First few weeks

Hey guys,

So I was told that I should start a blog so everyone can keep up with me. I guess I have kind of become a ghost in the past couple weeks and probably will continue that way for a while now. Basically, med school is everything they say it is, but I just get more sleep than I thought. No all nighters, no coffee, no energy drinks, just a lot of studying during the day.

Orientation week was great. It was like a little intro to classes and stuff from 8:00 to whenever every day. On Thursday of that week a couple of guys and I even went for a round of golf. I haven't played in 3 years ish so it wasn't pretty on my part.

Then class started. I have class every day from 8:00 to noon. Then an hour for lunch and then afternoon classes, which we don't have every day. Most of it is lab demos, but now we're starting to get into the nitty gritty of it. We have started Histology lab and Microbiology lab, which are 4 hours one afternoon during the week. The afternoons are really just open to do what we want, or what we should be doing, rather, because really all we do is study. A couple days during the week I get time to go for a run, but the other days I do work from about noon thirty until probably 6. Then quick dinner and back to studying until about 11 then bedtime. I have, though, started riding a bit with the cycling team here. I was going to do a race this weekend, but I don't have my mountain bike here, so I couldn't. The pres and the VP's have said that they're very impressed with my riding strength, but what do they know they're undergrads right? Just kids really.... No but it sucks really bad some days, and other days its a blast. And I know that so on the bad days I just know that I have built up karma for a good day the next day.

Dissection: awesome and awful at the same time. Awesome because the human body is just crazy. The things that go on inside all of us without us knowing is just ridiculous. The thought that there are normal people with normal working parts walking around is astounding. I guess I should explain a little bit about the lab and stuff. There is one room of cadavers. There are 11 of them. Each student is assigned to a cadaver, so there are 6 students for each body. Each week a different student (or in the first 3 weeks 2 students) is/are assigned to dissect a specific part of the body. The first week it was the anterior side of the arm. That means they had the side of the arm with the bicep and then the palmar side of the forearm (the palm faces forward (anterior) in the anatomical position). They had to find arteries, veins, muscles, and connective tissue. The list of structures is daunting, but you learn it fast. Then this week I, with my partner in tow, were lead dissectors for the hand and the axilla (fancy word for armpit). I took the hand and he had the axilla. So I spent the weekend last weekend in the lab for about 2-3 hours each day removing the skin from this man's palm and fingers. At first it was kind of weird holding the hand of a dead man and then cutting into the palm and fingers, but you get over it really fast. It is no longer a person, or a body. It is just this piece of tissue that you are using to learn. Also, the faces are covered up with a towel and we keep the portions of the body that we are not dissecting under towels as well. Then after skinning all weekend I spent 2.5 hours on Monday after lecture removing fat from his hand. That was a bad day. I was kind of pissed when I left lab because the hand looked nearly the same as when I had gotten there. Then all I had to do was go study, not uplifting. Tuesday turned things around, though. I got a lot done and was starting to really get in there. My partner was having a tough time. Included in his work was to remove the superficial fascia from the chest (fat, connective tissue, etc.) and get down to the pectoral muscle, the lat, and the serrateous anterior (uuhh the bumpy muscle over your ribs on the side of your chest under your arm? if that makes sense?). However, unfortunately for him, our body's muscles were not well preserved in that region and it was all basically mush. So he spent like 3 days picking through mush to try to find the nerves and arteries that he was supposed to find. Also not fun. We did finish, though, a day early at that. Then we had to learn each other's parts so we could demo it to the other students on Friday. That's how they do things here, they have a couple students learn then teach the rest, for anatomy at least. Oh and you can pull on the tendons in the forearm, especially the one that goes to the thumb, and make the fingers move. It's really cool. The next time I dissect I will be all by myself and I have to dissect the abdomen, which I heard is not fun or easy, so that's something to look forward to.

Anyhoo, that's all the time I have for you right now. I am staying sane, for the most part, and enjoying most of my experience so far. Oh there is a program called CCCP that we can get in, where we go basically shadow a doctor around here. I'm going to try to get it with a surgeon. We meet a minimum of 4 times throughout the year for 4 hours each, so it could be really cool.

My address is 605 S. 4th Street (apt 210) Champaign, IL, 61820. Feel free to send me anything: food, gifts, prizes, lottery tickets, money, magazines, funny pictures, postcards, paper cranes, pieces of a mystery machine that I can't finish until I get all of the parts, DVD's, beer, bike parts, your car keys, nuts, a cell phone, new shoes, seeds for a plant that bears fruit, candy, tacky Christmas sweaters, toilet paper (yea toilet paper, then I don't have to buy any), graphic novels, a snowboard, blue pens, your ideas about the possibility of time travel, or hats (just some ideas). I am also open to things not on this list. I will not accept: small children or pets, your laundry, bills, bottles filled with any sort of mystery liquid or gas, candycorn (I just don't like it that's all), those little metal circles that look like quarters from the hole punchout parts of electrical boxes, underwear that you or someone you know has previously worn, red pens, anything expired, or copies that you took while sitting on your copier.

I will try to keep this blog updated, although time is of the essence for me, but this is a nice escape from studying, so we'll see. If I don't post for a week or so someone just shoot me an email and tell me to say something. If you have any questions for me, there might be some place to respond to the blog, I don't really know this is my first time using this. You can always email me at slotz2550@gmail.com. I respond to emails every day, so I'll get to yours eventually.

Well I'm going to make like a tree and get outta here. See ya!

-Scott