Preparing

So the next two weeks are going to be no fun. Three tests in two weeks, one of which is biochem and one of which is a final. :/ I also have two papers due. My goal is just to embrace the pain. I get a full week off for Thanksgiving, so there is a little oasis between now and winter break. Then it starts up again.

I was thinking about anatomy, and it's really a bizarre class. The knowledge you gain from it goes directly from "what the hell is all this nonsense" to completely obvious. Once you know the names for everything it becomes pretty difficult to imagine NOT knowing. It's the only class so far that's been like that. Of course I can name the muscles in my feet. Who can't? Oh yeah...

Adjusting to a new (read:still abnormal) sleep schedule

You'd think, with all the stories that you hear about med school, that I would be the one making Naomi and I sleep crazy hours. A life lesson: residency tops school for awkward sleeping habits. Prior to October 31, Naomi and I were getting up at an unreasonable 5:45 every morning tired as all hell. As of Nov 1, we are now staying up as late as possible so that she can survive her all night shifts in the ER. Throw in daylight savings and you get some tired kids. It's 9:30 and Naomi is pre-sleeping for her shift. I'm sitting around stinking from anatomy lab, working up the courage to force myself to be up for another couple of hours before I allow the gentle arms of exhaustion take me into their embrace. Man, I wish that were right now.

Newest fun facts:

• Caffeine does not have a significant diuretic effect. Caffeine, consumed regularly, will not make you pee any more than not drinking caffeine. Why do you have to go so bad after a 20oz Diet Coke? You just drank 20oz of liquid!
• Camels store fat in their humps, not water. They burn the fat in fatty acid metabolism and then through aerobic metabolism and use one of the bi-products, water, to hydrate themselves.
  

The bee's knees

So this past week has been a hellish nightmare of a week. I am now capable of writing out biochemical pathways for an outrageous amount of reactions that occur in human metabolism. Chemicals, enzymes, inhibitors, competitive inhibitors, blah, blah, and more blah. It's all very fascinating I'm told.

However, I also got to see some pretty cool stuff this week, as well. In anatomy we covered the lower limbs, specifically the foot and the hand. The foot is one complicated piece of work. There are layers and layers of muscles in the human foot; each one serving some sort of purpose; either real or vestigial (such as our big toe, which has a lot of muscles that are similar to muscles in our thumbs but don't actually make our toe move in cool ways like our thumb anymore). However, the big toes is actually really important in keeping balance, it turns out. It allows our body to place all of our weight on the balls of our feet when we need to.

The really cool glimpse I got was when we got to the knee. When we opened up the knee to take a look at all the fragile little tendons that athletes injure (ACL, PCL and lateral collateral ligament - the "terrible triad"), what we saw shining back at us was a pristine, silver titanium knee joint. Two, actually, he'd had both knees replaced. So now I know what you're really made of, mom.