Anatomy and PBL

We started looking at the neck today in anatomy. Considering that I haven't read any of the chapter yet, I managed to pick up quite a bit. One thing I will tell you though is that there are seriously a ton of muscles in the neck, and they all have almost the exact same names. On the bright side, the neck muscle names tell you where they actually connect to, so it's more or less logical to learn where they are and what they do. One other thing that I don't think I've ever mentioned is that we don't see the faces of the cadavers during anatomy. They're always covered over with a cloth, and today was no different. I'm not bothered by the idea of seeing a cadaver's face, but I think it's sensible to keep them covered since we aren't studying that area of the body yet, and we want to preserve the bodies for as long as we can. But what did freak me out a little was that today the cloths were actually stapled to the cadavers' faces. I don't really know why that bothered me so much, but it did. I guess the residents were worried that we'd feel upset if one of the cloths fell off and we saw the cadaver's face, but I'd rather see their faces than have these cloths stapled on there like that.

We started a new PBL case too, and it's about a patient with a lung problem. We already have a pretty good idea about what's wrong with him based on today's session. My learning objective for Wednesday is about flow-volume loops for lungs. Basically these loops are graphs that describe how the lungs work when you inhale and exhale. Our patient did a test where he had to inhale as deeply as he could, and then exhale as much air as he could, as fast as he could. If he has problems doing this, then it means he has problems with his airways.

Today was actually a gorgeous day: sunny, relatively warm, and way too nice to spend it indoors. Right after we got out of PBL, one of my classmates and I grabbed some books and headed over to the Case campus to sit outside and read. This was a very welcome though rare occurrence, and it isn't going to last long. We're supposed to get another cold spell with more rain/snow by the end of the week.