I can no longer have friends

So today we started head and neck.  It's exciting because it's the last unit of anatomy and then I am done with the torture.  In just 3 short weeks I will go from having class 6-8 hours a day to only having 4 each day and being done at noon.  Yeah, life is going to get a lot simpler except for the random 6 foot Filipino that will suddenly show up around the same time and start eating all my food.  Seriously, who brings someone a piece of their own mother's homemade pie and then eats all of it but the crust.  It was MY mother who made the pie and that was MY only slice!  I believe you even went back to her house and ate more pie there.  All I have to say is that sometimes violence is the answer and in cases of stolen pie there really is no other way to resolve the issue.  Crust doesn't count as saving me some so watch your back!  You know who you are.  And drinking my milk until there is barely a cup left doesn't help your case either.

So today we learned that our professor won a beard off in 1968.  He is pretty impressive.  We also got to watch our beloved upper classmen (emphasis on MEN) come into our lecture hall in obscenely short skirts and tight shirts stuffed with balloons and give us quite the little cheer.  They had booty shaking and high kicks (those were not pretty due to the previously mentioned shortness of the skirts) and a nice little chant about how they think they can beat our class at anything.  Today they were confident they would win the powderpuff game.  I am totally not joking when I say medical school is just like highschool.  We really have powderpuff football.  We also had a game called sloshball a few weekends ago which is just kickball modified to include kegs of beer, costumes, and a slip-n-slide.  So anyway, I am not playing the game, but based on previous athletic encounters between the classes I would consider us the varsity squad and them the JV.  It's like we scrimmage them to boost our confidence and perfect our game plans for the real competitors.  That was a little mean.  But it is exactly the sort of thing a high school student would say and since I am trying to make that comparison I am going to keep acting this way.  Actually, I think medical school is exactly what kids want high school to be and at the same time the exact opposite of what they wish high school would be.  You can walk out whenever you want, class is completely optional, the professors laugh when you tease them, you have a keycard for every door in every building, hook-ups are almost a mandatory part of study sessions (this is why I study alone), when you get a test you can go anywhere on campus you want to take it, you can talk to your classmates in the hall during the test if you want (not about the test), there is a free lunch every day if you just go find it, and there is no social structure that makes upper classmen look down on you your first year.  In fact, they just feel bad for you so they are helpful and nice.  I think it is not what students want because studying 4-8 hours a day is common, getting below a 70% is failing, you are too busy to try and look nice, and having a social life at all outside of school is almost impossible.  Oh, and no one wants to hear you whine so shut-up, sit down, and study.

I had my cancer research elective today.  Cancer is awesome in a study it kind of way, but not in a have it kind of way.  I'm pretty excited to hear about the possible causes, cures, and pathologies.  I also got an email about my third and last elective.  It's in a detox clinic in Denver.  The elective intro email specifically told us to have wash and wear clothes because we will get body fluids, lice, scabies, and the like on us.  It also asked us to report to the nurse if we get assaulted by a belligerent patient so they can call the police.  Ah, the life of a physician.  When I was a young girl I remember waking up one day and realising I didn't care about getting a job where I could help people or make a difference.  I just wanted a job where there was a good chance I would get vomited on multiple times a week.  Okay, that is completely not true.  I just feel like medicine has been romanticized into this nice profession where you help people and they get better.  Really you just have unpleasant things happen to you all the time and you are never allowed to get upset except in private or the patient who probably upset you in the first place will sue you.  I also think being a physician is odd because people will just take off any of their clothing if you request it.  And say anything you want if you have your stethoscope on their back.  So back to the main point.  I did not come here to get lice, scabies, and bodily fluids all over my person, but I suppose it comes with the territory.

We also had an extensive lecture on professionalism.  I really enjoy hearing about how everything is a professionalism violation.    Since everything is a violation and it makes me depressed to think of all these new lifelong rules, I have decided to whimsically think of a professionalism violations as instances where a professional has been violated.  It makes me laugh when I think about it.  In fact, I think if patients can sue us for a professionalism violation we should be allowed to sue them for violating us as professionals by getting their bodily fluids on us.  Enough said.  So today in You Can't Do Anything Without Being in Violation 101 we learned that being friends on facebook with anyone who you could possibly see in a clinical setting is a violation.  So now I have to stop being friends with anyone who has ever been to see a doctor ever unless they are also a doctor.  This is how they force us to make friends within the profession.  Okay, that isn't quite the story.  They told us we can't ever add anyone as a friend who we have seen in a clinical setting first.  If we are friends before we just have to let someone else treat them unless there are extenuating circumstances and no one else is available.  We also learned that hilarious cases are not okay to just talk about unless the details have been so removed and altered that you could never tell who the patient was even in a line-up.  Like the person who had slowly developed liver disease without any reason and they eventually found out it was because their spouse had been poisoning their food for years.  They figured it out because one day they gave the leftovers to their pet who promptly died.  I can't believe these things happen and we have been banned from discussing them!  That is a great story.  Like in a movie kind of story.  But it is hush-hush.  I can tell you about this case because it was a long time ago and I didn't give out any details.  Then we talked about how you need to help out fellow students if they get dumped and depressed by fiding them a new person to date.  In the wise words of one of my classmates, "Nothing gets you over the last one like the new one."  Unless of course the new one eats the only slice of pie you have from your own mother.  No I will not let it go!  I also learned that we eventually get trained on how to tactfully discourage patients who hit on us.  I didn't think that actually happened, but apparantely it's pretty common.  Like happens multiple times a week common.  They also gave us tips for how to use our profession to get out of jury duty.  Take that legal system that claims it treats everyone the same!  Except then they told us it was a professionalism violation to do so.

So as an update on the hula hoop exercises.  I skipped them the day before the test because I was studying and I have observed no marked improvement in my toned-ness.  But I still persevere because otherwise I would get no exercise at all.

Dear Medical School

Why do you hate me so much?  I don't think I ever did anything to wrong you.  I just do what you say when we are together and then try to forget you when we are apart.  And you can't blame me for that because you are so very overbearing.  You follow me everywhere and never take a day off.  Did you ever stop to think you may be happier and not need to torment me if you took a vacation?  Misery loves company and I can see you are miserable because you never take a break.  I propose we take a break together.  I mean, why do you have to be so cruel as to use up all of my free time or make me feel guilty for neglecting you?  Is it not enough that I spent all of yesterday reading about the trunk?  Or that I spent hours in your stinky lab?  I tried to learn everything you asked me to, but I think you just make up terms like pancreaticoduodenal  or pericardiacophrenic so that any time I start to feel I may have a grip on things you can smush my confidence back down to size with your made up words.  I can trace blood to and from every structure in the body below the neck.  Is that not enough for you?  I can also tell you the function of the all nerves below the neck.  Why can't you just leave well enough alone?  I know I went out last night to get a hamburger with my brother and ninja, but do you really have to throw embryology and lymphatics in my face as punishment for leaving you at home?  I would have brought you back something, but the burger was just too delicious to leave even a bite.  Besides, you are so bitter about life I doubt you could even enjoy the delicate flavors of a burger slathered in spinach artichoke dip.  Please try to be a little more understanding that I need things like food and sleep to function.  If I die you will have to find a new person to torment.

And what is up with today?  Just because I chose sweet slumber over reading about lymph nodes at 3am last night you made sure to put as many as possible on the test?  Do you just hate me?  And then making me wait over 2 hours between finishing the written and starting the lab exam was unmatchably evil.  The kind of evil you only hear about in passing rumors.  Your behavior today was completely unacceptable.  Making me take a test you so obviously altered to highlight my weakest points and then giving me 2 hours to brood over it while I waited for the lab exam to start was just perfect for shattering my confidence.  And I had barely any left going into the lab anyway.  Sure it was a beautiful day and I enjoyed sitting in the grass watching people play frisbee, but I would rather have finished early and gone home or sat in the grass after everything was done.  Just because I finished the last exam early you had to force me to stay until 5pm this time.  Don't you ever wonder why you are so full of hate?

I am waiting in fear to see how you punish me for spending time at the pool today.  I assume while I was soaking and then at dinner with my classmates eating a delicious goat cheese salad you were alone making up the longest most ridiculous words you can possibly think of to make me learn later.  I know you followed me to the bar and hid my wallet so I had to get the double X mark of shame on my hands just so my classmates could shun me.  Am I not allowed to have a drink?  I just wanted to get one rum and coke so I could stand around and look cool without actually having to drink.  But you took that away from me as well.  And even now I can sense your evil presence waiting to pounce on me in the morning with a lecture on blood supply.  Why do you hate me so much?  Why must you have class the morning after an exam?  All I want is one day to spend basking in the glory of my accomplishment.  Why is that so much to ask?

And why do you only have tests on Mondays?  I feel like you have done this on purpose to crush my hopes of guilt-free weekends spent watching movies and playing video games.  I spend the weekend preparing for your torture and then have class for the rest of the week after so I can do the same the next weekend.  Don't pretend this isn't the truth.  I have looked at your schedule and after October I even see class in the afternoon after some morning exams.  Doesn't that seem just a little overboard?  Can't I even have a few hours between to feel accomplished?  I do not remember signing a contract saying you can do this to me.  One of these days I am going to go on another study strike, but head and neck is too complicated for that.  But after head and neck we shall see who has the stronger will!  You don't know who you're messing with medical school.  So just stop with the ridiculous hours, long words, complicated lymphatics, and unnatural penchant for making me feel guilty for everything I do that isn't studying.  If you push me much further you shall suffer my wrath!

Too Busy For Life

So there is a test on Monday and I will never feel like I studied enough that I can take the time to write a blog, but I realised I was getting a headache from reading so I needed a break anyway.  Friday we had exam review and then our dissection quiz.  My group got a 30/30 on it which was really nice and almost (emphasis on almost) makes up for how poorly I just did on the clinical exam.  I think once the two are averaged together I'll be one point below where I was going into the extremities written and lab exams.  I also helped lead a tour for the prospective students interviewing for next year.  The group I had apparantly had been around our campus before so they weren't impressed with much.  I was excited the whole tour because we got free ice cream right before it started so even their unimpressed attitudes didn't dampen my enthusiasm.  We also got to go in the CAPE and see all of the robot patients.  One of them kept blinking and one of them started singing.  It was really complicated singing too because he was even vocalising all the instruments at the same time.  I really enjoyed it.  Then we heard someone laughing from behind the mirror.  I guess he didn't know the microphone was on and he turned on the radio which came out of our robot.  I still like to pretend he was singing though.  Other than that I really did almost nothing except avoid studying and study.  Let's just say I am better at avoiding.  I think I spent most the night listening to wedding music and trying to get the venous supplies of the trunk down.

Today I woke up at eleven and then picked up my food basket thing.  I was pleasantly suprised that the food was organic.  I mean, when you pay $50 for two giant boxes of food you have expectations about the quality.  I really expected to find thinly veiled recycled McDonald's hamburgers and that sort of thing.  Which at this point I probably would eat.  But it was quality stuff in there.  I have a bunch of kiwis and a pineapple and an avocado even!  The other day I was thinking about how I eat like an Ethiopian, but then I decided I couldn't say that until I tried one of the many Ethiopian restaurants on Colfax.  They might have some good stuff.  Maybe it would be an improvement to eat like that.  Anyway, now I have a lot of food to eat until ninja moves in.

After I got my food I went home to put it away and go back into the complicated dance I play with studying.  I once again proved I am more adept at not studying.  I then looked over all of the clinical objectives, took the exam, and failed it.  Literally failed by two percent.  In case you don't know, anything below a 70% is failing at medical school.  They don't put up with a C average here.  Well they might I guess, but the students are so over-achieving that they wouldn't put up with it even if the faculty did.  So I have decided this does not bode well for the written exam or the anyone with thorax, abdominal, or pelvic problems that put their lives in my hands.  Actually I think I failed because I have no idea how to read any radiological images what-so-ever.  Everything is in grayscale.  I mean, just spice it up with a little color and I'll do great.  How am I supposed to know which shades of grey are tumors and water and blood and air and bone, well bone is easy because it's white and air is easy because it's black, but other than that everything is just various shades of grey.  There is a reason dogs and cats cannot be physicians and it has to do with that they are color blind and color is important.  (If you are a color blind pyhsician I apologize and am amazed at your skill distinguishing anything in the world from other things.)  Or maybe they can't be physicians because they don't have the capacity for complex enough thought or opposable thumbs.  I'm sticking with color blind though.  So I have nothing to talk about because I have just been studying/avoiding studying.  Tomorrow is likely to be the same, but I should have a lot to talk about as far as failing goes after the exam on Monday.

All Alone

Today started out in lab.  It was pretty uneventful.  We finished up the required dissections for the trunk and really it was a one-man job and we are in groups of four so people got a tad bit bored.  One of our guys even bought everyone coffee.  Not to drink in the lab because that would be gross, but to drink right on the other side of the glass door to the lab.  After lab I had BCLS, Basic Cardiac Life Support, also known as CPR.  I felt a little uneasy as though our teachers didn't really want to be there.  Maybe it was the worn out PowerPoint.  Or maybe, just maybe, it was when a lady told us we were adults and they were not going to hold our hands while we watched the movie and they could leave if they wanted, but that if we left we failed the course and got written up for professionalism violations.  Then there was the part where they gave us the test and let us use our books and started telling us the answers before we finished so if you had left any blank they just told you what to circle before you graded it yourself and turned it in.  Perhaps it was when they only did the re-certification test even though about ten people had never been certified in the first place.  Or maybe they did want to be there and I just horrible mis-interpreted everything that happened.  After we had all finished the test they actually let us practice on dummies.  I enjoyed when we were told to push harder than we thought we should because it is rare to not break a rib so we shouldn't be timid.  But my favorite part was when they asked everyone in the class to raise their hands if they would perform mouth-to-mouth on a stranger if they knew it would save their life.  About half the class raised their hands.  Then they said, "On Colfax?" and no one raised their hand.  No one's a hero anymore.  Especially not me because I didn't even raise my hand the first time.  Anyway, I guess our hospital never allows mouth-to-mouth, it's actually against hospital law, and always uses a bag or mouth airway thingy.  That's the technical term.  I also liked when the video told us never to practice the Heimlich maneuver on a non-choking person.  Sorry ninja.  Not for all the previous times, but for all the times in the future that I ignore their advice.

Once I finished BCLS I went home for dinner and then went back to the lab to study against my better olfactory judgment.  After I got home again I had an attack of crippling lonliness.  At first I thought it was from being so far away from everyone.  And then I thought it was that I only get hugs on the weekends.  And then I thought it was because I live in a beige cage.  So finally in my crippled and not so lucid state I began to think it was because no one cared about me.  But then my mom and ninja went out of their way to talk to me until my phone battery almost died.  So I felt a whole lot better, but I still felt a little lonely.  I finally realized why.  It's because I can't share my experiences with everyone due to graphic nature (believe me anything you have read so far is nothing compared to what has been going on) and the people I share these experiences with are still in the acquaintance stage.  So what can I do?  Tell my family horrible stories about lab of course.  Ninja will now always shudder when he thinks about farmers milking cows.  And my mother will cringe at the word prolapse.  My bother can never again watch Star Trek without laughing at Spock.  You too can share these experiences, but not on my blog.  Come on people, this is in the public domain.  I can't be ruining the life of a serious Trekkies who accidentally stumble across my blog!  So if you want to never be the same and you feel like gagging a few times just ask nicely and I can tell you.  But for now I must remain lonely in my weird world where I suddenly know too much and I can't unlearn the terrible secrets of the lab.

Cougar Attack!

So today we had our SPETA (Specialized Physical Exam Training Assistant.  At first they weren't specialized, but that made the initials PETA and they don't care about animals so they became specialized) training session and there was a camera crew there to film and interview students.  It was just my luck that the man with a giant camera came in while I was messing up an abdominal exam.  That's beside the point though.  I have decided I would make a great movie star because I didn't look at the camera once.  Yeah, and I totally improvised all of my lines.  Well, we were unscripted so there were no lines I should have been saying, but I think everything I said was brilliant.  So after my group got filmed for about half an hour we were told we had been the group chosen to interview after as well.  So I went into my interview and did what I do best.  I said "Um" a lot.  Well, not too much.  I said it once per question that they asked me.  I told them all about what we do in SPETA, why I am in medicine, and why I think SPETA is great.  Apparantly they are making a short film for a presentation to show at conferences and other medical schools about why starting clinical training on trained actors early on is more beneficial that getting dropped in 3rd year with your first live patient doing clinical skills you looked at, but never practiced before.  I think it's nice to practice on a "patient" who can tell me if I am performing exams incorrectly.  If I just had a non-trained patient I would be doing a ton of stuff wrong because I would think it was right and they would trust that I knew what I was doing and just lay there quietly thinking they were getting quality health care.  So SPETA is like having a really outspoken hypochondriac who constantly reads medical journals telling you how to examine them properly.  The best part is they never have an illness and they aren't upset when you tell them they are healthy.  So yeah, SPETA's are amazing and I get to be in a movie about them.  And they told us we wouldn't have time for starting our acting career in medical school.  I showed them.

After SPETA I went to my first elective meeting.  It was for Wilderness medicine.  I am going to learn how to save people from an avalanche among other amazing things.  So this is a new field of medicine that I didn't know MDs could specialize in.  I guess it isn't a complete specialty yet, but it is getting there.  Since it is a new branch of recognized and organized medicine there are a lot of research opportunities.  They specifically listed an ongoing study about cougar attacks.  I chose to take that the wrong way, as about half my giggling classmates did, and had quite the amusing picture in my head.  I imagined a young med student hiding in the back of a bar watching a young man get drunk.  They see an older woman enter the bar and start slinking towards the boy.  The researcher excitedly watches as the two begin a passionate conversation.  Then she pounces.  In a matter of minutes the boy is powerless to escape her.  She keeps going and eventually drags him away.  The student must follow to gather information on the survival rate even though the sight is generally not pretty.  The research gathered here is un-paralleled.  The med student becomes a famous published author for shining light into a new wilderness.  That student could be me!  Anyway, I think they meant the non-human animal cougar.  It was less interesting after that.  I'm pretty excited about our two field days because we get to see what equipment they use to do wilderness rescue and practice splinting with branches among other super amazing things.  We may even get to create small scale avalanches and then barely escape them with our lives.  Or easily escape with our lives.  I like to think dangerously though.

Once I got home I studied.  I really didn't get a whole lot done though.  I do know the caval drainage of the trunk and the order of blood flow through the hepatic veins now.  Tomorrow is our last day of lab before the exam on Monday.  I really can't find anything in the giant abdominal maze so I either have to go in the lab this weekend a lot *shudder* or just face the fact that I am about to fail another lab practical.  A loving 3rd year once told me, "I failed every lab practical and still passed the class."  She gives me hope.  Hope that I won't have to retake any exams from anatomy after it is over.  Hope, for America!  I got a little carried away there.  I just get excited around hope and then I get overly hopeful. 

So I have embarked on a mission.  A mission to get in shape in medical school during the anatomy block within the confines of my apartment and without any weights or room to run about.  My entire plan revolves around the hula hoop game on Wii Fit.  I know you think that is ridiculous, but it is ridiculously hard as I think I have mentioned previously.  I swung my hips around like a haphazard bellydancer for 30 minutes before I became severly fatigued.  I have decided to keep an update until the wedding on how my workout regimen is treating me.  I hope you like listening to me whine about how I'll never get rid of my never-born-a-child child bearing hips.  They are just so darned poofy!  Anyway, if it works I am going to buy a size 45 pair of jeans and go to Nintendo and insist they pay me millions of dollars to tell my weight loss story about their game on TV.  I know they'll accept and put me on an ad campaign because I already have a very credible acting portfolio where I talk about SPETAs.

I am DaVinci

I actually am not DaVinci.  That is a quote from one of our professors who also happens to be a retired general surgeon.  He said that after being asked about the DaVinci surgery option for gallbladder removal.  In case you don't know, DaVinci is a robotic surgical platform which can perform basic surgeries with minimal incisions and recovery time.  The surgeon is in control of the program, but they don't actually manually manipute the instruments inside your body.  So what I am wondering is if it is selfish that I wish we just did surgery the old fashioned way and were satisfied with it because I think that it is more fun to get your hands dirty than sit behind a computer.  I know what you're thinking, I love videogames so why not love computerized surgery.  Well, there is no Mario to put it shortly.  In fact I doubt it would have any sort of cartoonish characteristics to it at all.  I suppose if they altered the program so what I saw on the screen was more like Mario I would be slightly more excited, but I have a Wii for that at home.  Anyway, I think taking some of the personal interaction out of medicine may be a little bad.  Okay fine.  I just want to actually be a real part of the surgery process.  I mean, I am here learning more than I want to so I can someday (3rd year) experience the type of surgery where you actually get your hands into a body cavity.  Okay that sounded wrong.  I can't think of a way to phrase it better so feel free laugh at will.  I just think that there is something which connects doctors, especially surgeons, back to the root of patient care in physical contact.  Just having a nurse take your blood pressure by a machine feels less personal even if she is talking to you the whole time.  From the other side, if I never had physical contact with people and instead had robots do all the work and I saw the results on a screen they would be less people-ish to me.  But I have to acknowledge that if it really does have less complications and a better prognosis I should choose to use it in my patient's best interest.  But really I wonder where the point is that impersonal, but more effective medicine becomes a detriment to patient care.  Maybe never.  It's something to ponder.  But I want to get my hands dirty instead of letting a robot do it.  So I say I agree with Dr. Lee.  He is DaVinci and you can be too with many years of schooling and an arrest of the progress of putting computer programs into medicine.

So today we were supposed to skin the man bits in lab.  We didn't end up getting that far so the other group will have to do it tomorrow morning. Yay!  Disclaimer: The information you are about to read is the kind that grosses you out and may make you gag, yet oddly compels you to share with everyone you can find later.  We did not get to the man bits because we first had to dissect out the gluteal region, inferior rectum, and anus.  In order to get deep enough in the gluteal region to get to the anus we had to remove a lot of fat.  Our cadaver is skinny and we removed fat for over 2 hours in a really tiny space.  The reason it took so long is because the fat around your anus is much more liquid than anywhere else in your body.  I have no idea why so don't ask.  Anyway, we kept getting to a point where we couldn't see the bottom of the cave we were making in his buttocks because it would fill up with fat juice (for lack of a better term).  The juice looked exactly like the butter dipping sauce for lobster and crab meat.  It was a nice shade of yellow and had a sort of whitish bit of creamy stuff on the top.  So it took us a really long time to get to the sphincter we were trying to find and to dissect out the arteries, nerves, and veins as well and we never got to the man bits.  So now I do not have to do the dreaded man bit skinning lab and only have to find structures on the skin-free product.

Once I got out of lab I cleansed myself of the smell of death and went back to PBL.  We were finishing up a case of lesbian appendicitis.  Being a lesbian has a lot to do with it because it makes it easy to rule out pregnancy as a cause for abdominal pain and vomiting.  I presented my HIPAA findings very succinctly and everyone commented on how HIPAA is not cool.  Our group leader pointed out that perhaps it was made with so many exceptions and loop holes so health care providers could decide case by case what is in the patient's best interest.  I thought that would be the most genious idea ever for a policy and then had to dismiss that theory because I remember who made it.  If I ever run a country I am going to make policies full of holes so people can get away with things and not be held responsible, but they also can be held responsible because everything is so convoluted yet amazing.  It's hard to explain, but I know it could work if someone besides politicians got the end say in it.  Go think about it for yourself and get back to me.

So I studied today!  That was quite the accomplishment because I hate studying.  I can now draw out the arteries and anastomosis of the thorax, abdomen, and pelvis.  I can also explain the embryological formation of the kidneys, testis, ovaries, uterus, digestive system, pancreas, and part of the liver.  I think that is a lot.  Except I need to learn the venous drainage, nerves, and the rest of the embryology by Monday as well as be able to identify the structures in lab and know the anatomical relationships of all the structures.  And after everything I put that I learned you thought I was doing well and perhaps was close to finishing.  Ah, to be naive again.  I have decided I don't like information and knowing stuff.  It's not all that cool.  I think everyone should stay in a bubble where all they have to do is watch Phineas and Ferb all day.  Sorry Spongebob, but they are just so clever and I have seen all you have to offer and they are still new to me.  Maybe someday you can be my point of reference for ultimate fun things again.  I did watch Phineas and Ferb today.  It was nice.  I keep remembering what a wise comedian disguised as a doctor once told me.  He said, "Live in the moment.  If you are studying, then study.  If you are on break then there is no such thing as medical school and you enjoy yourself.  But never get stuck doing one thing and thinking about another.  That is not the way to be successful and be a great doctor.  You can't be thinking about your laundry while you are treating a patient and still give them quality care.  You need to learn that now so you can be happier and better physicians in the future."  Really I think that is the best advice I got during orientation week.  Maybe the best advice I have gotten ever.  I appreciate and accomplish a lot more each moment now than before for sure.  That is from one of our faculty.  He isn't a comedian, but he is so funny I pretend he is a professional comedian and just went to medical school because he is that awesome.  And you thought I was about to quote Patch Adams.

I wish a hippo would eat HIPAA

Yesterday I had visitors.  We had food.  It was nice.  I am so tired I am writing poorly.  See Spoon.  See Spoon dance.  See everyone fall on the ground laughing.  Haha!  See ninja.  See ninja cook.  The food is delicious.  Yummy!  But really.  My ninja came up with his brother and my brother and our friend.  Ninja made delicious pesto burgers and Juicy Lucy's.  I also baked a cake.  Then after we had all eaten way too much we played Just Dance.  It is seriously one of my favorite non-Mario games ever!  We have videos of everyone dancing so if you enjoy being in pain from laughter you should ask ninja and he can show them to you.  Other than that we didn't do a whole lot besides have an awesome time hanging out.  Oh!  And my amazing brother fixed my printer!  I really think everyone should come up much more often.  I would write more or try to be clever, but I am just worn out.

So today I had the morning off and lecture all afternoon.  I spent the morning trying to better understand the lymphatics of the male special parts, but I couldn't figure it out for the life of me.  Then in lecture we learned all about how nothing in embryology makes sense.  I mean, the testis start off up high and descend and the kidneys start off low and ascend?  That just makes no sense.  Why not just switch what they are and have them stay put?  I'm sure you think there is a reason I should be able to scientifically explain to you now that I am ever so studious, but there isn't.  Well, there could be, but I tend to daydream a lot lately and so I space out during important lectures only to tune back in and hear the phrase, "That will be worth a lot on your test."  Oh well, I suppose that is why they record the lectures and post them on the internet.  We also got to watch a gallbladder surgery today.  I have to say that pushing instruments through the abdominal wall looks like when you puch your finger through a piece of paper.  There is a bulge and then BAM there is a hole.  Anyway, they fill your abdominal cavity with carbon dioxide to balloon it out so they can see better.  Why carbon dioxide?  Well when they cut through structures in your body they cauterize them with a hot instrument that makes sparks sometimes.  If you used oxygen you would have a nice surgical mis-adventure when your patient had an explosion in their abdomen.  And that is why they use carbon dioxide rather than oxygen.  I didn't daydream at all during the surgery lecture because it was more fascinating than anything my mind could make up.  This gives me hope that far more interesting things await me outside of anatomy.

So after I got home I did pretty much nothing.  Well, I did my paper on HIPAA regulations for release of patient information to partners in same sex relationships.  HIPAA sucks.  They have all these rules that have provisions that have exceptions that have regulations that have provisions that have children that have rules that have provisions that have exceptions that have regulations that have provisions that have children that have rules that have provisions that have exceptions that have regulations that have herpes that have pustules that are filled with you know what.  Not pus.  Pus is white and what I am thinking of is brown.  So next time you are in the hospital just remember that your information can be released to family sometimes if you say it can and sometimes to the media if you don't specifically say it can't and sometimes to a hobo who knows your name and asks about you by name and never to anyone ever at all if you are pregnant.  So if you want your information to be 100% protected just be sure and get pregnant.  Sorry guys, but you and your complicated lymphatics will just have to be on the news.

3D Pirates

I know I haven't been writing everyday.  There is a reason for that you know, outside of laziness.  I keep pretending I am going to study and I should write my blog after I have gained all the knowledge of the human body.  Then it is 1am and I haven't gotten much done and I just go to bed.  Today I know I will not memorize everything about the human body, but I do feel on the verge of an epiphany.  Whether that epiphany will be that I am going to fail or that I suddenly understand how all the bits and pieces I've learned fit together I can't say.  I can say that it had better happen before Friday so I can plan accordingly for the weekend before the test.  So school is going better in that I like it better and worse in that I have no background in the thorax and abdomen like I did for the extremities.  It's like this time I have to learn it and not just go off of basic concepts I put together from my experiences as a perpetual musculoskeletal injury patient.  If only I had grown up with some sort of serious congenital defect in all major areas of my body.  Then I would be ahead still.

As an aside, I found out I do have a congenital defect in my aorta.  I have what is called a tortuous aorta.  It means that while most people have an aorta that goes in a straight line posteriorly in the abdomen along the spinal column mine is twisting about and coming up much closer to the anterior wall of my abdomen.  Kind of like an awesome blood filled snake.  I had to ask 2 PhDs and one surgeon to figure this out.  I explained how you can not just feel, but see my aorta pulsing next to my umbilicus (belly button) and that several medical professionals thought I had an abdominal aortic aneurysm because it is so prominent.  I was told several things.  One, as an embryo if you move while something important is forming it can take a different route.  This accounts for many of the subtle differences in each person as something important is forming all the time and everyone moves at some point.  To get a tortuous aorta you have to move quite a bit.  I did some research on my own and my mother says I was quite the active little embryo and moved any chance I got.  So really I changed the course of my own aorta before I was even as big as my current aorta is wide because I rock like that.  Two, there used to be a medical student with the same pulse, but she had a lordosis (swaying forward of the lumbar vertebrae) that pushed her aorta anteriorly.  I do not have lordosis.  So then they thought maybe I had a pelvic tilt pushing my aorta forward, but that was not true either.  Three, that tortuous aortas are commonly misdiagnosed as aortic aneurysms and are generally asymptomatic.  The worst they cause is a drop in blood pressure when transitioning from sitting or laying to standing.  I can attest that in my case this is true.  I often almost black out when I leap out of bed cursing because I don't have time to shower for the fifth day in a row and I'll have to get creative with my hair and armpits.  There was also one time that I jumped up in a fit of excitement and then slowly watched my vision black out as I fell in slow motion while clawing for anything to grasp to help me stay on my feet.  Fourth, that if I get stabbed in the back by a very precise surgeon I would not bleed to death because they would be aiming for my aorta and it wouldn't be there.  Haha murderous surgeons!  Fifth, that a tortuous aorta is not an aorta that has government secrets and spent years in an enemy prison protecting our country.  I was hoping the latter would have been true because then I could get military discounts at the movie theater based on what my aorta did and I could be proud of it and brag about it to my friends.  Now I am just ashamed because it couldn't be like all the normal aortas and I have to protect it from being bullied.  Sixth, if I ever have major surgery I should probably tell them because contrary to my belief it is not "fun" to discover this anomaly in the middle of a complex procedure.  Now I just have to get to the point where I can stand on my pineapple roof and chant, "I'm an anomaly and I am proud!"  In all seriouness, I actually like having an asymtomatic congenital defect because it is just so darn cool to have a pulse in your stomach.

Okay, now that you know way more than you could ever want to about my abdomen (it's such a nice abdomen though) I shall move on.  One of our professors was showing us the locations of all the structures of the female pelvis and she kept laughing out loud, to the point that she had to pause the lecture, after she mentioned that OB/GYNs tell you your body can return to normal after pregnancy.  She would laugh and then point out all the structures impeded by having a living being in your body and laugh harder.  She then pointed out that once a child drops into your pelvis right before birth it pinches off a few veins and causes another one to enlarge to drain the area impeded for the others.  Once that vein is stretched it never shrinks again.  This is 100% proof that your body is never going to be totally the same.  She really thought it was funny and her laugh is contagious so now I think it's funny as well.  But it is one of those things that is funny only when it happens to someone else.  Yeah, I won't be laughing if I ever have kids.  And if I ever catch my ninja laughing I will put a mass in his pelvic region for 9 months and see if he still thinks it is funny.  Okay, that was mean.  I was kidding.  A little.

So after my long arduous day of classes I joined some of my classmates for wine by the pool.  I really liked it.  I haven't hung out with many people outside of school so I was happy to get such a laid back opportunity where the object was not to get as smashed as possible, but rather to relax.  Later I went to the 3D lab with a few of my classmates to study anatomical relationships.  We all put on our 3D glasses and started working through them only to have an overwhelming feeling that we couldn't really tell what was anterior or posterior and the 3D was not being helpful at all.  It was only at this point (45 minutes in) that the three of us with 18 or more years of education each, realized we had not turned on the 3D capabilities.  So once those were on everything popped out and the abdomen looked like a nice little cave with kidneys hanging down from the ceiling.  Part of what we needed to study was the male and female genital anatomy.  All I have to say is that in 3D femal anatomy is not so in-your-face.  And that female parts look like a melted popsickle whereas male parts look like a fully frozen popsickle that is a little bent.  Okay, enough about that.  The most interesting thing I learned last night was that our 3D glasses are the polarized type and if you close one eye while you have a pair on and look at someone else wearing a pair of them they look like a pirate because one eye is blacked out and the other is clear.  I believe the three of us in the lab spent a good 40 minutes playing pirates.  Someone also had put a pair on the resident skeleton and I have to admit that he makes a darn good looking pirate.

So last night I had my first of the famed wedding nightmares.  It wasn't much, but it was really unpleasant.  I dreamed I was at my wedding and my aunt was following me around nagging me about everything I was doing wrong.  I got so upset that I went and hid behind a couch (yes it was in a giant house/ballroom/art gallery full of various furniture) where I talked to people I had never met before.  I heard people calling for the first dance and I refused to come out of hiding for fear that I would be nagged incessantly until I put on high heels and did the fox trot like a proper young woman.  I wonder what the next one will be like.  I hope it is more interesting and involves penguins.  In fact, I think I'll say the words, "penguins and igloos" at least 50 times before I fall asleep each night until I have a wedding dream full of those.

So today I went to field day with my 5th grade pen pal.  She didn't show up.  I got to hang out with a lot of other super awesome kids though.  It was freezing this morning so we played inside for a while and then played tag outside.  I won.  Okay, there is really no way to tell if you won or not because it was regular tag and not freeze tag.  I like to think I won though because I ran away from people and didn't get tagged.  And because if I'm not a winner I hate myself so I have to win at everything.  After the games we had snack time!  And after I got home I had nap time!  I really miss kindergarten.  I also want to start a petition to have medical school gym class.  We could play dodgeball with lacrosse balls and when someone got hurt we could all practice our diagnosis skills.

I didn't do much after I got home because I had a headache.  Actually, after my nap time I had more nap time.  Then I made dinner.  I attempted to make chicken a la king and biscuits.  I didn't like it and now I don't want to clean it up.  I would be a great chef if everything I made was one portion sizes and the containers it was cooked in was also edible.  I just hate cooking because I hate cleaning up after.  I also hate doing anything because then I get dirty and I have to clean myself.  When I get old other people will have to clean me for me.  Then I'll do everything I want to now but can't because I'll get dirty and have to shower like eat ribs or wallow in mud.

My Day Off

So yesterday I had class all day and nothing remarkable happened.  I practiced the physical cardiac exam and learned when I get nervous about palpating femoral pulses I get punchy.  I also learned I would prefer to pretend I felt the pulse than keep my hand there for 2 minutes.  I also had lab and we dissected the bag and eggs out the male bag of groceries.  The banana will remain intact until tomorrow in lab.  Then we will seperate the peel from the meaty part and not eat any bananas again ever.  Then after class I went to my new youth group for the first time.  They were watching a movie.  I don't want to give away the ending, but I believe it will be a happy conclusion (the boy puts on his friend's pajamas and gets murdered to the dismay of his father and sister and horror, yet slight satisfaction in proving the father wrong, of his mother and grandmother).  I bet you don't know what movie I mean.  Well someday you will be watching a movie and when a cute little boy becomes too curious about why his friend wears pajamas all the time you'll start crying.  We also had ice cream with a great number of sprinkles.  Well, mine had a ton of sprinkles.  And fudge and caramel and other sprinkles.   You have no idea how many sprinkles.

So today was my day off.  I promised myself I would get a massive amount of studying done.  As we all know that never works out.  I was woken up by a text from my friend at 11 and I went to get food right away.  We had good times.  And Good Times the hamburgers too.  Don't judge me for my bad jokes!  So after we ate we just hung out.  And then I went to get Sonic during happy hour so we could hang out longer without getting too thirsty.  While we were hanging out I told him all about how I have around $50 a month for food and I spend it on fruits and veggies and milk and eggs because meat costs too much.  He took pity on me as a poor med student and helped me sign up for Angel Food Ministries.  What is that you ask?  A well-known ministry that gives massive amounts of foods to people who cannot afford it otherwise, of course.  I bought $56 worth of food and it is more than anything I could ever get at the best grocery store ever for that price!  Seriously, God is the best ever and he has given me food when I need it most.  And I really need it.  I would feel bad for getting into this program, but you have to place an order and then they go get the food for you.  That means I am not taking away from a limited amount of food.  As a side note, I am enjoying being poor.  Mostly because I have the security that I am not actually poor, but am poor by choice.  I refuse to take any hand-outs.  I am just too proud to ask for help.  One day, when I am a doctor instead of a med student, I will have a feast for all the hobos.  It will be proper with turkey legs and fruits and massive loaves of bread and goblets of oxygenated wine.  Then the court ninja will entertain us all with his jokes and dancing.  It will be the best ever!

After I finished daydreaming about my feast and got home, about 3 hours passed in a way that I don't remember.  I think part of it was spent showering.  And part spent murdering warts.  They just won't die!!  Oh!  I remember!  It was mostly spent talking to my mom.  I like her.  As more than friends.  I like her as family.  We had a nice chat about how awesome my wedding will be because it isn't traditional.  Traditional is not fun.  It is boring and horrid and I would hate my own wedding forever if it were traditional.  In fact, I don't recall a wedding I have gone to that I truly liked.  Actually, I did like one of my cousin's weddings because they danced to 99 Red Balloons and it was loud and fun and light-hearted the whole way through.  I don't want to try and make people understand how deeply I love my ninja.  I want them to know how much fun we have together and share in that fun with us.  I think traditional weddings are just funerals dressed up in white, not celebrations.  Do not make the wrong move or wear the wrong thing because you could offend someone.  We have to go through the right motions or risk ruining everything.  They are so somber and they have a sick cadence to their traditions.  I can't express in words in a million lifetimes how horrible I think that is.  My wedding is a grand celebration of everything my ninja and I love together packed into a few hours.  There are only our favorite songs and soccer shoes and splatter paint and stick dancing and a karate demonstration and magic and balloon animals and singing and Jack-O-Lanterns and pizza and ice cream and eggrolls and salsa and salsa dancing and fruit tarts and art galleries and pub tables and canolies and fire dancing.  I love it all.  It is all SO beautiful.  And I know God will be celebrating with us and making everything more vibrant.  I am going to have a wonderful day!

After all of that you can imagine I wouldn't want to study.  Actually, I did want to.  And I got a lot done.  Yeah, days off are awesome.  And awesome days are easier to study on.

So very tired

I keep almost falling asleep in lecture.  Today I desperately drank water in an attempt to make myself have to pee so badly sleep would be impossible.  It did not work.  I found this annoying since my bladder is one of the reasons I am tired today.  See, my bladder woke me up twice last night because it wanted to be emptied.  Then it was hard to get back to sleep.  So I thought it only would follow that my bladder would keep me up if I filled it today in class.  But my bladder is the most horrible tenant in my body.  I would kick it out, but then I would lose my kidneys as well, which I like having around.  They always send me the most nutritional things they can get a hold of so I can stay healthy.  Anyway, I think it is only fair that if my bladder won't let me sleep at night when it is full it should take on the responsibilty of keeping me up during the day if it is full.  This has made me start to wonder when the rest of my body will start turning on me and playing mean tricks to make me crazier until they can take over the property and do whatever they want.  Oh no, my heart just refused to pump blood to my brain when I stood up!  It's already starting.  Stupid revolutionary bladder!

Wondering about my suppose-to-be-there body tenants made me think about my unwelcome guests.  I hate warts.  I took the banana off today only to find the wart I had thought died yesterday is actually alive and well deep in the crater of my toe.  I think it is daring me to try and go in after it knowing I'll have to destroy my whole toe to do so.  I think it may be worth it.  Anyway, if this banana thing doesn't work by next week I am just going to dump acid in the crater until the wart gives up.  I have had this thing for 5 years.  You may think I should be attached to it and give it a name.  I will not!  I can't name something that I am actively trying to kill.  That would be like naming spiders when they came into my room.  So I am just going to continue on my quest.  My quest.... of MURDER!!!

In other news, my PBL small group at school got me and another guy in my group presents today.  They are for major life events.  He is having a son and I am getting married.  They told me lingerie for my wedding night was in the bag and when I opened it up I realized how right they were.  It had Spongebob pajamas in it.  What can I say?  My PBL group knows me.  And if ninja expects me to have anything different I think we need to reconsider the whole relationship. 

Blackbelt Blackmail

Who loves having 6 hours of lecture in one day?  No really, if you know someone who enjoys that you should tell them to seriously consider medicine as a career.  Today we mapped out the arteries of the thorax, abdomen, and pelvis.  Then we mapped out the veins.  Then we mapped out the lymphatics.  Then we went over all the embryology of how it all is formed.  I think the single most amazing thing I learned today is that Chipotle burritos and embryos fold in the same fashion to create the finished product.  So next time we are hanging out and you want to learn just buy me a burrito and I can explain it to you.  Hopefully they fold it right and you don't end up with a major birth defect that makes your guacamole spill out of your abdominal cavity!  I also learned that if your heart forms backwards it will be on the right side of your body and that usually, but not always, causes all of your other organs to form reversed as well.  I wish I was one of the awesome people with everything on the opposite side.  I would make everyone call me ymA and type like this.  .siht ekil epyt dna Amy em llac enoyreve ekam dluow I  If you enjoyed how I typed that you should facebook chat with me sometimes because I can do it suprisingly fast.  Just another one of the benefits of going insane. 

Anyway, I love the professors at our school because they are all fun.  Today during lecture the professor paused and someone in our class yawned super loud and she just burst out laughing.  I just wish teachers at all levels could be so fun.  I want to take my medical school teaching staff to every high school in the country and have them tell the students what they do and do not care about.  I'll give you a hint, you would have to curse really loudly for at least five minutes before they even started to get annoyed.  We have gotten away with asking if we could get partial credit for writing "artery" as an answer for identifying an artery if we didn't know which artery (we can get credit), asking if there are federal regulations on buying rib cutters, asking how exactly they could know we were in class to answer a question if we didn't speak up when they called our name, being on facebook all of lecture, texting as much as we please, and becoming audibly distressed when they move onto a new subject with only 10 minutes left in class (they just let us out early when we do that).  It isn't that we got away with it and they looked mildly annoyed and didn't say anything.  The professors always laugh and tell us how much they really enjoy our class.  So next time a college or below teacher tells you something is unacceptable from a professional student tell them to go sit in on some medical school classes for a day.

So yesterday I embarked on an adventure known as trying to kill a plantar wart that didn't die after professional freezing.  I taped some rotting fruit to it.  A banana peel to be specific.  I kept it on all day and took off the tape to shower.  One of the warts had turned black and it fell out leaving a giant white crater in my toe.  I would be slightly alarmed at the crater, but it is quite the improvement.  The other one, which is really a colony of about 30 warts, is just being stubborn.  I put more banana peel on it, but I am brainstorming about what other fruits to try if it doesn't show any signs of death by Friday.  I'm thinking cactus fruit. 

Today I made the mistake of thinking if I looked up a squirrel video on youtube my cat would hold still so I could sit with her.  It worked!  Okay, the mistake part is that now she thinks my laptop is for her entertainment.  She keeps jumping in my face and trying to take over my laptop like Arby's took over Wendy's.  (That is really true, by the way.)  I guess I'll just have to get her a real squirrel to keep her entertained now.

Today I got a call from my mom telling me she went on her own daring adventure.  She climbed for hours through the wind and rocks to get to a freezing mountain pool so she could jump in.  Color me impressed.  I think that is somewhere between green, purple, and brown.  I am really jealous though because she seriously was in one of the most beautiful places in the world while I was in lecture.  But at least she was kind enough to send me pictures so the next time I decide to stress to the point of hallucination I can look at them and take the hike in my mind.  Or would it be for real?  I can never tell.

So I am still on my study strike.  I told you it was ultimate.  Today I was telling my ninja all about how I have been watching Cupcake Wars and anything else with food in it since I got home from class.  He then proceeded to lecture me about how I have a responsibility to my future patients and that I was miserable last time I had to cram and that I needed to get out of the habit of rationalizing why I shouldn't study and how I could get more sleep close to the test and not have to study all weekend if I do it now and all these other reasons that are so clearly selfish on his part.  I save lives by not studying.  Namely his.  Anyway, he is blackmailing me!  He says he will not come up and make me delicious grilled pesto burgers unless I study.  He is like an evil mastermind who knows exactly how to destroy me!  That is as not cool as waving a plastic sword out of a car window and almost getting arrested because the cop thought it was a gun.  Not cool, ninja.  Not cool.

House Home

I have realized I have two places where I would consider myself home and I need to specify.  I have House home and Apartment home.  I spent this weekend at House home.  This one is bigger, but does not have air conditioning.  Anyway, there isn't much to tell you guys because I was home so you were there and probably know what I did.  I enjoyed spending time with everyone and having my cake caper and then an unplanned photography caper. 

I would like to say my cake is going to be the best cake ever which is saying a lot from someone who thinks wedding cakes are the most boring looking pieces of delicious ever.  By the way, if you want to know what horrible feels like try going to the cake tasting for your wedding only to realize two bites in that your allergies have made it impossible to distinguish any flavors.  Eating free cake is supposed to be one of the best part of getting married, but they all tasted like cake texture and mucus.  Well, I guess texture isn't a flavor so they just tasted like mucus.  Mmmmmm.  Delicious.  Anyway, the ninja was late to the tasting and I was grumpy already that I couldn't taste anything and I decided nothing was going to make me feel better.  That is until we all came up with the best wedding cake idea ever!  This idea is so fantastic that even if we actually had mucus flavored cake people would eat as much of it as possible just to be a part of the amazing-ness.  Yeah, it is that good.  I would also like to say my pictures are going to be the best ever because I have only invited beautiful people to my wedding.  Or because the photographer showed me one of the best pictures I have ever seen in my life and then told me it was not his high quality stuff like he uses at weddings.  And he is one of the most awesome people ever and he thinks everything about my wedding is classy, right down to the pizza and indoor soccer shoes.  Best photographer ever!  So a lot got done and it was not educational so now I am behind on school, yet ahead at life.

I also got to play soccer while I was home and I did not blow out my achilles and die of hyperventilation like I thought.  I actually had a lot of fun and I am going to pretend I didn't suck so I don't cry myself to sleep tonight.  Actually I didn't do half bad except for the times where I wouldn't run (which was most the time) because I could taste blood.  I guess I have to cut myself a little slack because I really have not exercised or run since I had pneumonia in July except to play hula-hoop on Wii Fit and pretend it was good for my abs.  Yes, I really did that for a week.  And as a health semi-professional I say it IS great for the abs.  It works your whole core while making you work extra hard because you secretly think if you miss the hula-hoop your Mii father throws to you he will disown you for life.  Sometimes when you live alone you make Miis on the Wii of everyone you miss and then go to the Mii channel and watch them parade while you cheer for them as they go by.  I think it is the healthiest coping mechanism possible.  I mean, who wants to make new friends that may have the potential to be one of the most awesome people ever when you can just watch your Mii family parade for you whenever you desire?  In fact, I am a little upset now that I can't get my real family to parade whenever I choose.  I should try harder next time I am at House home. 

I do have to mention a few things about going house home though.  (I know I only capitalize house sometimes, but it is its own sort of grammitical entity that I made up so I made up the grammer rules for it too.  If you can guess what they are I'll give you a cookie.)  Now that I am in medical school I feel weird around certain people.  Some of them are condescending when I tell them I am in medical school and they say something like, "To be a nurse?" or "Which school do you plan to apply to after undergrad?"  I tried to find a benefit of the doubt to give them, but the only thing I could think of is that I look stupider than I am and I don't like looking stupid so I won't let them have it.  Others pretend like I suddenly know everything in the world and are disappointed that I can't tell them how to diagnose a femoral hernia as opposed to a swollen lymph node from home.  Then there are some who try to justify themselves to me.  People I have known for years have started telling me things like, "I rarely eat fast food, you know.  And I eat plenty of vegetables as well."  As if I didn't hang out with them enough to know they think vegetables are poisonous.  Or "I only talk on the phone while driving if it's something really important."  I like to just nod like I am in deep thought when they say these things because I am entertained by it and if I let them know I couldn't care less they won't worry about telling me how good they are anymore, but if I act judgemental they won't want to hang out with me again.  But by far my favorite is, "I was going to go to medical school, but then (awesome life event story that I wish I had so I wouldn't be stuck in medical school unless it is a tragic story and then I would rather be in school)."  I don't think everyone who isn't a doctor is a loser.  In fact, I wish God hadn't put me here sometimes.  But I know why I am here.

Back in high school I was an ornery person.  I am all better now, but the man upstairs has a wicked sense of humor.  My senior year I took anatomy and I wanted it to be an easy class.  So everytime our teacher insisted we memorize detailed parts of anatomy I would think it was my right to loudly voice my opinion.  I told her nearly everyday that year that no one, especially me after her torturous teaching method, in our class would ever be a doctor and that it was a cottonpick of cottonpickers (we were banned at my school from using any euphemism except cottonpicking) that we had to learn so much anatomy.  So here I am wishing I had just learned a little more in her class so my life could be easier now.  I'm just glad God made my feet taste so good.

Have a heart

Today I had school.  No, really I did.  I learned how to do a full pulmonary exam.  Now I know the right places to thump people on the chest.  I also know that when a doctor asks you to say ridiculous things while they listen to your breathing and you feel dumb it isn't just so they can have a good laugh out in the hall like I thought.  I mean, it's almost like medicine was carefully planned and each phrase and movement was made just to identify specific pathologies.  I still think part of it is to give doctors a good laugh for some stress relief, but it is mostly for your own good.  Okay, so the lungs are in your chest and you can definitely listen to them and check up on them from your back, but sometimes you have to do an exam on the front.  And we all know what is on the front half of half the chests on this planet.  It isn't that things were super awkward (they were a little), but more that they were cumbersome.  I mean, having to deal with such things took another half hour of explanation on proper handling of delicate matters.  Last thing I will say is that the art of not groping someone who is actively participating with you in examining their chest is harder than the art of groping someone without them noticing.  I have never tried the latter, but I remember reading the man alphabet book and seeing a whole chapter dedicated to the art of sneakily groping someone.

So later in the day I was at school again.  I know that seems ridiculous, but if you remember yesterday it shouldn't seem suprising since I love school so much and want to be there all the time. (cough, co-help-ugh, cough)  So in lab we are working on dissections and today we did the heart.  I just want to say hearts confuse me to death.  Once we had it out of the chest cavity I was all dosoriented and couldn't tell my apex from my midline or my atria from my ventricles.  Anyway, one of our professors came to help and we had music playing on our computer and he danced to "Get Up" by James Brown for a few minutes before he found a some nerves for us.  Then our other professor came over and told us horror stories about orthodontia when he was a child.  Apparantely they used a tool called a "mule kicker" to get the braces off your teeth.  After he explained it the name seemed appropriate if not a little tame.  Enough said.  Then I contemplated the strong emotional implications of holding a heart in your hand while listening to Tears for Fears.

So this weekend is the great cake tasting caper.  Okay, it isn't a caper, but it is really amazing and you should be jealous I get to go taste many flavorful cakes and you do not.  Except I still get a little nauseous from smelling baked goods so I am hoping my excitement tomorrow will push all of my past traumatic experiences with prosections to the farthest reaches of my mind where they cannot set off a gag-reflex reaction to similar smells.  Anyway, I want a giant fruit tart for my cake, but my mom says nobody else would want that so I need to pick a "real" cake to have.  Stupid other people who are not having a ceremony to announce to their friends and family that they and their best friend are signing the official Best Friends With Benefits Forever papers.  I want a fruit tart.  I think they are just being bitter because they don't have a best friend willing to sign their friendship into legal documents with severe consequences for breaking off said friendship.  The only thing that can even kind of make this better is the fact that I get to just have a bunch of cake for free tomorrow.  But they still owe me so I am making a list of presents at several stores for them to buy me as an apology for forcing me to bend to their needs rather than my own at my ceremony.

Umm..... I am tired today so none of this has been particularly interesting.  Today was very interesting to me though because I both held a heart figuratively and literally in one day.  And after trying to take a heart out without damaging structures I have no idea how they can possibly manage any sort of transplant anything.  I think the more I know about the human body the more I think medicine is a hoax because there is no way they can put whole new organs in people without everyone in a mile radius dying.  Just saying.  I think that our lab professors put pacemakers in right before we show up so we can find them and think putting one in is possible.  I believe it is not possible, but our professors think if they can make us believe it has already been done then in an effort to keep from looking like we are not good doctors we will learn how to do it and advance medicine.  Actually, if that is not already going on they should start trying it.  Like put in a mechanical brain and tell the students it worked for the person's whole life so they think they are real and later on when someone needs a new brain they will remember what they saw in lab and invent one for real because they believe it will work and don't want to look incompetent.  I am so brilliant.  Now if I could only convince myself that people really do sleep so I will try it sometime in an effort to seem normal.

The Ultimate Study Strike

My friend came up to visit today.  We went to a Mexican bakery next to my house and got what would be $50 of pastries at Safeway for $15.  I haven't eaten any of it yet because I am saving them to bring home tomorrow.  I also got vanilla there which is way better than stupid processed American vanilla.  Now all my cakes will be delicious!!  If only I could eat them.  Stupid old prosections in lab that have to smell kind of sweet like cookies and kind of like death.  Now I can't eat cookies or ice cream or cake without getting nauseous.  I can eat churros and fruit empanadas though.  So after we got too many pastries we got my ring cleaned.  Now I can stare at my sparkly hand all day while repeating, "One day you won't be so lonely little ring.  I will get you a friend named wedding-y and you can be joined at the hip like twins.  It won't be painful, stop crying.  It isn't so far away and you will be happy when the other half is here.  I promise it will happen.  I promise.  I promise."  Then it keeps going from there.  Soooooooo, after we got my ring cleaned we ate at Chili's and it was super cool because he is a great person and I like talking to him.  I think he will be able to get into the same school as me and then I could mentor him.

Anyway, I have gone on strike from all school activities.  Today when I got home from class I watched the old Mario cartoon (I know it is terrible, but I love it) and then played Mario Galaxy for a few hours before my friend stopped by.  Outside of lectures I didn't look at or do anything school related.  Okay, that is a complete lie.  I had to do my SPETA pre-session question sheet thing.  But that doesn't count because it isn't studying, it's answering questions without looking in the book.  Then I took the mandatory feedback survey for our class.  Uh, that doesn't count either because there is no grade involved and it is my opinion.  I don't have to study me to learn my opinions.  Well, I do actually, but it still doesn't count because in my opinion it doesn't count.  It took me a few hours of watching me from the bushes to figure that one out.  Then I signed up for electives.  I wanted to take Spanish and homeless medicine, but they were full.  So now I am in wilderness medicine, biomedical cancer studies, and one where I work with drug addicts in a detox clinic.  I think the only way it could have been better is if I got the homeless elective one as well.  Okay, so I suck at striking from school.  I am my own scab.  Or maybe school is just hard to strike from when it's stalking you.  Help me...... Oh no!!! I think school saw me type that.  Nooooooooooo......... (terrible shady noises, then silence and faint weeping)

Ahem, I love school.  School HELPs ME learn things I need to know.  I do not NEED any HELP because nothing is BAD about school and the THINGS I have to learn.  The classes ARE fun and a lot of cool things are HAPPENING on campus.  So PLEASE don't feel like you need to WORRY about me BECAUSE everything is fine.  I just want you to know I AM having a wondeful time here and school has TREATED me with nothing but respect.  In fact, I LIKE school because it has helped me stop being A PRISONER to my addiction to ridiculous things like fun.  I WANT nothing more than TO stay here.  Sometimes I don't LEAVE campus for hours after class because there are so many wonderful things THEY teach me about the human body.  So just stay where you ARE because I am fine.  There is no reason for you to be GOING out this late TO help me.  I wouldn't want you KILLing yourself rushing up here for ME when there is no EMERGENCY.  I will see you when I see you and it will be educational.  Just rest easy knowing how happy I am and that I love my new life as a hard-working student.

Nothing much

So today will be bland because I have been studying for and then taking my first exam.  Yesterday I spent the morning studying and then my brother and almost husband came up around 1pm to help me.  They took turns playing flash cards and helping me do the practice test.  Umm.... this isn't very interesting today so you definitely don't have to read it.  Anyway, I pretty much studied all day until we all went to a concert at 8pm.  So to put things in a little perspective, most people were at school studying until the wee hours of the morning.  So last night was not exactly the recommended time for hanging out.  However, I love Jamie Lidell and I HAD to go see him since he was playing 5 minutes from my house. 

So we got to the concert and I didn't bring an ID because I didn't want to drink and I figured they would just put a big X on my hand and be done with it.  Nope.  They had to have an ID so we had to go back to my apartment to get it and then go back to the concert.  That turned out really well though because I got to have some cupcakes which were delicious since the store was next to the concert venue and we were walking by anyway.  I had one smore and one snickerdoodle.  I liked the snickedoodle better because the smore was almost too sweet.  So then we were walking to the car and these two drunk guys started talking to me about my cupcakes so I offered them one and the one told me, "God bless you, but I am just drunk.  Eat up!"  Then the other told my almost husband that he liked his "Ninja Please" shirt.  They were really nice for two drunk guys on Colfax after dark. 

Okay, so then we finally got back to the concert and got in and there were maybe 20 people there.  So I was all excited because I thought there would be a better chance of meeting the singer after the concert.  So after the intro band finished they made us wait 45 minutes for the headliners to come on so they could sell more tickets at the box office.  By the time the concert started the place was pretty full.  Then Jamie Lidell came on and it was the most amazing 90 mintues of my life.  HE IS THE BEST EVER!  I would write about how cool it was, but you had to be there.  It was just awesome.  Take my word for it.  I felt that failing out of medical school would be worth just that one concert.  That is how great it was.  So then after the concert I wanted to tell him that he is awesome, but he didn't come out and the bouncer made us leave.  I blame all the drunk people who came in late just to see whoever was playing for keeping me from getting to meet him.  And then we went back home.

So at home I started to have a total freak out about failing.  At one point I was sitting on the floor with my hands full of notecards almost weeping openly about how I didn't know anything about the human body and that the medical school secretly knew all along and was just keeping me there until I fail the first test so they could rub it in and say, "You thought YOU could be a doctor?  You can't hold a candle to the real medical students we have.  We just accepted you to show you how insignificant you really are."  Then I pictured them becoming just partially transparent heads as they circled my head laughing at me.  It was really quite the delusion.  So I went to bed all upset, but I am a great sleeper so I passed out hard and woke up around 8am to find my ninja making breakfast. 

It was a really nice morning and I was still convinced I would fail, but I didn't care as much because I am just crazy like that.  It's like how I am terrified of needles from a distance, but once they get close enough to stab me I become fascinated and couldn't care less.  That's how I am with tests I guess.  Once they are here to be failed I get all complacent and carefree.  So I went over a few more things and my brother and ninja left and I studied a little more and prayed a lot more and then went to school.

When I got the test I was amazed at how well I knew what was on it and I finished quite early.  Then I waited for the dreaded lab practical exam.  I think I probably got around a 50% on that.  Good thing the test is weighted so the written portion is worth almost 4 times as much.  I would do better on the lab section, but I don't like to go to lab and study.  In fact, I would prefer to only be in lab when it is required.  So then I went home and refused to go pub crawling on Colfax because I think any kind of crawling on Colfax is a bad idea personally.  Even if you are in a large group of students.

I figured I wanted to celebrate by not being home alone all night so I went to see my cousin Ashley and her family.  We had Chinese food which for the first time since I can remember did not make me violently ill.  This should make everyone on the planet happy since I am the person who always derailed the Let's-go-get-Chinese train.  I don't think that is a real train, but I lost my ticket for so many years I felt that it was a not just a train, but the best train in the world.  And now I can ride it!!  I am pretty happy.

So after dinner I played with my little cousins.  I played run around the house giggling, let's see how many things we can put in our mouth before getting yelled at by mom, scream for no reason at all, and a weird version of Simon says where I think Simon is mute so you just do whatever he is doing because he can't say anything.  So overall I had an absolute blast.  And I got to watch Phineas and Ferb which is the best Disney cartoon on television.

And now I am home again.  I would have had an interesting entry, but my brain is hiding from me.  It does not want to be treated like a stomach anymore and would appreciate a permanent science fast.  Unfortunately I am going to have to coax the little guy out with ice cream so I can trap him in my skull again because lecture starts tomorrow morning at 10am. 

Cheese cubes on cracker boats in a tomato soup sea

So today I studied for hours, but I still don't feel like I learned anything.  I started by looking over the clinical learning objectives, then spent 5 hours in lab learning relationships.  Like the ones I missed every other second last night.  I feel like I have a better grasp on it now.  I feel that 8 hours in one day is enough and if I want to chat on facebook until my eyes bleed I have earned it.

So after lab and the required post-lab shower I was faced with the choice of what to have for dinner.  Personally I wanted nothing, but I have promised various persons I would not do that.  After raiding my pantry and fridge I settled on tomato soup and grilled cheese.  About halfway through heating the soup I became aware of how much work making grilled cheese takes and I decided to just cut some cheese cubes and have soup with crackers and cheese cubes which in my mind is the same as cheese melted between bread slices.  I happily sat down to my meal and then took a tour through the depravity of my own loneliness.  I discovered that in living alone I have become so emotionally needy I sang a song to my dinner.  It was to this tune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3e_zYCOc3I&feature=related and my lyrics went like this:

Oh, it's only a cracker boat
Sailing over a tomato soup sea
But it wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me

Yes, it's only a cheese cube pirate
Arr-ing from his cracker boat balcony
But it woudn't be make believe if you believed in me

Without your taste, it's a vegetable parade
Without your taste, it's a veggie soiree on a red promenade
It's a tomato and sodium world, just as unhealthy as it can be
But it wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me

Yes, it's only a cheese cube pirate
Arr-ing from his cracker boat balcony
But it wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me

Without your taste, it's a vegetable parade
Without your taste, it's a veggie soiree on a red promenade
It's a tomato and sodium world, just as unhealthy as it can be
But it wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me

Then I said cheese names rather than scat singing

So I suppose I should go commit myself now.  And I know some of my lines have extra syllables.  My dinner didn't complain and I wrote it for him so I don't care what you real living beings think.  All I need is my soup and my crackers and my cheese and I am set.  They love me no matter how poorly I rhyme things.  I love food more than people and I think it is worse when someone kills a food than when they kill a person.  I am going to start a group called PETF.  Person for the Ethical Treatment of Foods.  Then I will buy all the mistreated foods and keep them at my house even if I don't have adequate storage and I will encourage others to do the same.  It is better for the foods to spoil early in an environment where the are completely loved than thrive where they are slightly less appreciated and occassionally neglected.  I will make the world a better place.

My brain is full

I am on a much deserved study break.  Or at least in my mind I deserve it.  I took the practice exam, but only the sections I REALLY struggle with.  I got a 68% on the fill in the blank and a 100% on the embryology and radiology sections.  I missed most of the relationships questions.  Such as: The sural nerve passes "blank" and inferior to the lateral malleolus.  I have no idea.  Deep?  Medial?  Anterior?  There are too many choices and I inevitably choose wrong.  I suppose I should go spend more time looking at the 3D cadaver thing at school or maybe at the real ones in the lab.  I am just banking on passing the blood flow and nerve questions with a high percentage so I can have some elbow room with these and the practical. 

I would say I should study more, but I have come to realize the brain and the stomach are very similar and I think my brain is getting too full.  This is unfortunate for anything interesting that comes up in the future as I will have no room in my brain for storage.  Or I suppose if the brain truly is like a stomach for knowledge then I should be excreting useless thoughts from which all beneficial material has been removed at a rate which increases as I study more.  I suppose this can be accounted for in the random extended conversations I have been having out loud with myself or my cat about diseases that I think would be easy to cure, but don't exist.  Like tasty, edible skin growths.  I think if things like warts or blisters were really made of different types of candy they would be easy to cure.  Just have the patient eat them.  The only problem would be that some patients wouldn't really want to be cured because having snacks built into your own body where they can grow would be convenient AND fun.  Then maybe there would be a sort of reverse vaccine where in an attempt to cure world hunger people all over the world would be injected with the horrible blue raspberry boil virus.  Also, if the brain is like a stomach then it should follow that if I keep stuffing it to the point of unbearable pain it should start to expand and cause a hunger, if you will, for more knowledge until I wake up in the middle of the night with my brain growling until I get a midnight study session in.  Hopefully it will be something nutritious like arterial supply rather than things that will only make me sick like nerve lesion problems.  Anyway, I suppose I have quite proven myself wrong about there being no point in studying and now I should go study until I am about to explode in order to expand my brain to accomodate more in the future.  I wish my brain was like my appendix so if it got bothered it would explode and I would have a perfect excuse to never learn anything.

Outside of schoolwork, I had a nice visit from everyone today.  I greatly appreciate the food which I am considering an early celebration of my marginal success on my first exam.  Next weekend I am going to pretend the cake tasting is a celebration as well rather than a horrible chore where I am forced to taste several delicious cakes to have at my wedding.  Then I will stay home forever!  Okay, I won't because I am too far in debt already to give up for something as small as homesickness.  Mark my words though, one day I will figure out how to put the entire Fitzsimmons medical center on a truck and switch its place with the Cinemark and Lowe's in Colorado Springs so I can come back for good.

I wish my onions tasted like onions and not fish

So I don't enjoy eating much lately, but I try to cook something delicious to eat throughout the week as encouragement.  The quiche-esque thing I made (it can't be a straight up quiche because it has no crust) was super delicious the day I made it and so I was pretty excited to eat it today for dinner.  About halfway though my slice I realized there were these little grey things in it that I didn't remember putting there.  They tasted and flaked like fish when I picked it apart and I really had no idea what they were so I analyzed everything I put in the dish originally and realized it was the onions.  I wish they still tasted like onions because I like that flavor.  So anyway, I have decided I am a magic chef and next week I am going to try and turn oranges into steak.  Mostly because I am too poor to buy steak and I bought so many oranges I think they will go bad before I can eat all of them.  If I pull that off I plan to start making gold out of straw.

In other news, I hardly studied today.  I should be more scared of failing.  Maybe I'll have a good nightmare tonight and then study like a beast until Wednesday.  I think if people told me they would get me outside food for studying I would focus better.  Like if people who used to feed me just whenever volunteered to drive here from their homes and feed me as a reward I may be doing a better job.  Or maybe if I had a reward for hitting the books like food that wasn't juice from my fridge I would be a great student.  Perhaps another great idea is to have any random person who knows what my favorite pizza or other food is brought it to me after a long hard study session.  Those are just my many various and different ideas for how I think I would be able to get more consistent motivation for schoolwork.

However, I did still manage to memorize the structure of the Brachial, Lumbar, and Lumbosacral Plexus-es (plexi?).  And I also memorized the muscles and innervations of the anterior compartments of the arm down to the anterior hand.  I bet by the time I go to bed I could have the posterior arm to hand done and part of the arterial supplies as well.  But I never think I will be able to get down the attachments and actions.  Stupid complicated body!  I hate how everything fits together in a giant medley of complicated-ness.  If the bones were less lumpy I would have no bony landmarks to get down.  And if all the muscles were named for what they do (i.e. knee straightener) and the attachments were named for what attaches there (i.e. knee straightener attachment) then this would be no problem what-so-ever.  Or if we used the English terms in place of all the Latin terms at the very least.  I just feel that everyone involved in medicine from the day they started scientifically naming body parts was working towards the common goal of making anatomy as hard as possible.  And now, since I am suffering through, I plan in the future to contribute as well and have my sciatic nerve sheath tumor named McDowelloma just so there is one more complicated term that makes no logical sense for future med students to learn.

Because I can't be on the phone all night every night telling everyone my stories.

So I love everyone I left in Colorado Springs, but I don't have time to always be on the phone.  But I WANT to always be on the phone with you guys and it is not working out for my study habits.  So I decided to start this so everyone can see how my days are going even if I am not answering my phone at the moment because I am in a lecture or study group or lab or just having an actually productive study session and answering the phone would stop my thought process.

I realize I suck at keeping up with these sorts of things and that when I write out stories I feel like I am in some sort of competition so they are long-winded and no one will read the whole thing.  I'll try to break things into lots of little paragraphs so you can pick and choose what to read.  Anyway, don't think I don't want to talk to you or that you have been annoying me because I do want to talk to you and I think you are fascinating and that is the problem.

So here is my blog that I don't expect you to read, but you can if you want.