Histology of Blood Cells, PBL, POD, and CHI

Today was a pretty rough day, and not really because the classes themselves weren't good. I think a lot of it is that we are all getting tired and irritable now that we're nearing the end of the block, myself included. We started out this morning with a histology seminar, and I am just not gung-ho about histology. I know I haven't put as much time into learning it as I should have, and I would probably enjoy it more if I was more familiar with all of the different cell types. But somehow it is hard to get enthusiastic about hours of gazing at fuzzy pictures with arrows pointing at nebulous structures. I mean, cells are cells. Some have big nuclei, and some have small nuclei, but I still say that they all look more or less the same.

PBL today was kind of rough too. This was my last day as the group leader, and I think that we did all right with the session itself as far as getting through all of our work was concerned. Everyone did a good job with their presentations and we got done on time. But like I said, we are all very cranky, and we were arguing about stupid things and snapping at one another. I am sorry to say that I was one of the offenders.

The POD speaker was very good, and he didn't use PowerPoint at all, which I thought was great. Sometimes speakers will just present slide after slide of data, and those seminars are not the most fun for us to sit through. But this speaker didn't do that. Instead, he sat and talked with us about how he wound up where he was and the things that happened in his life to affect his current research work. It was really interesting to hear about. But some of the research he had done made me feel sick to my stomach, and I ended up walking out about two thirds of the way through because I just didn't want to hear any more about it. He had been doing physiology experiments on dogs that involved making their hearts fail, implanting sensors in their backs, and then driving up a hill with the dogs trying to run behind and keep up. I wouldn't normally consider myself to be some kind of animal rights activist or anything, and maybe I was just feeling sensitive because I was in a bad mood. But for whatever reason, it got to me.

In the afternoon, I volunteered at CHI again, and that was the best part of the day. You hopefully remember that CHI is our student-run free health clinic. I started out doing body fat percentage and BMI measurements for patients, and I counseled the ones whose body fat and BMI were too high about ideas to help them lose weight. We were giving out free flu shots today, so when things got slow at my station, the doctor who was running the flu shot station showed me how to give them, and I gave my first shots. It was surprisingly easy to do. She also showed me how to draw up the flu vaccine into the syringe to prepare the shots for patients. That's actually more tricky than giving the shot, because you have to make sure that there is no air in the syringe.

We have our normal SAQs and CAPPs to do this weekend, and I am not in the mood to do them. Not that I'll be in the mood to do them later either, probably, but I think I just need to take this evening off to relax and do something fun.