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.