back in action.

hello, hello!

so due to popular request... i've decided to try to remember to blog on a fairly regular-ish basis.  :)

we are a month into the fall semester.  so far so good, but when i stop to think about it, it is a little overwhelming.  our first gen med unit was neuro... so basically in two weeks we learned everything we need to know about neurology to practice medicine.  weird, right?  i mean don't get me wrong... it was intense.  we had between 2 and 8 hours of neuro everyday for those two weeks.  after neuro was derm (which we were tested on today).  a week and a half of nausea-inducing pictures.  eek.  and now we're in the midst of cardio.  so far, i've decided i don't want to do neurosurgery, and i definitely don't want to work in dermatology, despite the fact that everyone raves about the hours and pay.  neurology itself is okay, but i wasn't in love or anything.  

the other classes we are taking are...

research and stats (ugh).

medical documentation (ugggh).

(fortunately both of those are only once a week).

psychosocial -- which i like.  we start each class with a medical related story or poem and watch a lot of movies.  most of the work we do is reflection, so that appeals to my social science/psych interests.

complementary medicine -- pretty interesting.  so far we've done acupuncture/chinese medicine, massage therapy, chiropracty and tai chi.  and the class enjoyed tai chi so much that we've decided to incorporate it into our weekly routine, having a course in it every wednesday morning before class.  :)

pharmacology (eek.)

EKG (piece of cake).

clinical lab medicine (merr...)

interprofessional healthcare teams -- the idea behind it is good, we get together with students from all the other programs (MD, podiatry, physical therapy, path asst, clin lab, psych...) and we have to work on a project together and discuss various things, including the current system of health care.  but in reality, it ends up being kind of a joke and a waste of time.  i don't think we are really gaining any interprofessionalism through it, which is supposed to be the goal.  pretty much most of the school still thinks that as PAs we can't write prescriptions, probably can't diagnose, don't do any surgery, and some of the med students were even surprised that we "actually got cadavers to work on in anatomy".  oye vey.  we've got a lot of work ahead of us...

so there you have it.  nine classes.  wow.  most of them are only a couple credits though, besides gen med and pharm which are the big ones.  gen med mostly.  i am thoroughly enjoying gen med and going through the different areas of medicine.  i find myself actually enjoying lectures.  and i love that everything is so directly applicable to what i will be doing (starting in less than a year!) as well as in my personal life.  i've already diagnosed my family with a handful of skin conditions.  i'm sure they're appreciative.

so yeah, overall... it's great.  intense, but great.  we have class technically from 8 - 5 everyday, but in reality we usually have at least one day that don't have to come in until 10 and one or two days that we get out by 3 every week.  i have to say that thus far, it's not nearly as difficult as i was expecting.  although i feel like i'm losing touch with everyone outside of the 61 kids in my class that i see everyday... i am completely able to handle the work load without freaking out, and still able to take a break and have fun a couple days a week.  work hard, play hard.  :)

thats enough for now.  i've got to save stuff to talk about later, seeing that my day-to-day is pretty much indistinguishable from week to week.

el fin!

round one: check!

i'm officially done with 1/4 of my didactic PA schooling... well, time-wise.  they definitely cram in a LOT more classes during the year.

anatomy was a lot of fun and i definitely realized how incredibly applicable and useful it is in any area of medicine, or even just in your personal life.  it's pretty amazing to me that i could point to any spot on anyone's body and say exactly what is (or should be) in there... and most likely i've also seen what it looks like too.

studying medicine, or really any science, is so intense.  everything is just so... PERFECT.  everything fits together exactly right and is shaped or formed in an exact way so as to complete it's purpose in the most efficient way possible.  amazing.

our last anatomy exam was monday.  the rest of this week we started gen med.  we learned about genetics, imaging, infectious diseases and a general intro to clinical medicine and had a test on it all today, which wasn't too bad.  they just wanted to give us a jump start on the fall.  it's supposed to be pretty bad.  i can't wait!  this past week was so interesting learning about all the different diseases and processes.  so i'm sure it will only get better.  it blows my mind that less than a year from now i'll have all the education, as far as classroom stuff, that i'm going to get before they're putting people's lives in my hands.  eek!

my roommate moved in last week also.  i think we'll work well together.  she's really easy-going, and she didn't hesitate to switch stuff around in the cupboards in the kitchen and the bathroom to fit her stuff in, which i like.  she just moved right in.  it's a little bit of an adjustment going from living alone to having a roommate again, but i'm sure it will be fine.  the hardest part is just having to remember to close the door when i go to the bathroom now.  ;P

i've got a week of nothing to rest up and get ready for the craziness in the fall.  it should be fun.  eric is coming on tuesday and staying for a week so we have lots of fun things planned.

hurray for a week of no worries!

the most traumatizing lab yet.

ugh.  so i have officially decided that i don't think i want to donate my body to science.  at least not for an anatomy lab.  

gwen has been reduced to a pile of rubish.  last thursday was definitely the most traumatizing lab yet.  we're on the pelvis.  so basically what we had to do is saw off one of gwen's legs... and if that wasn't bad enough, it was the way we had to do it.  so we turn gwen on her side and lift one of her legs up in the air... so not only is that an awkward position, but then guess where we have to saw.  yeah, you guessed it.  my group hands me the saw, seeing that i'm always the one that loves to do the sawing and whatnot.  but not this time.  no way.  i gave the saw to a different group member and helped hold gwen still.  basically we had to saw up between gwen's legs... in order to hemisect her vagina, bladder and uterus... up through her pelvis and then across the side of her lower abdomen... subsequently removing one of her legs and half of her pelvis from the rest of her body.  eeugh.  so barbaric.  none of the bodies even look like bodies anymore.  it's just piles of skin and organs.

one more week.

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.  :)