Week of November 15

Let me make one thing very clear: all I thought about this week was vacation and how much sleep I couldn’t wait to get.

Monday

On this morning, there were two lectures and two hours for dissection so I was feeling very tired by the time I got to my preclinical site. 

For my preclinical site, I was finally able to talk to a patient! She was very friendly, and I realized that many of the skills I learned for an initial primary care visit were going to be difficult to translate over to the endocrinology practice.

I also finished all my lectures for the week by Monday afternoon, so it was perfect

Tuesday

Fortunately, I was able to finish all the lectures for the week by Monday. I was able to focus on the brachial plexus for this day. I made a sheet with all the information from the brachial plexus and our anatomy didactics. This one sheet ended up becoming 51 pages of notes by the end of the block, and I am very proud of it. 

Wednesday

On Wednesday, I spent most of the day studying the arm muscles. The posterior arm and forearm muscles were very difficult for me to understand. The anterior arm muscles were not as bad for me, but the posterior was super difficult.

I did spend most of the day learning the names of the posterior forearm, but I found myself still struggling with it the next day.

Thursday

The CAS session was focused on the lower extremity even though we had not discussed that part just yet in anatomy lab. It was a bit difficult to understand those maneuvers because they we did not cover it in FOM, but it was a good session. The SP had a hip replacement so we needed to be mindful of how far we pushed her lower extremities.

The interesting part of the lower extremity session was learning why my knee has subluxation. According to my professor, the angle the hip makes with the knee when young females are developing cause the subluxation.

After class, there was a medical student Thanksgiving that was planned by the M1 and M2 classes. I am very thankful for this dinner because I was able to get some amazing food and spend some time socializing.

Friday

On Friday morning, there was a formative anatomy practical. There were two rounds around the lab where we answered questions that each group made.

I thought that the anatomy practical was very helpful. I knew walking in that I was going to get half of the questions wrong. I did get that many wrong. However, I learned so much during that practical.

This session was right before the weekly case scenario. This weekly case was focused on osteoporosis (which made sense because the entire week was focused on bones and bone physiology).

Thanksgiving Break

I am not going to write about the following week in a different post because I did not do many things with the week off.

On Saturday and Sunday, I stayed in my apartment and studied for the formative exam. I spent most of my time looking through the anatomy and glanced through the physiology. I knew the formative would give me a better idea on how to study for the physiology once I see how the questions were phrased.

On Monday, I took the formative and was very excited to see I did very well with the anatomy. I needed to figure out how to study for the physiology, but I decided to focus on that a little more after break. I drove home on Tuesday, and I will admit I did some studying but also a lot of sleeping.