Hi there; Birdie here!
I just have to get through this physiology final on Monday and then the week after I'll have a whole week with no exams! I'm really excited about it. I've been finding it really hard to study for physio and for last week's anatomy exam. We haven't gotten the written exam grades yet, but I got an A on the practical, so I guess I managed to study enough anyway. I'm hoping to finish writing study guides for the physio notes today and then go over them tomorrow, and hopefully that will be enough. Then I can take at least a few days off studying...kind of like I did after the anatomy exam, actually, only this time I won't have to feel bad about it.
I still am aiming to update this on Fridays, btw, but I wanted to hold out so that I could write about the wetlab I went to this morning. It was put on by Internal Medicine Club, which I'm not actually a member of--apparently they got a grant of some sort, so they could open it to non-members. And I figured, why not? One of the club officers there was talking to me at one point during the wetlab and basically giving me a spiel promoting the club, and she seemed kind of impressed that I was going to this wetlab as a first year. Well, that's the kind of person I am--if I've got an opportunity to do stuff like that, I'll take it whenever I can, basically. It's not like I'm going to get less busy during the later, harder years. I still don't think I'll be joining this club, though...I'm already paying probably too much in dues.
We got to do a bunch of procedures on cadaver dogs: CSF taps (getting cerebrospinal fluid samples--a procedure that can be pretty scary, since if your needle goes in too deep you hit brainstem!), thoracocentesis (drawing out fluid from around the lungs), and bone marrow biopsies from a couple of different sites. We also had a few cadaver cats to practice placing esophageal tubes on, and I got to put in my first suture with it! Not that I was at all good at it--turns out, cat skin is really tough. The doctors make suturing look so easy, but it wasn't easy at all to get my needle through, much less in the right place. One of the dogs had a strange abdominal mass--it felt like ribs on palpation. Once everyone had gotten to try the procedures (and third years were getting ready to practice surgery on the dogs), they went in to see what it was...turns out, it was his stomach, FULL of dry dog food. It was absolutely bulging; we could see individual pellets distorting the surface of the stomach.
I'm glad I managed to do well on the wetlab procedures...it makes me feel a little better about how bad I messed up in anatomy lab. Between my partner not having looked at the dissection guide for what we were about to start, neither of us having looked at the demo dog yet, and misinterpreting part of the instructions, we managed to (rather messily) cut into our abdominal cavity when we're supposed to be working on the thorax. Not that we managed to cut the thorax very well, either, apparently, since we can't really see anything in there...it worked rather better on the big demo dog. Luckily by the time of the exam we'll have gotten to the abdomen anyway, and dissection skills aren't a part of our grade unless they interfere with us being able to answer our quiz questions. Apparently we did something right on our last dissection, though; I didn't notice as we were going through the practical, but judging by the fact that the left pelvic limb was removed when we went to get him out yesterday, our dog was one of the stations.
I've been having a little trouble with live dogs, too. Well, one live dog in particular--my second roommate (the other first year) is fostering/potentially adopting a dog from the local shelter. She's really cute, but she's super scared of me and starts growling and barking at me every time I go downstairs. I don't think she understands where I come from since she can't get up the twisty metal staircase herself. She does that somewhat to our other roommate as well, but she gets over it or at least doesn't do it as much. It's kind of frustrating...I like to study downstairs sometimes, but now if I try she'll just want to bark at me the whole time. And it's really not convenient that I have to go through that roommate's bedroom to do my laundry...
One last thing: on Tuesday I went with my friend to the weekly 5k downtown, as we often do. We usually meet up with a bunch of our classmates, but no one else was there (most likely because that was between the anatomy practical and written exam). We did the run anyway, in about 30 minutes (which, with the way we were running, makes me think that wasn't really 5k, but eh). When we finished, we saw a bunch of runners trailing off somewhere, so we joined the trail. It turns out, they were shooting a commercial for a catastrophe-themed "run for your life" 5k in the spring--and we got to be in it! We had to run up a hill (but not too fast) and look scared, with "military" waving us on and an "ambulance" in the background. It was really fun! If you happen to be in the Baton Rouge area and see a commercial like that, I'm in it. :) We all got free entries to the race for participating in the commercial, and I might actually do it; if I do, it'll be my first 5k since I really started running! And after that part, there was a horror scream contest, and my friend won the girls' part. She won a $50 gift card to a sports & outdoors store, though she hasn't gotten it yet. So if you see that commercial and there's a close-up on a girl screaming--I know her.
Sorry, I lied, one more thing: I finally got my laptop back. :D
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