Calm After the Storm

Tonight is the calm after the storm.  We had our first Gross anatomy written and practical yesterday. They said this whole med school thing was a marathon and not a sprint and they weren't lyin'.

We started off the day yesterday with a "Developmental Anatomy" (aka embryology) exam from 10-11.  This was the test everyone would say was a "hail mary" type of exam.  Developmental is worth so little of your overall average (~1%) most people just cram a day or two before the exam and the morning of and hope for the best.  Of course you can't fail the course b/c failing this meaningless waste of time would mean you would be taking it again during the summer (the only "free" summer we have left is after our M1 year-no one wants to spend it re-taking the Developemental Anatomy)  This class is the rock in everyone's shoe .  It's difficult material, hard to learn, and it won't help your average that much even if you do well b/c its worth so little, but.....you have to pass it.

Between 11 and 12:50 we crammed in a quick lunch and tried to learn any last minute bone parts.  We kept going over all the crazy clinical names of all the brachial plexus lesions: "back packers palsy", "watier's tip", "claw hand", " cyclist handlebar neuropathy", "erb's palsy", klumpky's paralysis", and many more.

At 12:50 I went in to take the written portion of the Gross test. There were 83 questions we an alotted 1.2 minutes per question.  I had to hustle through these because I'm typically an anatalytical test taker.  I had no type to process at all, I kept telling myself "move kelly move, don't think about it, just go with it.."

After out 83 questions with 1.2 min per question we went into the hall way got a quick snack from the M2's who are awesome for providing a snack table with home-made goodies and drinks.  Taking that exam is strenuous and we all needed a little glucose before taking the lab exam.

After our snack, we headed into the cadaver Lab practical, there were 73 stations, 60 seconds per station, no time in between so we kept going for 73 minutes till we finished every station.

Needless to say, I'm glad its Tuesday.  Can't believe its only Tuesday though, feels like we've done a week worth of work already-ha they never said it would be easy....and its not, but I know its worth it.

Thanks for reading.

Salt and Light,

Kelly

HILARIOUS...

MEDICAL SCHOOL VIDEO

M1 year long schedule

If you're an aspiring medical student out there and ever wondered what a week or two in medical school would look like- I thought I would attach the M1 year long schedule to give any pre-meds out there a view of what we do each day :) Enjoy. Click the link.

http://studentservices.umc.edu/documents/M1MasterSchedule.pdf

Muscles, Nerves, and Bones Everywhere

The Third week of medical school is officially over and I'm about to embark on the fourth week. I started off my labor day in the Gross Anatomy Lab at 9:00 this morning (saturday I was there at 8:00am) to dissect what the book calls the cubital fossa....aka the elbow---they should just call it the elbow.

Nonetheless, we took skin and fat off and looked at the arteries in the fold of your elbow along with the tendons of the bicep and the median nerve.

I usually let the boys in my group do most of the cutting-they like that, although I do plenty of fat removal myself. I did find the cadaver "hugging" me today. I had swung her arm out to get a better look at the brachial plexus (this is the huge bundle of nerves that goes down the arm that orginates in the arm pit) and  before I noticed it my cadaver had her arm around my waist. I guess she knew I needed a hug this morning :)

Best wishes to each of you on your holiday weekend-hopefully you got a hug from someone today-I sure did :)


Salt and Light,

 Kelly