Anatomy lab practical 1

On the first day of anatomy lab the professor told us that he was giving us all the answers to the test. That sounds easy--until you remember you have to match the right answer with the right question. The "answers" for our first lab practical coming up on Tuesday are found on 18 pages, each with a list of 20 or so anatomical items. Our job on this test is to be able to identify the type of tissue (as seen through a microscope) or the specific bone (a physical model) as well as certain details on each. An example is in order.

The humerus is the bone in the upper arm. It is fairly easy to identify because it has a ball on one end that isn't as completely chiseled as the ball on the femur. The challenge is to remember the 13 items we need to not only identify on the humerus but also spell correctly. Some are rather easy; the ball is called the head. (Sounds very scientific, doesn't it?) Some are more difficult; the indentation on the back side of the bone on the elbow end is called the olecranon fossa. Add to that the coronoid fossa and the radial fossa on the front and there are three indentations to keep straight. It's actually not that bad - as long as one remembers that the olecranon process on the ulna attaches to the olecranon fossa on the humerus forming the pointed elbow and the radius is on the outside of the arm (when the palm is facing up). The fossa (indentation) that is left is the coronoid fossa, not to be confused with the coracoid which is on the scapula.

So that is about half of one bone down. Only 44 more to go. And we haven't even got to figuring out a way to remember what all those holes in the underside of the skull are called. Would that be the optic canal or the superior orbital fissure? Is that the foramen rotundum, the foramen ovale, the foramen spinosum or the jugular foramen? I'll assume that everyone could identify the foramen magnum (the BIG hole) since that's where the spinal column passes.

Long story short, I have my work cut out for me between now and Tuesday morning at 8 am.

A typical week

People often used to ask me what my typical day was like. I usually responded, "I don't have one." Days are more typical now and my week is definitely predictable as well.

Monday: I have class in the morning followed by some time in the Learning Center with the models for Anatomy to get ready for Anatomy lab on Tues morning. I usually go grocery shopping on Mon and spend the rest of the afternoon studying. If all goes well I get some exercise before it gets dark.

Tuesday: I have class from 8 to 11. By the time 10:30 rolls around I'm starting to eye the clock. I don't think any Anatomy teacher could hold my attention for that long as my brain is rather full at that point. I have another class at 2:30 but I have time to come home, eat and do some studying. It helps that I'm less than 10 minutes from school by bike. This past week was livened up by a sunset walk around Lake Harriet with a friend.

Wednesday: I have one class in the morning beginning at 9:45. The rest of the afternoon is mine to study. I'm part of a home group that meets at 6:00 and sometimes I need to prepare food in the afternoon.

Thursday: See Tuesday. My class schedule is the same except I don't have Anatomy lab at 8:00. That makes it easier to pay attention during lecture.

Friday: I don't have any classes on Friday which makes it a great day to do my volunteer work in the OT department at the hospital. I'm there from 8 to 12. This past week I began tutoring 8 students in French as part of a homeschool co-op. They are all studying French so my role is to help them with oral comprehension and speaking. The challenge will be working with numerous levels all at the same time. This will be every other week on Friday afternoon. The other weeks are a great opportunity for a long bike ride.

Saturday: This fall I'll be working security at the University of Minnesota home football games. Yesterday I was there for 8 hours which involved at least 6 hours of standing near an elevator in a premium seating section. My basic task was telling people where the bathrooms and water fountains were and advising them to take the stairs when the elevators were shut down to allow the coaches to get from the field to their boxes and vice versa. Things were slow enough that I was able to review some of my anatomy flash cards.

Sunday: I do my best to keep this a quiet day, or at least a day of no studying. Besides church I try to get together with some friends. It's often my only chance to read something for pleasure or to get out my guitar. Today I spent the afternoon with some extended family.

Labor Day

In my family Labor Day was always about laboring. Mom always had a list of things for us to do. I don't really remember the contents of the list but it was different from the usual Saturday cleaning. I think it probably involved washing some windows and doing some work in the garden.

In keeping with family tradition, I had a list of things for my parents to help me with when they came to visit this weekend. By the time they left this afternoon the apartment looked quite different. There are curtains at the dining room window hiding the view of the wall that is 2 yards away. There are pictures on the walls making it look much more homey and putting some color into our lives. I even figured out how to get out the screens and storm windows so two of the front windows could be washed.

Saturday we made two trips to Home Depot to figure out the best/most inexpensive way to add more counter and storage space to the kitchen. In the end we added 74 inches of workspace to the 21 inches we already had. Dad made numerous trips to the hardware store a couple of blocks away. They definitely recognized him by the end of the weekend. The other project was getting the basement store room organized and putting up a hook so one of our three bikes can be off the floor.

It wasn't all work and no play. Saturday afternoon we went to cousin Levi's football game at Bethel. Last year I went to a game but he stood on the sidelines in street clothes because of a knee injury. It was good to get to see him actually play and he was easy to spot being the only one on the defensive line with two knee braces. After the game we had a leisurely visit with cousins Janet and Eric complete with mint tea. 

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.