story happened at least a week ago, probably more... but it's worth sharing anyway.

so in lecture we did the ear, and basically they said we could attempt to chisel out the canal and whatnot, but it's doubtful that we'll find anything.  the canal and the ear bones (you know... hammer, anvil, stirrup [malleus, incus, stapes]) are inside a large bone of the skull and so basically you have to be able to hit it just right to get into the canal... and even if you do that, the ear bones are so small that it's doubtful you would find them, especially before you crush or lose them.  so... knowing all that... we were done with everything else, so i figured i'd give it a whirl.  i ended up having to take gwen's entire ear and canal (embedded in skull) off separately... and then work at it.  i chiseled and chiseled and finally... TADA!!  we could clearly see the canal... the concha... and... the anvil!!  (originally i thought it was the hammer, but i'm pretty sure it was actually the anvil).  so exciting.  one of our TAs is obsessed with the ear -- she loves it.  so i thought i would show it to her.  so here i go walking... ear in one hand... tweezers holding the anvil in the other... and BAM.  dropped the anvil.   i go "no, no, no!" and drop to my knees.  subsequently me and two of my lab mates are on our hands and knees on this nasty sticky cadaver floor looking for this ear bone.  grr.  and we never found it.

the end.

awe.

so the other day... i was looking at our brain, and well, seeing that it is mostly mush on the inside, my finger slipped through it at one point and when i pulled my finger out, there was a chunk of brain mush on the end of my finger.  i looked at this chunk of matter and all its grotesqueness and my immediate realization was -- this piece of tissue on my finger holds thought.  isn't that a crazy realization?  like that little chunk of mush that was in my hand held memories of this woman's life, and thoughts and muscle memory type pathways and all that jazz.  how weird is that?  

blows. my. mind.

moving forward.  we dissected the face and into the temporal space yesterday... lots of arteries and nerves to check out.  and then today was fun.  we took a saw (plan old hand saw), mallet and chisel, and sawed a wedge out of the back of the skull, and then visualizing the pharynx we cut straight down through the center of the skull... like right down through the middle  of her eyes, down her nose, through her front two teeth and then through the tongue and bottom of the jaw. so we literally have two sides of her face/skull.  awesome.  it was so cool to be able to see the structures from the different views.  unfortunately this also now means we had to find all the arteries and nerves and muscles that we couldn't see from the outside.  but we found them, and it was sweet, i have to say.  :)  so that was fun.  renewed my interest in lab a little bit.  although it was pretty... disconcerting.  not to mention the fact that all that careful dissecting we've done for the past two weeks seems like it's pretty much obliterated now and i have no idea how they're going to tag stuff for our practical.  

test is wednesday.  now until then = studying.  bleh.

i can't wait until 4:00pm on wednesday.  :)

today = best day in lab so far.

or at least pretty far up there.  so today we learned the skull... and then basically there wasn't much to do in lab, they said we could start taking the skin of the face if we wanted to get a head start and we could check out the brains if we wanted -- which are sitting in buckets in the back of the lab.  each cadaver has already had an incision made around it's skull and it's brain was taken out before we even saw the cadavers.  except... gwen!  so we thought it was done, because her scalp was definitely sawed around her head, but we were wrong!

so i pulled her scalp forward over her face (gross, i know) and we were going to take her skull cap off... which should have more or less just lifted off like everyone else's... all clean and whatnot.  and we can't find the incision!  our skull is still completely in tact!  (shock and awe)  so... remember how i told you that gwen had all this trauma... and definite head trauma/surgery -- staples up the side of her scalp.  ok, so under those staples, on the outside of her skull -- massive clotting.  so much blood.  under that -- we think she fractured her skull around her pterion -- point where a bunch of the sutures come together, right around your temple -- weakest part of the skull (we learned this today, fittingly).  so, apparently they didn't take her brain out, because they figured it was probably too messed up anyway and wouldn't be good as far as structure and whatnot.  so what did we do?  we took it out!  i got to use the bone saw to saw around her skull (so much harder than you would think! it was a thick one) and then we chiseled the cap of her skull off to reveal -- BRAIN!  hurray!  she also had a fairly neatly sawn out circular piece of her skull where i guess they tried to do rapid brain surgery to repair her either epidural or subdural hematoma (it was difficult to tell -- but we learned about those today too, fittingly).  they didn't put the piece back very well, so i'm guessing it wasn't looking good from that point on, although they did put in a nice little metal piece to keep the little bone window attached to the skull.  

anyway.  so skull cap off.  and we can see the brain!  it was excellent.  okay, i guess thats not true.  really, the brain sucked.  the anatomy professor came over and said "yeup, the technical term for that is what we call 'brain pudding'" -- nice, right?  :P  but yeah so pretty  much the outer portion of the brain was fairly intact... but the inner portion was pretty much moosh.  it was pretty sweet to be able to dig through it through and look at the structures that we could see, not to mention to be able to see what the actual trauma caused and whatnot.  

the smell was horrible.  it was mainly from the bone saw kind of burning through the skull and all the bone dust in the air... but all in all, an excellent day in lab.

spending a lot of time in airports lately.

last weekend was my little sister's hs graduation party.  it was great to see my family, i miss them a ton already.  :(  we also had a ginormous slip and slide which was tons of fun.  then wednesday i left again for florida to visit eric for the 4th.  we mostly just vegged out and relaxed which was nice.  we saw a couple movies -- Wanted and Hancock.  both of which were pretty straight forward and simple plots, but still good.  for the fourth we floated down ginnie springs on an air mattress and then had a little picnic and took a nap.  and of course we ate at dragonfly (YUM) and visited Ward's market before i left, where i got some granola for my smoothies and some fresh avocados.  mmmm.  i've got one left in my bag right now that i think i might break out on the plane to enjoy.  :)

this upcoming test (next wednesday) has sooooo much information on it.  ugh.  i have a feeling it won't be going so breezy this time.  but i'm really buckling down this week and i have a free weekend coming up to use to study too.  this week we're doing the face/head which is supposed to be crazy detailed and difficult.  uggh.  and then we have the entire abdomen, the back, the nervous system in general and the upper extremity on top of that.  the upper extremity was a lot harder than i expected... mostly nerve-wise.  but i think once i go through it a little slower i'll be fine.  

there are always some interesting people in airports.  ay ay ay...

i miss everybody.  at least i have this exam to distract me.  and my birthday is the day after my exam!  yay!  come visit.  :)

construction workers with medical education.

i forgot!  the awesomest part about yesterday and getting to the spinal cord -- not only did we get to use the bone saw, but we got to use a "bone" chisel!  granted, we called it a "bone chisel", but i think that was really just to make it seem less barbaric.  it looked like a plain old chisel to me + a mallet.  minus all the gut juice on it.    .....was that too much for you?  hah.  but it was pretty cool.  i'm always the one who ends up doing the work and jumping in when we do the bone crushing type work.  although i've pretty much figured out that general surgery is not for me (too long and tedious -- soo frustrating!), the bone stuff is still in the picture.

flip-flop.

in lab, we've been doing a lot of flipping and flopping of organs and bodies.  we moved to the back and worked through the muscles and down to the spinal cord and then today we moved back up to the front and followed the brachial plexus and arteries down into the upper arm.  things are starting to get pretty smelly (if you can imagine them being worse, seeing that despite the first day or two i don't even notice the constant stink of cadaver on my classmates and i anymore), but it was pretty neat.  we learned some interesting things that corresponded in lecture about various nerve damage and how it presents itself in different ways.  i'm excited to start learning about clinical stuff and the actual applicability of everything we're learning.  i feel like i've spent so many years learning abstract things that were hard to put into real life and now i'm finally learning the exact things i will be using and doing for most of the rest of my life.

amanda and i woke up at 5:15am today to workout.  it was AWESOME.  we lifted (legs) and then i ran two miles.  after the hour plus workout, i still had time to take a cold shower and make a strawberry banana yogurt granola smoothie.  yum.  i've felt really good all day and much more awake and alert.  the plan is to continue with this 5 days a week.  and since i'm getting my workouts done in the morning that means anything that i do later in the day is just bonus exercise!  woot.  feels good.

tomorrow i head back to CT for my little sister's graduation party.  yay!  it should be lots of fun and i'm excited to see everyone.

fun times.

so since the last anatomy test, all i've been doing is having fun.

the test went really well.  A's all around.

tuesday night after the test i had a party ("post-exam happy hour") at my place.  it went really well.  most of my class showed up, we had a good time, were in bed by 12 or 12:30 and up for class the next morning.

this week we did the abdomen.  bleh.  it's smelly, messy and unorganized.  and our lecturer speaks in monotone and reads off his slides.  ugh.

i was surprised by the spleen.  i thought it was kind of  a squishy organ like the pancreas, but it looks more like a kidney.  it's pretty solid.  i think it might be my favorite organ so far.

it's cool how everything is so compartmentalized and everything.  and it blows my mind how all of our cells differentiate and form these organ structures and these systems.  i'm not even going to try to wrap my head around that cause my mind will just blow.

friday night a bunch of the girls from class and i went out downtown and stayed at meganne's mom's place.  she lives in lincoln park in a ritzy little apartment.  friday night was pretty fun, but there was the typical problem with group dynamics and people wanting to go different places.  amelia and i ended up  opting out of the last bar and strolling down the street for some late night munchies.

saturday. was. awesome.

we woke up, got dressed and went exploring.  stopped at a starbucks and urban outfitters where i picked up my new favorite adventure pack and a little hat.  meganne wanted to go to the zoo so we headed that way.  we ran into the farmer's market which was Huge!  it was great.  i'm definitely planning on heading back there.  then we walked around this cute little lake where they had paddle boats and these big old swan boats which were hilarious, but adorable.  we walked through the zoo which was really impressive, ESPECIALLY for being completely and totally free.  i love chicago.

at this point the group split up and rhonda and amelia and i took off for more adventures while everyone else headed back home.  we hopped on a bus to the loop and ended up walking forever to this street festival.  the festival was alright.  i had some really good shishkabobs and a very refreshing miller lite.  at this point we started heading towards wrigleyville.  we ended up taking pretty much every color of L train possible in numerous different directions, but we made it.  eventually.

we met amelia's friend who was in town for a bachelor party at one of the bars.  we ended up staying at the rooftop of this bar for most of the night.  it was a very intimate crowd as everyone had been drinking there pretty much all day, so by the end of the night we pretty much knew everyone.  it was very good times.

we met our friend terra at another bar to say hi and made our way to evanston and the metra station to catch the last train leaving the city for the night.  rasheed scooped us up from the station, we stopped at taco bell for fourth meal and crashed for the night.

it was super fun times and we ended up getting to see most of the city.

today is clean-up and put life back in order day.