Been too busy and concurrently lazy to post lately, but I figured I’d give a couple updates and lessons I’ve learned:

* If you think it’s a cervix, it’s probably an ejaculatory duct. We had an anatomy walkabout (where they pin different things and we have to ID them) on the abdomen and the pelvis, and, yet again, I made a stupid mistake. Maybe it was from the lack of sleep. Maybe I’m just an idiot. Now maybe this is me setting my standards too high, but I think if they pin the ejaculatory duct, I should reasonably be able to tell that the answer “cervix” probably ain’t right. Especially when there’s a penis right there on the body. Urology, proctology, and ob/gyn have just been ruled out.

* The medical community is not telling you the truth about your amniotic fluid. When you take health class, or ever talk about pregnancy in class, the amniotic fluid is just this vague fluid that somehow develops to cushion the infant. It’s just kind of there, and you don’t generally ask what it is, or how it got there. And now I know why. Y’see, the amniotic fluid is basically, uh, fetal pee. It’s quite a beautiful cycle. You drink your pee, pee it out, bathe in it, and drink it again. No, really. If you’re really all that curious, there’s much more information about it , but really, ignorance is, without a doubt, bliss.

* It’s all about who you know. I just got a job working with the Virtual Labs Project , and I’m pretty excited about it. I’ll be doing some Flash animations and slowly learning how everything works, but I ended up finding out about the position from an older med student who saw my website and thought I had potential. Sniff. I’ll try not to get too emotional. Thanks, Phil .

* Damn. The body is amazing. Glad to report that my sense of wonder continues to develop. Just going over heart sounds on Friday, I was reminded at how mind-boggling it is that all these complicated things are happening, every beat, in the body. Muscles squeeze, valves fly open or snap shut, pressures rise and fall… and it all happens so naturally and quickly that to begin to understand it, you have to really slow down the process in your head. But then, you realize that the dynamics change so quickly that it’s almost impossible to follow the process real-time in your mind. Although your heart has no problem pumping, without stopping, for 76 years. I won’t even being to talk about its development, save for a quote from a Embryology professor: “It’s as if you had to make a cruise-liner engine from a tiny speedboat motor, in the course of 9 months, the only other stipulation being that you’re never allowed to stop the engine from running.”

Comments Off on What A Mess