Some-Body. Any-Body. The Body.

It belonged to a Chinese female probably between the ages of 35 - 45. It was about 160cm tall with an engagement ring on its left ring finger. It had several bruises on its arm. And we dissected it. We made several cuts on the upper body with the help of a well sharped scalpel. All in the attempt of learning the human body. Finally we had it skinned off. Literally. We began clearing the fats and it was one well fed body. The layers of adipose tissue was overwhelming. And we thought it was over. How wrong we were. It was time for a Mastectomy. We carefully removed the lump of fat that was attached to its chest and placed it on a dish. Over? Not quite? We were now looking for white stuff. Adipose and more adipose. Beneath all that adipose laid the muscles; nicely packed away. This particular chest muscle was the Pectoralis Major. Upon cutting the muscle away came a gleam of hope in white. They were the rib bones. Success. It was over.

Dude, Where's my Coffee?!

I had an exam earlier in the day.
I have an extremely long day tomorrow.
I have a couple of lab reports due the day after tomorrow.
I have a presentation next week.
I have a review paper to write by next week.
I have my Finals in 3 weeks.
I have a  laptop which is dying.
I have a system that's running low on caffeine.
I have been diagnosed with exhaustion.

Surgeon: Naughty or Nice?

I discovered the flowchart on the right from one of the Medscape - Medical Student blogs. From what the chart suggests, and given the student that I am, I would best fit into Emergency Medicine. However, what I REALLY wanna do is Surgery. With reference to the chart, it requires me to be excellent at two things to be able to get into Surgery:

1) Hardworking 2) Mean

Mean? I gotta be mean to make my way through to Surgery. That is ridiculous. Surgeons are not mean. Wait, are they? (And I am reminded of Christina Yang from Grey's Anatomy now. "Scalpel Monster". Sighs.) 

What's harder than being Mean? HARDWORKING! We all can be mean if we want to. *evil smile* Then again, let me establish the fact that I am pretty nice to begin with so..anyways, both the intense effort to study and to be mean is laborious. Will these take a toll on me? I do not know. I really don't.

I should start considering Emergency Medicine.

Perhaps this whole specialty thing is a little too early for me to go nuts about but man, the batch of students I study with in class are competitive. Yeah, I hear you going "aren't all medical students competitive". Well, not exactly, you are on the blog of one who is pretty much slacking her way through med school and still surviving. Still surviving... 

Now you say it!

Singapore Medical Council has spoken. As of October 2009, they have decided to only recognise the post graduate medical degrees that are offered  to the local Chinese students and not the other medical programmes. These other programmes have a signigficant number of foreigners; quite a handful of Singpaoreans at that. And this change in rule, applies to the University I am currently enrolled in. It still puzzles me why they would allow us to do our internship there but just not employ us. Thank you Singapore, I really appreciate your move. I really do.

Kaboom!

The above picture illustrates a Brain Blast.
It has been identified as an aftermath of a particular Anatomy Class.

From the classroom

The first Anatomy class of the semester was VERY interesting. Interesting comes with a whole lot of new terms in an unfamiliar language often mispronounced by the cheena professor. Nevertheless, it was still awesome.

Some of the things that my K bank acquired:
Human body has 206 bones. (many are probably aware of this :P)
There are 10 different systems in the body.
We have 5 different types of bones.
There are 2 different types of bone marrow. Yellow bone marrow and Red bone marrow.
Hemopoiesis; the process of red blood cell production. In an infant, the spleen and liver produce these cells. However, in an adult the red bone marrow does the job. And it appears to be doing a great job by producing 2.5 million red blood cells every second.
The inorganic matrix of bone is made up of largely calcium and phosphorus. They contribute to two thirds of the weight of a bone.
The adult human body has 24 vertebrae. Originally, we were born with 34. As we develop, some of the bones fused to form bigger bones.

And many other information that will be posted as the semester goes by :D