I get nearly 100% of my fluids from caffeinated beverages.
I have gone out drinking after an anatomy exam...at 11 in the morning.
I spend more time on my cadaver's body on a given day than I do on my own in roughly a week.
I have skipped class...in order to study.
I have learned so many mnemonic devices, I have trouble keeping them all straight (and they all have to do with drinking or sex--especially the ones I've written for myself).
I can now eat a meal while discussing dissection technique (and in fact did so on Sunday night...thanks for the dinner and calvaria-removal talk, Dr. Ginder!)
I have realized that while showers can wait, and laundry can wait, anatomy waits for no man (or woman).
I have had dreams about the brachial plexus.
I have come, after almost a semester of medical school, to realize that I have more to learn than I could ever have previously fathomed. This is both very humbling and terribly exciting.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
I don't wanna.
Anatomy exam 2 came and went. I did better on this exam than I did on the last one, which pleases me, but not as well as I would have liked (of course, anything less than a 100 is 'not as well as I would have liked,' given my inherent OCDish-perfectionist tendencies, so this is somewhat less than surprising). So the limbs are done. And the pelvis, and the perineum. On to the head and neck! Onward and upward to the Circle of Willis, I say! And on to a biochem quiz!
One problem.
I don't wanna.
Woke up at 3:30 this morning, couldn't get back to sleep, and I don't wanna. Don't want to go to my PCP preceptor's office this afternoon; don't want to study for my biochem exam (though I have been, don't get me wrong); don't want to learn physiology or biochemistry this morning. And yet I will do all these things. Because that is what adulthood in general, and professional school specifically, is about. Mostly doing things that you're excited about, but on some days, when you just want to stay in bed and look at cuteoverload.com or maybe watch an Eddie Izzard DVD or finish that painting you've been putting off...going into lecture or lab anyway. Bleargh.
One problem.
I don't wanna.
Woke up at 3:30 this morning, couldn't get back to sleep, and I don't wanna. Don't want to go to my PCP preceptor's office this afternoon; don't want to study for my biochem exam (though I have been, don't get me wrong); don't want to learn physiology or biochemistry this morning. And yet I will do all these things. Because that is what adulthood in general, and professional school specifically, is about. Mostly doing things that you're excited about, but on some days, when you just want to stay in bed and look at cuteoverload.com or maybe watch an Eddie Izzard DVD or finish that painting you've been putting off...going into lecture or lab anyway. Bleargh.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
When do political issues become medical issues?
And I'm not even talking about health plans here. I'll leave aside for a moment tax credits vs. Medicare-for-all vs. universal employer coverage (which, by the way, still isn't analogous to universal coverage). I'm thinking specifically about the recent outcomes of Prop 8 in California (to ban same-sex couples from getting married), and of the Arkansas vote to prevent unmarried couples, gay or straight, from adopting children.
Now, you might say it's a good thing for children to be raised in intact homes. That's true. There are, however, intact and loving homes that haven't been marked with the state's official seal of approval (ie, a marriage license). Add to that the fact that the parents in some intact and loving homes, by virtue of legislation like Proposition 8 in CA, can NEVER become married--and the fact that various agency representatives in AR have said they basically intend to look the other way on the marriage issue "as long as they ain't queers or nothin'" (OK, so I've dramatized a bit) and you have a message of hate masquerading as concern for child welfare, which makes an already regrettable attitude downright despicable.
Am I saying this on account of the fact that I--at some point in my adolescence--'caught the gay?' Well, yeah, in part. But I'm also saying it because I know gay parents who have only managed to be legally recognized as the parents of their offspring through processes like second-parent adoption, and this sort of law threatens the ability of my tribe to create families. So what's second-parent adoption, you ask? Essentially, Mary and Alice are a couple. Mary gets artificially inseminated, maybe with Alice's egg to make the experience more equally 'shared'--but also a damned sight more confusing. So, Mary gives birth to the baby and is thus listed on the birth certificate. But, lo and behold, there's only space for one parent of each sex on the birth certificate, so Alice is S.O.L. until she secures a second-parent adoption, which establishes her as another mother. OK, I lied, it's not actually that confusing--just frustrating and lame.
So let's say (Goddess forbid) something happens to Mary, and there's no adoption, and no marriage. Well, if Mary listed Alice as the child's next guardian, it's all OK (well, not really, because if Mary's parents don't like it, they can contest it in court and in Arkansas chances are they'd win) and the right person ends up with the kid. But if Mary hasn't made a will? If she hasn't been thinking about her mortality, if her death wasn't anticipated, and she accidentally steps out in front of the 29 bus some morning? It would be nice to say that Alice, as the child's de facto other mother, would automatically get custody...but it would only be nice to say, because it wouldn't be true. Mary and Junior are both injured in a car accident and both incapacitated? Guess what--if they live in the wrong state and Alice hasn't officially been invested with healthcare decision-making power for her partner, Alice can't legally make medical decisions for either one of them.
That's when political issues become medical issues, and why a physician with the best interest of the patient at heart must be aware of both.
Now, you might say it's a good thing for children to be raised in intact homes. That's true. There are, however, intact and loving homes that haven't been marked with the state's official seal of approval (ie, a marriage license). Add to that the fact that the parents in some intact and loving homes, by virtue of legislation like Proposition 8 in CA, can NEVER become married--and the fact that various agency representatives in AR have said they basically intend to look the other way on the marriage issue "as long as they ain't queers or nothin'" (OK, so I've dramatized a bit) and you have a message of hate masquerading as concern for child welfare, which makes an already regrettable attitude downright despicable.
Am I saying this on account of the fact that I--at some point in my adolescence--'caught the gay?' Well, yeah, in part. But I'm also saying it because I know gay parents who have only managed to be legally recognized as the parents of their offspring through processes like second-parent adoption, and this sort of law threatens the ability of my tribe to create families. So what's second-parent adoption, you ask? Essentially, Mary and Alice are a couple. Mary gets artificially inseminated, maybe with Alice's egg to make the experience more equally 'shared'--but also a damned sight more confusing. So, Mary gives birth to the baby and is thus listed on the birth certificate. But, lo and behold, there's only space for one parent of each sex on the birth certificate, so Alice is S.O.L. until she secures a second-parent adoption, which establishes her as another mother. OK, I lied, it's not actually that confusing--just frustrating and lame.
So let's say (Goddess forbid) something happens to Mary, and there's no adoption, and no marriage. Well, if Mary listed Alice as the child's next guardian, it's all OK (well, not really, because if Mary's parents don't like it, they can contest it in court and in Arkansas chances are they'd win) and the right person ends up with the kid. But if Mary hasn't made a will? If she hasn't been thinking about her mortality, if her death wasn't anticipated, and she accidentally steps out in front of the 29 bus some morning? It would be nice to say that Alice, as the child's de facto other mother, would automatically get custody...but it would only be nice to say, because it wouldn't be true. Mary and Junior are both injured in a car accident and both incapacitated? Guess what--if they live in the wrong state and Alice hasn't officially been invested with healthcare decision-making power for her partner, Alice can't legally make medical decisions for either one of them.
That's when political issues become medical issues, and why a physician with the best interest of the patient at heart must be aware of both.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Who says there's no fun allowed in med school?
Quotables from the most recent set of lectures
"You can in fact exercise your pubococcygeus muscles. There are exercises called Kegels, and the best thing about them is that no one knows you're doing them...you can stand at the podium and contract them as you're lecturing, for example, and no one has any idea." --Our very funny anatomy prof with an AMAZING British accent
"There are many theories as to why humans evolved bipedal locomotion. To see cheetahs in high grass and avoid being eaten; to be able to wade into water to fish without drowning; to be at the right level to harvest grain. My personal opinion is that it evolved to enable us to drink Bud Light. Try drinking from a can while on all fours sometime...maybe after you've had a couple already. Very difficult. Hence, bipedalism."--Another anatomy prof in a stunning nonsequitor
(On trans fats) "What did you guys have for breakfast? Any McDonalds? How about a glazed doughnut? No? What did you have?"
Student: "Cottage cheese and a bagel."
Prof: "Man, you guys are boring. I knew when I didn't get any questions after the midterm that you were low-key, but...anyway, there are about 5 grams of trans fats in a bagel, 10 in a McDonald's McMuffin. You're only supposed to have 2 grams, max, a day, so after one McMuffin--bam--you're dead for a week."
"You can in fact exercise your pubococcygeus muscles. There are exercises called Kegels, and the best thing about them is that no one knows you're doing them...you can stand at the podium and contract them as you're lecturing, for example, and no one has any idea." --Our very funny anatomy prof with an AMAZING British accent
"There are many theories as to why humans evolved bipedal locomotion. To see cheetahs in high grass and avoid being eaten; to be able to wade into water to fish without drowning; to be at the right level to harvest grain. My personal opinion is that it evolved to enable us to drink Bud Light. Try drinking from a can while on all fours sometime...maybe after you've had a couple already. Very difficult. Hence, bipedalism."--Another anatomy prof in a stunning nonsequitor
(On trans fats) "What did you guys have for breakfast? Any McDonalds? How about a glazed doughnut? No? What did you have?"
Student: "Cottage cheese and a bagel."
Prof: "Man, you guys are boring. I knew when I didn't get any questions after the midterm that you were low-key, but...anyway, there are about 5 grams of trans fats in a bagel, 10 in a McDonald's McMuffin. You're only supposed to have 2 grams, max, a day, so after one McMuffin--bam--you're dead for a week."
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Limericks (no, not from Ireland...less dirty)
For Table 10
There was an anatomy table
That quite simply did not seem able
To dissect with the speed
The professors decreed;
in the end, the stress made them unstable.
Standardized patient--failure
I entered the room with a grin,
Asked the patient, "So how have you been?"
HPI and exam,
then I thought, "oh g*ddamn,"
because I forgot to foam in.
Upper and Lower Limbs
I've been studying muscles for weeks,
lumbricals down to gluteal cheeks.
Can't learn one more insertion;
Such crazy exertion
can't help but reduce me to shrieks.
Histology
I can use a microscope well.
Preparing a slide? That's just swell.
But then point out some bug,
and I'll say with a shrug,
"I can tell you it looks like a cell."
There was an anatomy table
That quite simply did not seem able
To dissect with the speed
The professors decreed;
in the end, the stress made them unstable.
Standardized patient--failure
I entered the room with a grin,
Asked the patient, "So how have you been?"
HPI and exam,
then I thought, "oh g*ddamn,"
because I forgot to foam in.
Upper and Lower Limbs
I've been studying muscles for weeks,
lumbricals down to gluteal cheeks.
Can't learn one more insertion;
Such crazy exertion
can't help but reduce me to shrieks.
Histology
I can use a microscope well.
Preparing a slide? That's just swell.
But then point out some bug,
and I'll say with a shrug,
"I can tell you it looks like a cell."
Pelvis and perineum, you say?
Yes, sex has officially become boring. Not just because it's been reduced to memorizing the branches of the pudendal nerve, the difference between the corpus spongiosum and cavernosa, and the inferior hypogastric plexus. No, (oversharing alert) I've also started to feel the effects of the massive quantities of Zoloft I'm taking, which means that while I'm not having panic attacks every day, nor considering jumping onto the Metrolink tracks, I am also somewhat lacking in the libido department. Granted, looking at all the photos of rectovaginal fistulas and elephantiasis of the scrotum in anatomy lecture may not have been the most...titillating, either.
Anne, I hear you saying, you write about anatomy all the time. We almost never hear about physiology or histology; sometimes you write about biochem or a selective, but rarely. Is anatomy really that big of a time-suck? Does it really weigh that heavily on your mind? To which I answer: yes, dear reader. Yes, indeed it does. And the bitch of it is, you really do need to know it. It's not like, say, some of the more esoteric histology and biochem lectures, where one could argue that the majority of physicians aren't going to need to know about post-transcriptional modification of mRNA in their practicing lives (if ever...ok, maybe at a bar trivia night, but then again, there was never a damn question at Lew's trivia night--In KC--that I knew by virtue of being a hoity-toity neurosci/German studies major. Mostly it was about sports, and weird/arbitrary 'pop culture'--so you know my scores were always in the crapper. Add to that the fact that it takes one--count it, one--Bud Light to knock me on my ass, and there you have it: the reason I never won 50 bar dollars. In Ithaca, on the other hand, the questions were of...ahem, pardon me while I have a snobby, elitist liberal moment here...a higher caliber, and the Telluride group always cleaned up nicely. I spent a bare minimum of my own money at The Chapter House. Good times).
In the course of my studying, I have come across a handful of words that I've fallen head over heels (make that cranium over calcaneous) for, and here they are:
acetabulum: where the femur (thighbone) articulates (connects) to the innominate (hip bone). Sing it with me...the thigh bone's connected to the acetabulum...
infundibulum: a cavity opening either into a tube or into the outside world; there is an infundibulum in the right ventricle of the heart, one in the fallopian tubes, and one in the shaft of every one of your little hairs.
Don't they just sound like Harry Potter words, like mad incantations? Can't you see Hermione Granger shouting, "Infundibulum!" and laying out a Death Eater? Can't you see what a huge dork I am, augmenting my dorkiness further by referencing a children's fantasy series in relationship to anatomy?
Anne, I hear you saying, you write about anatomy all the time. We almost never hear about physiology or histology; sometimes you write about biochem or a selective, but rarely. Is anatomy really that big of a time-suck? Does it really weigh that heavily on your mind? To which I answer: yes, dear reader. Yes, indeed it does. And the bitch of it is, you really do need to know it. It's not like, say, some of the more esoteric histology and biochem lectures, where one could argue that the majority of physicians aren't going to need to know about post-transcriptional modification of mRNA in their practicing lives (if ever...ok, maybe at a bar trivia night, but then again, there was never a damn question at Lew's trivia night--In KC--that I knew by virtue of being a hoity-toity neurosci/German studies major. Mostly it was about sports, and weird/arbitrary 'pop culture'--so you know my scores were always in the crapper. Add to that the fact that it takes one--count it, one--Bud Light to knock me on my ass, and there you have it: the reason I never won 50 bar dollars. In Ithaca, on the other hand, the questions were of...ahem, pardon me while I have a snobby, elitist liberal moment here...a higher caliber, and the Telluride group always cleaned up nicely. I spent a bare minimum of my own money at The Chapter House. Good times).
In the course of my studying, I have come across a handful of words that I've fallen head over heels (make that cranium over calcaneous) for, and here they are:
acetabulum: where the femur (thighbone) articulates (connects) to the innominate (hip bone). Sing it with me...the thigh bone's connected to the acetabulum...
infundibulum: a cavity opening either into a tube or into the outside world; there is an infundibulum in the right ventricle of the heart, one in the fallopian tubes, and one in the shaft of every one of your little hairs.
Don't they just sound like Harry Potter words, like mad incantations? Can't you see Hermione Granger shouting, "Infundibulum!" and laying out a Death Eater? Can't you see what a huge dork I am, augmenting my dorkiness further by referencing a children's fantasy series in relationship to anatomy?
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