phew

burningman1
Originally uploaded by hibiscusfire.

We had our first "Practical" in anatomy today. It was both a practice test for next week's three hour final as well as a strong-handed approach to making sure that we were all cramming as much information into our heads as possible several weeks before the actual midterm.

So far, each week, we've had an "oral quiz", where the professor has walked from one dissection group to another and pointed to structures in our cadavers, asking questions such as, "What pre-ganglionic nerve innervates this?" These quizes have only been worth 5 points each (out of a total of 400 for this quarter), so if we weren't all medical students, they would have been completely insignificant. But being that each week we move to a new and more complicated region of the body, and we are expected to know each vessel (source and path), muscle (action, origin and insertion), nerve (origin, type and innervation), and bone (and their many many different bumps, notches, holes, etc), no one is surprised to find themselves camping out with their cadaver in the anatomy lab the midnight before the quiz. Of course, while we're desperately trying to study for the quiz, we are expected to have already been studying the new region for the last two days.

I never knew that my brain was capable of learning so many words and concepts in so little time. It is like immersing yourself in a foreign country with a completely different language and being expected to memorize a section of the dictionary each week.

In the first week, the thorax was pretty sweet: maybe two hundred structures with little variation and little ambiguity. The abdomen was a bit tougher, mostly because it was stinky and half the structures could be moved around. For this region, we had to learn about four hundred new structures or landmarks (no, that is not an exaggeration), their relationships to each other and the rest of the body, and their function/action. Next came the pelvis, probably again in the 300-500 word range, with lots of anatomical variation from male to female and person to person (veins and arteries branching off in different directions, for example,or nerves that dove into some foramen in the pelvic diaphragm and came out underneath a muscles on the posterior side of the leg). The pelvis was also more difficult to dissect, so that even when I began to feel like I was learning all the structures and their functions, I still had to work hard to locate them on our body.

So this Tuesday, as we struggled to conquer the pelvic cavity in four days, we also began our four week sojourn into anatomy of the head and neck. Hundreds more bones, plates, foramena, notches, nerves, muscles, ducts, glands were thrown at us in Tuesday's lecture. Any were fair game for today's test, along with every piece of anatomical information we have learned so far.

Though it doesn't sound like it from these blog entries, the stress is not just concentrated around anatomy lab. We also have a biochemistry class, and this week, I had hoped to do some catching up in that particular arena. I used to really like biochemistry, but I really don't have the time to do anything but memorize it right now. We also have "doctoring", eight hours a week, which includes its own homework of readings and medical case research. In addition, we have courses in embryology and radiology, which will be included in next week's Anatomy midterm. Finally, on top of all that, we've been involved in group projects that have required us to (extensively) research and diagnose a difficult clinical case.

Needless to say, the last 40 hours looked something like this: flashcards at 8am, class/lab 10am-4pm, intensive studying/cramming 5pm-10pm, a late visit with friends to the anatomy lab 10pm-1am, flashcards 1am-4am, sleep 4-9am, class/practical exam/review for next week's midterm 10am-5 pm, beer, beer, beer, cheap chinese food, and a whole lot of beer 5pm-midnight.

...and it's not like i've really been slacking all those previous nights.

But that's med school...and I'm definitely starting to feel like a med student.

Oh yeah, the practical...It was just as you would have seen in "quality" movies like Gross Anatomy. Each person stood at a "station" in front of one of the cadavers and had 60 seconds to answer an anatomical or functional question before a little zen gong rang and we had to move on to the next one. 60 seconds lasted about 15, and I found out that I didn't know that the mandibular nerve, which is a fifth division nerve of the trigeminal crainal nerve five (CN V5) innervates the masseter muscle. ...But I'm OK with that, since I only learned that there was a mandibular nerve and a masseter muscle about 48 hours earlier.

We had 20 questions on that exam and I did well enough to be relieved. Next week, there will be 60 questions. This "practical" section of the 3 hour exam will take 90 minutes and occupy two rooms and a hallways.

Definitely looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, there's a Biochem midterm I can't keep ignoring coming up in a few days.