Thorax and Abdomen I

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

So we're back at it again, and, like after the first exam, we get to work our tails off for a good solid week before finding out our grades from last Saturday. The new unit: thorax and abdomen. Most people don't know what the thorax is, but it's really just the region of the body containing the lungs and heart (and their neighbors, such as ribs, esophagus, etc.). As usual, we wasted no time getting in there. With an autopsy saw, we removed the chest wall, exposing the lungs, which turned out to be the best in the lab. By best, of course, I mean in the worst condition. There is a disease most people have heard of called emphysema, characterized by enlarged air sacs on the lungs. Bootstrap's lungs were covered with golf-ball-sized air sacs that had Binhammer sending the whole lab over for a look.

The next logical step after you remove a man's lungs is to expose and remove his heart. Being logical people, we did just that. So far this semester I've been sort of a dissection hog, which no one really minded when it came to things like cutting down the middle of the face and chiseling through the top of the skull to get to the eyeball. But as it turns out, Kylee's favorite organ is the heart, and because she wanted to so badly, and because it's her birthday tomorrow, Tony and I of course had no problem letting her be the one to single-handedly remove the heart from the body. We spent most of yesterday and today looking at structures on the surface of the heart, and then cut it open today to look at structures inside. So far, we all feel lost, which has been the case for the first few days of both previous units.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking of applying for this thing called an Enhanced Medical Education Track (EMET). It's a new program where students can do things above and beyond the curriculum and get that recognition at graduation. I am looking at the auto-immune disorders track, and I am relatively certain I will apply for it. It requires about 440 hours in the first year, and about 160 in the second, but a lot of the time spent will be doing things that I plan on doing anyways. There is an opportunity for summer research, which I would have applied for anyways, shadowing, which I would have done anyways, and the research you do can be used for an honors thesis in the fourth year, which I would have tried to do anyways. It's competitive, as they will only take three students, but I met with Dr. Thiele today, and think I've decided to pursue it.

Anyways, Joanna's mom's birthday is today, so I need to get to studying so I can go have some cake and ice cream.