holy cow

Holy cow its been 2 weeks since I last wrote on here. What have I been doing all these days....?

Just finished my Anatomy and Stats exams and the anatomy skills portion, which is the portion where they tag structures on the bodies and we just identify them. Went pretty well, no big problems. Except they made the STATs exam super hard and virtually no one finished all of it, so that's uplifting. Especially since the TA said it was going to be pretty easy. Lies. But both portions of the Anatomy test were all good. Now we have 3-4 tests every Monday until Thanksgiving break. So that's something to look forward to. It is nice not having class on Monday, though, no stuff to go over that day. It's like another weekend day to study. I just can't believe that it's still such a long time until Thanksgiving, but time generally flies around here so its all good. And since all the exams aren't on one weekend, we have a little more free time, which is nice.

On this past Friday I got to ride about 35 miles solo because of the extra time (and because I skipped my student anatomy demo. No worries, though, I went over the structures the night before with the student who was going to demo it to me that day, so it was no biggie). But I got to ride, plus it was super nice out. I only had to wear a short sleeve baselayer under my jersey to be perfectly comfortable. Then a bunch of us med students went and played football for almost 2 and a half hours. It was awesome. Great way to just relax. But then one of the guys may have torn his ACL, so not that good. It was funny cause when he went down, here we are, a crowd of med students, and everyone just looks at each other and is like "well what are we supposed to do." Luckily we had a kid who was an athletic trainer at Iowa so he handled the situation. That ended the game though, so not a good way to end the day.

Then my buddy Nick, from undergrad, came all the way from California to see people who are still here, so we got to hang out Saturday. I couldn't do anything on Friday night because I was studying. Except that I spent like an hour or so just watching different ortho surgeries online. I'm pretty sure I can do a total knee replacement now, though, so that's good. My problem is that I was studying anatomy and in anatomy they start talking about different procedures. So then I look up videos of the procedures to get a better understanding. Then I get distracted and look at other entertaining videos, which are generally ortho surgery videos. So there goes an hour. Woops.

To get more out of my days I have started working out before class in the morning. I work out with my friend Joe. We call him ostejoerosis, like osteoporosis,  because he is soooo old (he's 30) (just turned last weekend). Anyway, it's been really nice actually. There is something fantastic about riding to the gym at like 6:20 in the morning when its cool and dark. One day last week I left like 15 min early just so I could ride around campus a bit before I went to workout. It's quite nice. Plus, in the afternoon I have time to go and get a run or ride in without taking time away from lifting.

The working out that I do in the morning is from this website/program called crossfit. It's basically militaristic circuits that usually only take like 20-30 min and really work you hard. I would say that about half the time I feel kinda queasy afterward, so it's definitely good stuff. I even got Jenna started on it, so when you see her on Thanksgiving she'll probably be super jacked. No big deal.

So this week I was studying in the anatomy lab. Going over structures and such. We were learning about the thorax and deep back/spinal cord. This means that half of the structures are on the back and half are on the front, so we have to turn the bodies to study both. Well, another student and I turned over the body we were using, and the towel over the face did not follow. So his face was no longer covered. This was the first time I saw any of the cadaver's faces. It was kind of weird, I'm not going to lie. Because usually I just see the body as tissue that we are learning, or a model or something, not a person. When you see the face, though, it's like oh wow this is really a person. It made me think about what the guy was like when he was alive. It was weird to think that this person had lived 85+ years. They had been a fully functional human being for 85 years and all of the parts that we are now looking at used to function in the same way that mine are now. I mean, we compare the structures we see to our own, but you never think of it the same way. We're looking at skin and shapes on the skin and don't really think about what it looks like underneath on ourselves. I mean we never think about how the air goes in our trachea and down into our lungs. And the blood comes from the heart to get oxygen then gets pumped through the body. And all the time the heart is doing this and we're not even thinking about it. All of this stuff just happens, and we never even think about it. The human body is an amazing thing. And it's really cool to be able to take one apart and see how it works. See how everything works together and functions appropriately and does what it is supposed to for so long. I mean 85 years is a long time for something as complex as a human body to be functioning. It's amazing. So if you ever get the chance to see a more in depth view of the human body, I say take it. Unless it means you are dissecting a body that you found yourself, in which case I would not advise taking that route, but that's just me.

Okay I'm going to go. Gotta start studying for next weeks exams. Yum.

I think it would be cool, if you were writing a ransom note in Microsoft Word, and it popped up, the paperclip and said, “It looks like you’re writing a ransom note… need some help? You should curse more.” The paperclip would be all messed up, you know? I never saw a paperclip with tattoos before.
     - Demitri Martin