My old favourite

Just a quick note to say: Frank Netter was a genius.

If you are a medical or anatomy student and haven't heard of him, or if you have an interest in anatomy and want to see some excellent illustrations, his work can be found sneaking into any number of published works on anatomy, on the web, or (if you are lucky like me) in a book of its very own.

He was both a physician and a professional artist (another bio here) so the pictures are excellent from both points of view.

I find anatomy really interesting, and his pictures help me learn, understand and remember more than just about any other anatomy source. Combine his work with other sources (cadaver atlases, medical imaging anatomy books) and those big latin/greek words might just stick in your head!

The nose knows

I have something sad to report. This afternoon during anatomy the off-button on my nose failed me completely, and I have gone from anatomy buff to complete anatomy phobe (almost) in one session.

One of the anatomy demonstrators cut open the abdomen of a cadaver in front of the class, and we were in the front row. I was slightly nervous as I have never seen cadaver cut open ("scalpel-to-skin" if you will) but wasn't too worried. After all, last week went so well! As soon as he cut into the abdomen of this poor cadaver, the room filled with the most revolting smell that I have ever, ever, ever encountered in my entire life. I have smelt a lot of bad things (including burns victims), but this affected me much more.

Normally I can ignore anything that I smell but this was very special. I couldn't decide whether to breathe through my nose or my mouth. I tried wedging the safety glasses further down onto the bridge of my nose but it was to no avail. I occasionally found myself feeling quite dizzy as I was subconsiously holding my breath, so I had to take a couple of deep breaths. Thank God that this wasn't as bad as I feared it would be.

We are not allowed to chew gum or do anything that would make the smell better, which really really doesn't help. There is a theory floating around that the fellow who cut into the abdomen accidentally nicked the colon, and apparently this would explain the smell.

I feel terrible about this, as this person donated his body to science and I feel very priviledged that I have the chance to learn from his cadaver. I don't think I learnt as much as I could have if the smell hadn't distracted me so badly. If you'll excuse me, I need to take a long, soapy shower and cover myself in nicely-smelling things.

Just a thought

Our days are so full at the moment that part of me wonders whether they are preparing us for life working as junior doctors on the wards. We rush from lecture to lecture without a break in between, and frequently have days of 7 or 8 hours straight contact time without space to eat or pee (sorry for the detail!) without eating during lectures or tutorials, and excusing ourselves to find the nearest bathroom. There should theoretically be a 10-minute break between lectures/tutorials, but everything runs overtime as the sessions are so content-rich, and the lecturers frequently have to leave us to cover the last part of the lecture ourselves.

That said, I'm loving it!

And everybody seemed fine in the anatomy prac - even those who hadn't seen a cadaver before. I really enjoyed it as I love the practical aspects of anatomy. A few of us were really enthusiastic (within limits - there was no cheering involved!) and I like to think that this made it easier for those who might have had difficulty. I got really keen when I found out how hard atherosclerotic arteries are and tried to get people to poke them. I worked out I'm an anatomy "poker", which was a surprise. I like to get in there and get my gloves dirty. Another surprise!

I don't believe how fast the past week and a half have gone. The days are so full and busy that they just fly by. I am happiest when kept busy and occupied, so I'm pretty chirpy right now!

More anatomy . . .

Day two of medical school is over and I just thought I would write a few more notes on my impressions so far.

I am actually excited this time about doing anatomy, which is interesting because if I had revealed this to my past self, she would have declared me to be an impostor. (If I told her that I was doing anatomy because I am studying medicine, she would know I was an impostor!) When I did anatomy in my first degree it was an absolute grind of rote memorisation, focusing on regional anatomy. We covered a little of the function but were mainly concerned with EXACTLY where bits were located in relation to other bits, and what every single little lump, bump and hole was called. It was as painful as it sounds.

Enter the medical course with its focus on PBL (Problem Based Learning) and concentrating on the actual practical use of the anatomy. We get to focus on why things are there, what they do and how they interract with everything else! It is much more motivating. The fact that I am potentially going to be treating people and potentially cutting into them is also a great motivator!

I also want to get everything I can out of our cadaveric dissection classes, so I have purchased McMinn's Colour Atlas of Human Anatomy which focuses on pictures of real cadavers. Memorising nice pictures with blue veins, red arteries, green lymphatic vessels and yellow nerves is quite different to looking inside a real person. Somehow I feel I owe it to the person who donated their body to get the most I can out of dissecting it.

Also, histology seems to be making sense. When did that happen???

Those frickin' holes . . .

OMG, like, the bottom of the skull has so many frickin' holes. If you believe in a Creator God/Sky God/whatever, then he is a sadist who hates anatomists. It's like somebody staged a competition to see who could stick the most little holes and things in the bottom of a skull, make them all necessary, make it all functional, and that being's submission became the design for the human head. And they got a certificate and permission to design the virus of their choice. As a prize. Clearly.

Or perhaps the opposite is true - somebeing submitted a design that required the LEAST amount of holes possible for a functional head and brain-based organism, and THAT design became the main one for the human person. If that were the case, then THANK GOD things weren't more complex than they had to be. And perhaps THEY got to design the ULTIMATE KILLER T-CELL, and thanks to them, we are alive.

Or not. I'm always half-way between believing that there has to be some kind of design behind all of this, or thinking that the cosmic force behind the universe knows that what is best is what will be worked out or developed, or seeing the suffering that happens in life due to flaws in development and design, and believing that either it is quite ramdom and we are meant to use nature to what is best, or that Creator is a sadistic bastard who doesn't care (i.e. the Blind Watchmaker theory).

Or perhaps the above ramble is thanks to vodka. In that case, then on of the Best Things That Happened Today is that I did my first drunken post! Woohoo!!!!!

Huzzah and all that stuff

Hooray! I got up early this morning and actually enjoyed anatomy study. Or maybe it was the coffee, the lack of sleep, and the fact that tomorrow is Saturday and I'm not working or on-call this weekend. Meh.

Another day, another dollar

The best thing that happened today was that I started to revise anatomy. I have learned most of it before, but that was several years ago, and apart from the vascular side of things, I haven't really covered cerebral anatomy for years!

It was really strange looking through all of the names of things like "mesencephalon" and remembering the word but not remembering where it is or what it does. I think that the key this time around will be to look at the function of things rather than just the name - my last anatomy subjects were almost pure rote memorisation of names, and I hated it.

When I remember just how much hard work I had to do in anatomy classes (which was at least as much time as all three other subjects put together) I wonder whether I am cut out to pursue studying medicine. However, I forget the benchmark test that I made for myself - if I was clever enough to pass the entrance exam (aka MCQ water-torture-test), then I should theoretically be clever enough to study medicine.

And yes, I do know where the major landmarks and organs and everything else are. I'm not going to be one of those med students that you hear about in the paper ("Medical Students Fail Basic Anatomy! World Ends")!

The weird part about anatomy is how many section of the body are named after breasts. Seriously. The mastoid processes, the mamilliary bodies and so on and so forth. Those anatomists must have been a seriously obsessed bunch! Honestly, how did that happen?

Anatomist 1: "Hmmm, what do we call that little lumpy bit of bone?"
Anatomist 2: "It looks like a breast!"
A1: "Everything looks like a breast to you."
A2: "I'll call it the mastoid process!"
A1: *with head in hands* "Not again."

Back to the books, I guess. At least having seen so much of it in real life at the Hospital, it is making more sense this time around.