A New Semester

Friends keep asking me when my classes start and seem surprised when I reply, "Last Monday." Tomorrow begins my 2nd week with my first test and a quiz in my other 2 classes. Nothing like starting off with a bang. Here's the briefing on each my classes.

Abnormal Psychology: I have the same professor as I had for General Psychology last fall. We will be studying all the mental illnesses/disorders, the causes and how they are treated. This will be my "easy" class though we do have a test every 2 weeks. The advantage is that each test only covers 2 chapters worth of material and there is no cumulative final. It looks like there are enough people in the class that like to talk that we will have some interesting discussions.

Anatomy: Everyone I've talked to who has taken this class says it is all memorization. After the 1st lab and lecture I decided the challenge will be learning how to most efficiently study. My lab instructor said he was going to be a bear with us until each of us figures out the best way to learn the material. My lecture professor promised that it would be enjoyable and as long as we keep up, we'll be fine. The scary part is that spelling counts and the official names of bones, muscles, nerves... are rarely short. Yesterday I went on a bike ride with a group of people who turned out to all work in the medical profession and they told me about their experiences in Anatomy class - especially dissecting human cadavers. That isn't part of the program this time around. We'll do a cow eye, sheep brain and heart and a fetal pig.

Statistics: The professor of this class worked for umpteen years as a statistician for the NCAA. She declared that was a great job and is trying to inspire us to love statistics so much that we'll want to do it for a living. At the very least she wants us to be able to tell if the news is correctly reporting the results of a study or poll. The downside of this class is that all homework is done online. So far it hasn't taken too long so hopefully this will be a better experience than my online math class.

Activities of Daily Living

Back in April I wrote about a volunteer opportunity in the outpatient physical therapy department at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC). Shortly after that I was able to move over to the occupational therapy department. This has given me more work to do as well as many opportunities to observe the therapists working with patients. I have learned a lot about what is involved in occupational therapy. There is more than I can write in one post (since I want to keep these short) so I'll focus on the activities of daily living (ADLs) since they come first in the day.

One day Theresa, my supervisor (at least she's the person who gives me work to do), told me to take a break from the computer where I was redoing some patient handouts and come talk with one of her patients while he used the arm bicycle. This man had spent an extended period in the rehab part of HCMC and was now coming in from time to time for outpatient therapy. As a result of an accident he was paralyzed from the waist down. Theresa asked him to tell me what OT had done for him. "It got me out of bed, taught me how to get dressed so I could get to PT and begin to get better." That's what ADL's are all about: getting dressed, bathing and grooming so you can get on with life. This man said the first time he put on his own pants it took him 45 minutes. "My mom thought Theresa was so mean to just watch me struggle and giving only verbal cues and encouragement." Theresa piped in that for the first several years that she worked as a therapist she had to literally sit on her hands so she wouldn't do for her patients what they could do for themselves.

I have had only one opportunity to observe a therapist helping with ADLs. Theresa took me to the room of a gentleman who was recovering from a stroke which had affected both his ability to speak and to understand what others were saying. The only way to communicate with him was through gestures. Yet he knew what needed to be done to get ready in the morning. Because he had some weakness on the right side Theresa placed the items he would need to get ready on the right side of the sink. It was obvious that it was important to him that his hair be well combed. He had no problem using his left hand on the left side of his head but the right side was another matter. The comb kept falling out of his hand. Theresa had tested his grip strength the day before and she knew he had enough to hold on to that comb. The brain just needed to figure that out. Once he got his hair combed right, he took off the t-shirt he had slept in which, of course, messed up his hair. You could see the frustration in his face.

His daughter had come with some clean clothes including some shorts with a drawstring figuring it would be easier for him to not have to deal with buttons and zippers. From the look on his face it was obvious that he didn't usually wear that kind of shorts but he didn't put up a fuss as he put them on. Getting on his button-down shirt was another matter. He put the left arm in first and got that situated and then he was done. This is common for stroke victims. Half of their field of vision is gone and they don't realize it because the brain fills in what it thinks is there. At that point Theresa stepped in and helped him get the shirt all the way on. Teaching him to put his weaker arm in first would be a lesson for another day.

Why I love riding in Iowa

I'm in the middle of a week with my family in Iowa. It has been good to get away from the noise and bustle of the city. I've enjoyed corn on the cob and a tomato from the garden (most are still very green). I've also enjoyed a couple of good rides on my bike. While I am glad to live near downtown where I'm close to school and can get most places on my bike, it is frustrating to still be in the city after riding for an hour. When I was in France, I lived in a city with about the same population as the Twin Cities but I could be in the country in about 10 minutes. Here's a few of the reasons I love about riding in Iowa - especially our sparsely populated county.

1. Little traffic: I rode 19 miles on Saturday morning and saw only 10 cars. I lost count on the rest of my ride but it ended up being about 1 car per mile.
2. Country stop signs: Because of the little traffic there is little need to stop or slow down at stop signs unless the corn is tall enough to hide the road.
3. The wind: There aren't any long hills to make things more challenging but there is wind. I always try to head into it so when I'm tired I can turn around and be blown home. The other day I rode into the wind for 40 minutes and made it back in 20.
4. Mile after mile of corn and bean fields. Some people think it gets boring. I'm not one of them. Farming is one occupation where one's mistakes are seen by everyone who drives past. Great care is taken to make sure the rows are planted straight and evenly and most farmers pride themselves in keeping their bean fields clean (i.e. weed free). Some of those bean fields look like they have been manicured. 
5. Well-kept farm yards: Every now and then there is a place that is rather junky. Old cars, pickups and other equipment seem to be strewn all over. These just serve to accent the care everyone else gives to keeping their property neat and well cared for.
6. Fresh country air: no fumes, just what my grandpa called the smell of money when downwind from a dairy or hog setup.
7. Quiet: all that can be heard is the sound of the wind, the crickets and the birds.

Summer Biology

You may have heard the shout of rejoicing when I finished my biology final on Thursday evening. In many ways I simply endured these condensed summer courses. It wasn't that biology was that difficult or time consuming. It was just jammed into a short amount of time so that it couldn't really be enjoyed.

Some people seem disappointed when I tell them that we didn't do any dissecting in lab. That makes sense because we spent the semester talking primarily about things we can't see without a microscope. (I have a better chance of doing some dissecting in Anatomy lab this fall.)  Last semester I learned all about atoms in Chemistry. This semester we moved on to the cell which is significantly bigger than an atom but is measured in nanometers and can't be seen with the naked eye. As we talked about all that takes place in a cell so it can function properly, keep us alive and reproduce I couldn't help but be amazed at the wisdom of our Creator. 

We spent several chapters talking about genetics and how traits are passed on from one generation to another and why sometimes a trait skips generations. At the same time there is great variation between siblings. Because of the law of independant assortment one man's sperm has 8.4 million different genetic combinations. Combine that with the same number of possibilities from his wife and their children will be one of 70 trillion possible genetic combinations. No wonder each of one of us is completely unique! That adds a new perspective on Psalm 139:15.

My frame was not hidden from you, 

when I was being made in secret, 

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Saturday a friend and I celebrated the end of summer classes (she made it through Shakespeare) by getting out of the city and going to Taylors Falls on the St Croix River. (No one here seems to understand my French pronunciation of that river.) We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the bluffs overlooking the river and did some hiking managing to get back to the car about 5 minutes before it started pouring so hard we had to pull off the road.