Bah!

So much studying! Today was our last day of class and lab before the test. Now we get the next two days to stress and study and cram as much information into our brains as can possibly fit. We broke out the big guns for lab today meaning they gave us chisels, hammers, pliers, and wire cutters so we could take out some of the vertebrae and visualize the spinal cord. Most of lab I just stood at least 6 feet from our table trying to avoid getting splashed by bone shards or body juice since my body buddies were a little overzealous.

Oh that reminds me. At the U, it is traditional to pair up 4 people (two boys and two girls) to work on one body in the lab. They are called body buddies and spend about 3-5 hours a day together for 7 weeks. This apparently leads to many instances of lifelong friendships because you bond. So my body buddies are pretty cool.

There is Rebekah who is around 24. She graduated from Johns Hopkins and got a Master's Degree in Public Health at Columbia. Then for the past year or so she has been working in NYC at an organization which provides AIDS testing for homeless people. She does not actually want to practice as a doctor when we graduate but work on health policy using her MPH and her MD to give her greater perspective. Seems like a lot of work for a little perspective if you ask me but she is very nice and a good teacher. Another one of my body buddies is Jon who is also 23 or 24. He took 2 years off after graduating from the U of M and apparently did nothing. He wants to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. He amuses me because the entire time in lab while he is concentrating on cutting he has this completely disgusted look on his face. You wouldn't think a future cardiothoracic surgeon would get grossed out but he does. My other body buddy is Tam, who is 22 and originally from Vietnam though he lived in Texas and Chicago and went to the University of Illinois-Chicago. He also wants to be a cardiothoracic surgeon, though thus far I am not all that confident in his abilities because he tends to cut through all the muscles and nerves without a second thought. He can be nice and amusing but is also sometimes annoying because he gets bored and wanders around the lab while the rest of us are working.

So these are the people who I spend a lot of my time with, especially now that the test is coming up since I need to be in lab more to review structures on the body. We have a practical exam where the teachers tag different parts of the body and we have to write down the name of the structure on a blank sheet of paper. We also have a small radiology portion where we identify bones and muscles on x-rays and MRIs. Then we have written exam which is really multiple choice. This applies the anatomy that we learned in the lab to real life situations. It is kind of fun actually to realize that all the crap that we are learning about random structures applies to clinical situations and that I can figure out the cause or result of a condition by simply thinking through what I have learned in anatomy. Crazy stuff. Anyway, I must sleep so I can get up and study. I'm really horrible at keeping myself on task what with the internet and music and tv and food and my cell phone. I may just have to shut myself up in the library in the basement where there is conveniently no cell phone reception. Just 2 more days and I will be able to relax hopefully!