Anatomy, Neurohumoral Seminar, Thanksgiving Potluck, and Bone Marrow Drive Training

Our anatomy lab today was mainly a review. The case involved a man who was shot in the chest, and we went through all of the structures that could be injured. Obviously, there are quite a lot of important structures in the chest, like, oh, say, the heart and lungs, as well as the major blood vessels, various nerves, and so on. The cadavers were mainly review, and we also reviewed the radiology of the chest and the preserved lungs from a few weeks ago.

We do not have PBL this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but we did have a seminar on how the brain and hormones control blood levels and circulation. We were given a case to read about a smoker with shortness of breath who shows up at the ER because his symptoms are getting worse. We went through the case and also discussed how the body tries to compensate for problems with the circulation. (Even though the man in our case smoked heavily and had shortness of breath, it was due to a heart problem, not a lung problem.) The seminar was pretty good, and really the only complaint I have is that 16 of us were crammed into one of those conference rooms (it's right next to the one where you go when you come to interview here), and that's just a few too many people to fit in there comfortably.

After seminar, we had our Thanksgiving potluck. One of the upperclassmen had told me that this potluck is a CCLCM tradition, which made me laugh, because CCLCM is way too new to have any real traditions yet. But they want this to become a tradition, and as far as traditions go, it will be a nice one. Basically, the M2s organized a list of items we needed for a Thanksgiving meal and asked everyone to sign up to bring one of them. It was a lot of work and effort on my part, but somehow I managed the stress and avoided being overwhelmed by my task, which was to bring in three cans of cranberry sauce and a can opener. ;-) The school provided us with turkey and drinks, and all of the faculty were invited to come for lunch as well. We all ate too much, but everything was so good.

In the afternoon, I studied for a while and went to the gym before going to train for the bone marrow drive. I can't remember if I've told you about the Oncology Interest Group that we have at CCLCM, but they are one of the sponsors of the bone marrow drive along with the Asian medical student group over at Case. Any student will be welcome to register, but we are specifically targeting ethnic minority groups that have the most difficulty finding a match: Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and Ashkenazi Jews. The drive is going to be held over at Case in a couple of weeks. It's really easy to register. You just have to swab the inside of your mouth a few times and fill out a form. Your DNA gets tested and put into a databank where it can be compared against people who have a disease like leukemia where they need a bone marrow transplant. If you come up as a match for someone, you are contacted and asked to donate your marrow. You are free to refuse to donate, but since it is expensive to register and test potential donors and we are not going to charge anyone to register, we are asking that people only register if they are serious about being willing to donate their marrow if they get asked.