work hard....work harder

Where to begin, where to begin....well lets start with this week SUCKED and the only good thing about it is, it is over tomorrow!

my weekend was spent diligently studying powerpoints, book, and dead bodies. Monday we had our LAST gross anatomy exam (I have gotten my grade since then and got an A, but will still be getting an average grade in the class). After fighting that battle, I had the practical portion in the afternoon and then met my classmates again at characters (the bar) for a beer and some laughs. one of the many laughs i got this day was from my classmates talking about "that body that smelled so bad during the practical." see, the way the test is run is 12 bodies are tagged on either side of the room and we rotate around the room at one minute intervals per question (total of 25 questions). so, we each get assigned one half of the classroom and two groups do the practical on two different groups of bodies in the room at a time. thus, half my class had to rotate to my body and this was the "disgusting smelling one" that everyone was talking about. i proudly told everyone it was my cadaver and got many looks and expressions of pity, well deserved pity i might add because she really does smell. also, i have realized i have probably taken off a couple months of my life inhaling all of her 'fumes'. but hey, i have learned a HELL of a lot of anatomy :) anyways, one beer turned into a few beers and then ping pong in the commons (i was responsible and waited to drive home).

theeeeen, the next day we started our Head and Neck anatomy course. my thought process about this week was that Monday was the new Friday and Tuesday was the new Monday...the weekend was cut out of our curriculums. we didnt have lab tuesday which was nice just lots of intro lectures and TONS of new words to learn. the head is a very VERY complicated place.

Wednesday was our first lab on the head region and it was pretty freakin awesome. The dissection was done by group A so i didnt have a lot of 'hands on' time but when i came in later in the morning to see what the group had done i found our cadaver with her skull cut and brain removed exposing the inferior (bottom) base of the skull. FREAKIN AWESOME. Today in lab I dissected from 8 to 10 and we starting exposing facial structures. i wont put too many details cause they sound morbid and not normal but lets just say i am learning a lot about the face and its underlying structures. once again, we had the problem with our cadaver being not embalmed fully so she still smells pretty funky. i really thought i would have had a harder time doing this dissection but i guess i have become desensitized because i was able to hold that scapel. im not a pro at it but i do have fun using it...but no, i wont be aiming for a surgical career believe me!

soooo, this week has also been pretty intimidating because along with all this stuff, we have our Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) midterm tomorrow. The whole day is blocked off as to allow blocks of students to take the test througout the day. the test is done in groups of 14 and we are paired with a person a couple minutes before we actually take the test. we are allowed 19 minutes in which an evaluater will watch me do a structural exam on a classmate, assess a certain region in their body and then use 2 OMM techniques we have learned in class. i will write more about it after its done and i know what its like!

oh, and last week we had a test in Essentials of Clinical Medicine where we were tested and graded on a patient encounter. again we did a patient history and had to write the S (subjective) of our SOAP note. I had ENS again today (its every Thursday afternoon) and we spent another day learning physical exams (heart rate, blood pressure, breath sounds, heart sounds, eye check, ear check, etc etc) we practice them on a patient next week!!!!! i will need LOTS of practice before i do this on a person other then my classmates!

so tomorrow i will be in school early practicing my OMM and then i have my exam at 2:30. after that, its our class organized party bus to Hollywood... yes you read that right. WORK HARD, PARTY HARDER!!! :)