Indiana Jones lies

Dude, it's only been one week of anatomy, and I've already done some crazy stuff to my dead person. It's nuts. It's also a lot of fun, which is weird. There are definitely times when I just kinda think about how weird it is that I'm cutting up a person in the morning and then doing normal things, like going grocery shopping or doing my laundry later on in the day. Which is why no one outside of med school should ever ask me how my day is going on anatomy lab days. They'll regret it. But I'll share here because I think it's kinda awesome.

We started out studying the back. So we had to open up the back. Which meant taking off the skin and looking at the muscles underneath. We basically skinned the dude. It turns out I have a mild allergic reaction to the solution they fix the cadaver in, so as I'm skinning away, my eyes started burning and watering exactly like they would if I were cutting an onion. Not that I'm comparing my cadaver to an onion. . .but it is kinda funny. . .

Anyway, after that we got to look at the spinal cord. To get to the spinal cord however, we had to hammer and chisel away the spine. . .which is a suprisingly good way to get out aggression. The spinal cord is actually really pretty. And it's very appropriately named because it looks like a thick cord with smaller cords running out of it. That's what controls most movements and sensations. . .a simple looking cord. I thought that was neat.

Yesterday, we took out the heart and dissected it. It was actually a lot of work because we had to take the skin and muscles off, then take out the ribcage, cut out the lungs and then cut out the heart. There's no way in hell the dude from Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom could seduce out the heart, or whatever it was he did. No freaking way. Our guy actually had a really big, muscular heart the size of a small football. . . so we naturally pretended to throw it at, er, to each other. Heh. The heart is also really pretty with all its different chambers and vessels and whatnot. Yeah that's right. I'm talking about a human heart. I have to keep reminding myself that. I know what your heart looks like. . .God that's so cool.

Anyway, not much else is happening outside of school. I'm still trying to find a life of sorts. You know, one that's not too demanding, possibly involves free food and doesn't judge me because I cut up dead people during the day. Anything along those lines would be awesome.

I can make awesome baked potatoes. . .yeah that's right

Man, it's been a hell of a long time since I've posted anything. I used to be so good at writing every three days. . .and then my life got boring/incredibly busy with school.

I went home last weekend, which was super-exciting. I did dinner and costco shopping with my mama (I am a college student after all). We then went home and relaxed. I played with my cat and she apparently had missed me quite a bit because she wouldn't leave me alone. Here's a pic of the little fatfat.

Look at the belly! Sooo cute and furry and bear-like. :) On Friday night, she came and slept with me. She somehow managed to find a nook on my shoulder and slept there, thus pinning me down and making me completely immobile for the rest of the night. But at least she was soft and warm. . .that makes up for anything.

I then spent Saturday running around and hanging out with people. I did dinner in the city and drinks with Dina. I realized how much I miss San Francisco. For some reason, it never seemed overwhelming and crazy to me, although it should have. Chicago on the other hand is pretty overwhelming and crazy. I don't know why. Then we headed over to Berkeley for Sami's party, yay party!

Overall that weekend was really great. I really miss hanging out with all you guys. . .stupid moving. But I also really needed that weekend at home. Being around the people I love even for a few hours was really really refreshing.

So I managed to get back to my place around midnight on Sunday night and do an hour of reading for monday then go to sleep. That basically set the tone for the rest of the week. I was running around all week doing all kinds of nonsense. It was super busy. But I survived and I'm spending the weekend catching up on work. I did make myself the most awesome baked potato ever after watching Tyler Florence make it while I was at home. Behold, the yummiest baked potato ever.


And, I also got another view:

There are actually two baked potatoes because Trader Joe's didn't have normal potatoes for baking. I made a white cheese sauce and added the broccoli in there. It is possibly the most delicious thing I have ever made. Drooool.

Other than that. . .I don't have a whole lot going on. I start anatomy on Monday, and we got to see our dead person on Wednesday. I will be cutting up a rather large, but not particularly fat dude. Should be interesting.

Spiderman - not so yummy

This week was mostly pretty quiet with my being sick and all, but now I'm better and things are getting back to normal. I have my first exam on Friday, and already I'm tired of studying for it. Not that I've been really studying for it. We have had 36 lectures already, so I've spent most of my time catching up on those. And then I'll have to go back and review them all over again. Considering I have a week and it's all material I'm pretty familiar with, I'm not all that worried. . .I'm just annoyed at the amount of material.

Anyway, our college mentor had a party for us on Friday night. I didn't realize it was optional as there were a few people who didn't show up. They made it seem pretty mandatory. The first 20 minutes were pretty excruciatingly painful. Apparently, I'm a grown up now, so all conversations will consist of grown-up things or be about school. I don't think you could have counted the number of ways I imagined hurting people until they stopped talking. On the other hand, I also don't like talking about stupid things I equate with high school. It's kind of a fine line.

Unacceptable topics of conversation include: 1. Grey's Anatomy - just because I'm going to be a doctor doesn't mean I like this show, in fact I find it insufferable. Apparently women are now ok with being stereotyped as illogical, highly emotional twits. Thanks Grey's. 2. School - We're all there together 24/7, seeing and doing the same things, do we really need to keep talking about it? 3. Who's hot - There's a list of the hottest guys and girls in the class made by people who went through facebook and ranked everybody. . .this is fucking worse than high school.

Acceptable topics of conversation: 1. Anything that ends with a joke or set up for a joke. 2. Good TV, like The Office, which generally ends up with trading funny lines from the show. 3. Funny stories. . .Basically anything that's not particularly serious and ends up in much laughter wins with me.

The one cool thing about the party was that our mentor dude stopped an ice cream truck and bought us all ice cream. It was the greatest thing ever. I got the Spiderman ice cream bar. . .which turned out to be the most sugar-y, artificial color filled ice cream bar ever. About half way through the bar I started getting really jittery from all the sugar, so I stopped eating it. It was still pretty awesome though.

I'm literally not believing how soon I'm coming home. Since I'll be flying out right after my exam, I have to get trashed on the plane (life is so hard). My brother already filled me in on the proper way to do so, and one of the rare cool girls in my class is flying out with me. So this should be fun.

My hot pot and me

I'm sick. I blame it on the fact that for the past two nights, my body decided I shouldn't sleep well. I woke up roughly each hour wondering "Why? With the tossing and the turning? Mother of god whyyy??" And then there is the fact that I was eating two meals a day because I've been busy and stuff. I still blame my body. I went to Walgreens and picked up a hot pot, tea and cough drops. For some stupid reason I forgot tylenol. By the time I realized that I'm a giant idiot, I was in bed and not getting up again. So yeah, go me. I'm going to be a doctor.

Anyway, I'm taking my first exam next week (thankfully the material this week's been easy, so I'm not that far behind), and then I'M COMING HOME!! So fucking excited sweet baby jesus i'm coming back to California! I miss California. I sometimes forget I'm not there anymore. Stupid moving.

Yup, that's about all I've got right now. Hopefully this stupid cold goes away soon and I'll be able to take a breath without wanting to rip off my nose.

Monday mornings

I need a life. . .no, really

This blog has turned into a massive med school journal. I wish I could change that, but considering I have no life, there's really nothing else for me to write about. So I'll at least try to keep it interesting for you all. Or else one of you could lend me your life for a bit. I'll return it. . .maybe.

I did shadow a surgeon in the operating room today. It was wicked awesome. First of all, I got to wear full on surgical scrubs. I should have taken a camera because I was so fucking excited about that part. I wore the mouth mask thingy and everything! God, that right there fulfilled so many fantasies.

The patient lady had an electrode inserted along her spine about a month ago with a battery pack implanted down her lower back. She had swelling around both the battery pack and the electrode, so the surgeon went in to determine whether there was some sort of immune fluid build up (think like liquid pus stuff) or a leak of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from a tear in the spinal cord covering (very clear brain bath liquid). It actually took about an hour just to prep the patient by positioning her correctly and getting the anesthesia set up (anesthesiologists have a pretty boring job in my opinion, they just sit there after they get the person down). They then isolated the area that would be worked on by placing a crap load of different towels (not really towels, but I can't think of the word) on the person. Eventually you couldn't even see the person except for the area that was going to be cut.

Anyway, now to the juicy stuff (hehe). So there was a lot of swelling because of the build up of fluid. With swelling like that, there's a lot of pressure built up as well. The surgeon made the incision in the skin and as soon as he got through the muscle layer, a bunch of liquid spurted out of the wound. Now, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle the cutting and spurting and whatnot, but apparently all my years of watching tv have desensitized me completely. Yay for not having feelings! Watching the surgery was pretty neat. It turns out there was a rip in the covering of the spinal cord, so they had to go in and do spine surgery.


The spinal cord is held in that hole/white space, so the surgeon shaved off the spinous process to get to it (yay for drilling bones away). I kinda assume you need an intact spinal bones, but apparently not so much. Learning about all the abuse a human body can take is fun. After 4 hours of standing around on my part, the surgery was done and I got to leave. It was sad because my legs didn't want to walk home. I literally stumbled like 4-5 times. Standing's hard, yo.

Oh and fun surgical stereotype that's true: at the end of the surgery when they were sewing the patient up, the surgeon and staff started talking about nights they've gone out drinking too hard and general debauchery that ensued. It was pretty great.

I'm always sleepy

Nothing's really been going on this week. I had a pretty uneventful weekend where I studied and ran errands. I saw Across the Universe. .. and I don't know how I feel about it. There were some really very pretty and exciting images, and I probably would have appreciated it more if I was more familiar with the Beatles. The story was put together weird but it was still pretty charming. Anyway, Julie Taymor still rocks as far as I'm concerned.

So I'm taking this optional class called Patient Perspectives, specifically the psych one, where we go and talk to patients for an hour each week and listen to their stories. It's supposed to help us learn how to talk to patients and understand what they're going through. I went in on Tuesday, and I was told that it would be a nice environment and there's nothing to worry about. I also like to think I'm pretty tough and can handle most things. But it's pretty One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in there, which is not so ok. I went in with another classmate and asked the psychiatrist there to suggest a patient to talk to (so we don't end up with someone violent). We also asked for an interview room because that's what we were told to do, but he said no. My patient was actually really nice and quiet (which didn't help so much with the conversation part of it) and he had some pretty harmless paranoias. However, we were sitting in a common area, and one of the patients kept walking around our couches in circles muttering about how someone's going to die and then he'll follow. That wasn't cool. Nope, not one bit. The patient I was talking to looked pretty uncomfortable about it, so I basically ended the conversation (about 5-10 minutes after we started) and bolted the hell out of there. In retrospect, I probably should have told a doctor about that. . .but I think they'll figure it out.

Other than that, I'm not really handling the 8am classes all that great. It's helped a little bit since I got a mattress pad and I don't wake up in the middle of the night because my back is hurting. I think the problem, though, is that I can't take naps. I have never been able to take a 15 minute nap. My brain's just buzzing too much to fall asleep during the day. So last week, this constant tiredness just built up until Friday when I passed out hardcore and took a 3 hour nap. And I don't think that even qualifies as a nap at that point. So yeah, my body hates me. It's great.

Mm yeah, that's all for now.