Stuff from the last two weeks...

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind here at PSU College of Medicine.

First, I took my very first medical school exam on Aug 31st. It was a 7 hour exam (starting at 1pm and ending at 8pm) with two breaks. The first break was at 3:30 and it last 15 minutes and the second break was taken at 5pm and lasted approximately 5 minutes. I have gotten my scores back and although my grades weren't as high as I have experienced in the past, they were passing, and as the saying goes, "P = MD"

On Sept 5th, I dissected a man's testicles... Gentlemen, you can take pride in the overly-complicated system you manage to maintain down there. It's really not just a "ball sac." Enough said.

Today I had to purchase a opthalmascope and an otoscope... cost: $598. I realize these are fancy names, but these tools are basically magnifying glasses with attached light bulbs. The costs are really outrageous!

Over the past few days we have been dissecting out the long and short intestings, the stomach, the liver, spleen, kidneys etc. A few points of interest:
-the liver is the largest organ in the body
-your gall bladder is a seaweed green color and all the organs, tissue, fasia, and viscera surrounding it are also seaweed green from bile stains... I've seen it first hand! Please understand that the rest of your "insides" are some shade of pink (despite how text books draw them), so the gall bladder really, REALLY sticks out!
-there are three portions to your small intestine, all having goofy names: duodenum (do-odd-in-umm), jejunum (Jay-june-num), and ileum (ill-E-umm, okay this one isn't that goofy).
-your colon starts at your right hip, then ascends up to your right rib cage, then transversus the abdomen following the path of your ribs (you can trace it out with your finger), and then descends down the left side to your left hip, and then travels to the back of the pelvis where it forms the rectum. Despite taking the toughest biology classes Biglerville High School had to offer and 3 biology classes at F&M I was never aware of the length of the colon. I always just assumed it was a short intestinal organ right inside your anus. That ain't true at all! It's big and it goes places.
-here are some funny medical school words that I've run into: gubernaculum (goob-er-nac-you-lum, a ligament that pulls the testes into the scrotum right before birth), lunule (loon-you-all, there are a bunch of these in the body), appendixes applicae (mall fat globs hanging of the large intestine),and lienorenal (lean-no-ree-nal, a ligament extending from the spleen to the kidney).