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.