Charlie goes to Medical School

Behold the Resplendent Anatomy of the Human Fry...by Futurama

So…

The end of the last module hit me much harder than I expected.  I managed to get through without any major damage to my grades or my ego.  Wife feels a little ignored and my caffeine twitch is a little more pronounced, but all-in-all it was a rousing success.

Musculoskeletal was a very interesting module because it gave me a chance to think about some specialties which I had not considered yet.  We did have a bit of lecturing on integument which meant that we also had a dermatology clinical lecture.  We also had a radiology clinical lecture, which was a jumping off point into the radiograph studies that we made use of in the gross anatomy material.  However, the majority of clinical correlations during this module had to do with surgical specialties, orthopedics and surgical oncology.  It has been interesting to listen to these clinical lectures, because I hadn’t given a lot of thought into surgery.  However, the major sticking point still seems to be that an early retirement age (or at least retiring from surgical procedures) means that I won’t get to practice as long as I would in other fields.

A lot of significant first occurred during this lecture.  Gross Anatomy Lab kicked off which we’ve already talked about.  We also started Histology Labs which I’d like to spend a post talking about.  This has also started a round of lab practical exams, which I should probably also include.

Mostly, however, this module has been a lot of grunt work.  Biochemistry has started covering a lot of metabolic pathways which means memorizing the pathways, the enzymes, the regulation and the clinical conditions associated with their dysfunction.  Anatomy is mostly memorization with a little bit of sussing out function (once you have the origin and insertion of a muscle, you can figure out what it does…and sometimes vice versa).  Histo is more visual memorization but basically the same thing as Gross on a smaller scale (if a cell has a lot of secretory vesicles…it secretes stuff, if it needs a lot of energy…it has a lot of mitochondria), but with some accompanying Cell Biology.  Some Physiology and Development were also in this module.

Neuroanatomy Lab...by Futurama

The Nervous System has gotten off to a slow start with some intro lectures…until today which was basically a four hour laundry list of structures that we need to memorize, the skull, the brain, the supporting structures and the ventricles (I’m going to go with the description “brain holes” for the ventricles).  We are wrapping up some of the muscular dissections with the neck and face and quickly moving into the brain next week.  We’ll also have a separate series of neuro anatomy labs.  This module is more lab-heavy than the last module.

Neuro/Psych is what people are considering to be the hardest of our first year (but I bet they say that about every module), so I’m going to be doing my best to stay well ahead.  Luckily both Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks occur during this module, so I’ll have a couple of chances to catch my breath…or at least study a lot without new material.

Futurama is a show that was on Fox but is now showing on Comedy Central or somewhere.  Go watch it or buy it.  Thank you.