Week One (truncated)

So, today is Labor Day and I am finally feeling like I have a moment to work on the blog. It has been pretty busy so far, but it is certainly manageable for the moment. OHSU doesn't throw you into the deep end first. As a result, once our orientation was finished on Tuesday, they gave us a day off to prepare for class. We had lecture and lab on Thursday and Friday, but then it is Labor Day weekend...so we have Monday off to catch up if we underestimated the workload (or were just studying inefficiently). It seems like a very considerate way to introduce us all to the grind.

However, after today, the kindness ends. In the second week, we will add a second, semester-long, class coming where we learn our clinical skills and also work in a doctor's office. This will take up two precious afternoons a week, plus a minor amount of study time. I am finding Gross Anatomy, Imaging and Embryology (the hardcore, academic class we started the first week) to be manageable, but when the Principals of Clinical Medicine class is added, there will be precious little time left. That is how they get you in med school. It isn't that the material is so hard, there is just so much of it and not enough time.

So that is the summary of what is happened. Onto some details...

Cadaver Lab - First Day
On Thursday, after our lecture, we went down to work on our cadavers for the first time. This necessitated us changing out of everything we were wearing (underwear and socks too!) and putting on a pair of ill-fitting scrubs. My pair were made for a 6 foot tall, 300 lb man. The top is a very unattractive, button-up smock and the whole thing is maroon. I look like a blood clot.

We all got down to lab and proceeded to get gloves. I overheard people discussing double-gloving it and I followed suit. We went over to our cadaver, an older woman who is very thin and frail, and began to decide how we would proceed. The first order of business was to remove the skin from her back. Now, the thing is, none of us have done this before and none of us really know what we are doing. As a result, we had no leader. In addition, the lab book at our table was from five years ago, so the pages numbers didn't match, and we were given instructions in class that contradicted some of these instructions anyway! Needless to say, chaos followed. After making a number of unnecessary cuts, we finally started making progress. However, we had to remove the skin from the body. This is when I remembered reading that the number one dissecting tool is...your fingers. So, I dove in with my hand and proceeded to do separate the skin from the fascia. Soon, everyone in the group joined in on this gruesome task and we were successful, somewhat. It turns out we were not deep enough and had to remove all of this fascia and fatty tissue in order to expose the musculature. No worries though, we eventually got there. Being older though, our cadaver barely has any muscle left. Her lat muscles (the huge Michael Phelps swimmer muscles on our sides) were as thin as tissue paper.

After lab, I sat with some classmates at lunch. Few were able to eat right away, but I had no problem. Apparently, not everyone double-gloved, so whenever my friends went to eat their sandwich, all they smelled was the cadaver lab. Yum.

Keep Your Mouth Closed
On day two, we worked on exposing the spinal cord. This was an even more gruesome task than the day previous. Let's just say it involved chisels, mallets, and a tool called the "bone pliers." So, we were having difficulty actually removing the spinal processes (the little spines you can feel through your skin) and had the professor come over to show us. I was looking over his should and my mouth fell open in amazement as he started to expose the cord. At this time, a bunch of spray came up from our cadaver and landed all over my smock. Just a couple of inches away from my wide open mouth. The professor proceeded to tell me that this is why we keep our mouths closed when dissecting. Point taken.

Well, that is enough for now. I need to get myself going and do some studying. I will try to post again next weekend and summarize week two. It seems we are having a Bone-A-Thon up at school for Labor Day. It looks like days off are a thing of the past.