Pelvis and Lower Limb

My name is Derrick Antoniak, and this is my blog about being a first-year medical student.

So, another test in the books, and another week of new dissections before we get our grades back. The written portion of the exam was not very difficult at all, but the lab practical had a lot of tricky pins. My goal, like for the head and neck exam, was to get all the easy points (PBL, living anatomy, radiology, cross sections, and embryology), and I think I was relatively successful in doing so. I'll find out on Friday, as usual, but for now, we're moving on to the fourth and final unit, Pelvis and Lower Limb.

Interestingly, because of the way we develop (as a species that is), part of the male reproductive system was covered in the abdomen unit (namely the testis and associated structures). So, the first two days of this unit had us looking at the entire female reproductive system and what was left of the male (essentially the penis). The area dissected is actually called the perineum, which, if you don't know, is quite an intimate area (I won't describe its borders here, you'll have to look it up). In Body of Work, a book I read over the summer about the author's experience dissecting a cadaver as an M1, she talks about the difficulty she had running the scalpel over such structures as the fingers, and lips, and other uniquely individual structures. She grapples especially with the idea of making the midline incision in the perineum, a cut that would include the clitoris and labia and, in general, skin that is seen and touched in only the most intimate of circumstances. We were spared that dilemma, however, not only by drawing a male cadaver, but also by the fact that the perineum was given as a 'DEMO' (The demo's are basically dissections that are either too difficult or too time-consuming for us students to do, so the instructors dissect, in this case, a male and a female perineal area, and give us about a 30-45 minute demonstration of all the structures revealed). The perineum was similar to the thorax and abdomen in that there are small, hard to distinguish structures all in close proximity to one another, making their identification difficult. Today's dissection, on the other hand, was much more similar to the upper limb, if not easier. We started on the anterior and medial thigh, an area with big, fat, long blood vessels and nerves, huge, easily-separable muscles, and, most importantly, enough room for all four of us to dissect at the same time, which hasn't happened for about six weeks now. So, lab is going good, and we are down to five dissections remaining, so it's really sinking in this week that we'll be out of there soon.

Meanwhile, this week is complicated by the fact that we have our ICE midterm on Friday, so a lot of anatomy study time is being redirected to that right now. Some of my classmates are worried about ICE, but all the M2's I've talked to say they didn't study for it until two or three days prior and it wound up being their highest grade for the semester. In general, I feel very comfortable with my ability to keep up with the curriculum, and I have pretty much stopped worrying about grades.

Joanna is pretty much working from 8AM to 9 or 10PM every day except Sunday, when she 'only' has to work noon to 8, and we both can't wait for election day to come and go. On the other hand, I've been calling the hours I spend walking precincts and delivering signs with Joanna 'extracurricular activities', which they are, and I've put in quite a few hours, and once the election is over I'll actually have to get more involved here on campus. I don't mind that, except most activities and organizations here cost money to join, and, in the words of Sir Mix-a-Lot, "I ain't down with that."

I had my fourth of five preceptor visits to Dr. Roy Monday, and she said she thinks I'm learning a lot. I had a real nice interview with one of her adolescent patients, saw some more ears and noses and throats, gave some flu vaccines, and felt very comfortable overall. I don't go back now until December 16, so I am going to try to fill up some of my free afternoons with shadowing in the ortho clinic and elsewhere. I did a little test on this website called Careers in Medicine over the weekend, and, based on my responses to like 90 questions, they matched me to 'general surgery', so that's another department I may contact this week to try to set up some shadowing.

Anyways, that's enough. I'll put some pictures up next time. This blog is probably getting boring.