Thank You, Academic Gods

Looking through the lecture topics for biochem, I think I've studied many of them before in undergrad biochem.  There's certainly nothing new in the first few weeks.  The last exam block looks like it might be a little more foreign to me, but it will be nice to have at least a few weeks of mostly familiar material.

I think I should sum up what I learned about studying anatomy.  I did a lot of "what is med school like" reading the summer before I started, and if I decide to actively promote this blog, my thoughts might be worth something to someone.

• Spend some time looking at different anatomy atlases, then pick your favorite, buy it, and  make it your own.  I wrote and highlighted all over mine.  Looking at a diagram of just muscles is a good way to see how they align with each other, but writing in which nerve innervates each one (even if you don't need to know them all yet) will help you put more of the puzzle pieces together.  If you like group study, see if you can get a study buddy who has a different atlas.  I went with Netter's, because the artwork is beautiful, but I liked occasionally looking at Grant's as well.  Sometime's seeing a different representation of something will make a complex structure or body system click.
• If the topic is limbs or the pelvis, go to lecture.  Many schools record their lectures so you can watch them online, and I think just about every school provides their students with print-outs of the slides.  I frequently skipped class and learned the material on my own; lots of people do.  But you really need to see someone talk about limbs, because they'll probably move around to demonstrate the various muscle movements they're talking about.  (The video in our recorded lectures is of the slides, not the lecturer.)  And the pelvis is just ridiculously complicated.  The 3-D structure is hard to visual and there are a ton of arteries and nerves, so go see the diagrams on the big screens in the lecture hall.  Don't squint at an atlas hoping to find everything.
• Try flashcards, even if you're not usually a flashcard person.  The key to learning those weird anatomical terms is to drill them over and over and over.  You can buy anatomical flash cards (again, I used Netter's).  I used to see half the class flipping through them before a quiz.  It was my primary mode of study.
• Touch yourself.  No, I mean...  There's no good way to phrase that.  But seriously, when you're learning surface anatomy, find all the features on yourself.  When you're learning bones, feel for them.  (You'll count your ribs so many times in med school.)  When you're learning muscles, use them.  When you're learning dermatomes (areas of skin innervated by the same nerve), trace that area of skin on yourself.  It really does help you remember things.  Anatomy practicals were always kind of funny, because you could look around the room and see people flexing their thumbs or bending their wrists or chewing.

Humans Can Be Really Weird

After a week of relearning the developmental and abnormal psychology I learned in high school and college, I am once again reminded that brains are amazing.  I studied neuroscience in undergrad, so I knew that already, but actually getting to see interviews with real patients made me understand it in a new way.  I've known people with anxiety disorders and depression and bipolar disorder and eating disorders, but I'd never really spent much time talking about what it was like for them.  You can't say to a friend over dinner, "Say, you have problems with mental illness.  How exactly does your brain work?"  Well, you can.  But you shouldn't.

I'd never known anyone with true OCD, though.  Not OCD in the way that most people mean when they say they're obsessive-compulsive.  I always double-check that my keys are in my purse, even though I know I just put them in there.  And I like colored pencils to be in rainbow order.  Someone who genuinely struggles with OCD will tell you that's nothing.

Schizophrenia is also very interesting to see.  Watching a movie or a TV show with a mentally ill character is not the same as being in the same room as someone who really believes their delusions are true.  And you can't convince them otherwise.  How could you?  Someone would have a hard time convincing me that I'm actually dairy maid who only thinks she's in med school, because I know I'm in med school.  I'm certain of it.  People can be just as certain of their delusions.

Brains can distort reality and create fantasies in a gazillion different ways, and yet patterns still emerge.  The amazing Oliver Sacks has earned a ton of money and a huge fan following because of it.  I've always enjoyed Sacks, because his vignettes tell the stories of complete people, not just a mental condition.  You're not paying a penny to see the lunatics in Bedlam, you're learning about the life of someone whose brain doesn't always work the way yours does.  A similar work is Phantoms in the Brain, which doesn't focus exclusively on what we might consider mental illness, but rather the way the brain can err or be tricked, both in normal people and in people who have a particular condition.  I wish I had time to read more books like this, but I don't really have the time to read much of anything besides course materials anymore.

Finally Awake Again

Anatomy is done!  I passed.  It's amazing.

After the final on Friday, I essentially just collapsed.  Then went out and got drunk.  Then collapsed again.

The worst thing about anatomy exams: the practicals.  Every cadaver in the dissection room has something tagged with a piece of red string and a question asking what it is or what it does.  Everyone starts at one station, gets one minute to answer, and rotates to the next.  Practicals themselves are not awful.  Studying for them is annoying because you have to spend hours looking at cadavers.  The awful thing is that after spending 3 hours taking a written exam in the morning, you have to come back and spend another hour taking the practical in the afternoon.  It's like the professors think we actually slept the night before and can handle two exams in one day.

But it's over now.  I should stop complaining.  Next we spend a week on behavior and then start the next real class: biochemistry.  (Please, Academic Gods, please let med school biochem be the same as undergrad biochem.)

I Feel Bad for the Students in the Pharmacy School

I've been in med school for two and a half months.  My once nearly calligraphic handwriting has deteriorated to a series of squiggles that somewhat approximate letters.  I now fully understand why I have never been able to read a prescription with any real confidence.

What Happens When Part of Your Heritage Is Scandinavian

When shown a photograph of a person with one very pale hand and one more reddish hand, most of the class answered aloud that there was something wrong with the pale one.  And they were right; there was an occlusion of the artery.  I assumed there was something wrong with the reddish one, because the pale one was about the color of my own normal hands.  Oh, the joy of never tanning, always burning...

I Could Make a Pun About Being a Drip, but I Won't

I had dissection at 8am this morning.  That was fun.  We were supposed to dissect the bladder and the rectum.  Some groups ran into some sort of trouble on the rectum (I have no idea what), so we were told not to bother with it.  So all we did was the bladder.  That consisted of going, "There are the ureters that we found several dissections ago.  There's the top of the bladder.  Oh, and there's the rest of it.  Let's open it and see the openings for the ureters and urethra.  There they are.  Um...  Did anyone watch Project Runway last night?"  Actually, my group is three guys plus me, so I didn't say the last part out loud (though I seriously considered it).  We spent some more time poking around the pelvis and looking at other bodies, but we still were out of there by 9:30 (and that was with a lot of procrastination).  So I got up at 7am on a Friday for nothing.

I got back to my apartment intending to take a shower and get rid of the formaldehyde smell that lingers after dissection.  Instead, I discovered a leak in my bathroom ceiling.  One drip was right over the tub, and another few drips were over the floor in front of the tub.  I called maintenance.  By the time the guy got here, the dripping had stopped, but I showed him where I had seen the dripping and where the floor was wet.  He went upstairs to turn on the water above me.  It didn't drip.  It's been several hours, and it hasn't dripped.  And of course, it's Friday, so if it starts again, I'll probably have to wait until Monday to get it fixed.  I'm sure this will be fun.

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