Med School Madness

Wednesday night we went to Athens to stay with my grandparents for Thanksgiving. We watched the Cowgirl Barrel Horse Championships on TV and went to bed around 10:00. In the morning I ate fresh eggs for breakfast. We enjoyed Thanksgiving with the extended family and then Pop showed us where the fresh eggs came from.

I had so much fun on the tree run with my dad last year, I wanted to do it again!

We met at the vacant tree lot to head to the Christmas tree farm outside of Bakersville, NC at 5:00 am.

Spirits were high in the morning. I was glad the roadie dads making the trip didn’t find me to be a need for filtration on their humor and snarky comments. It was good daddy/daughter time in the mountains.

We loaded 606 douglas firs and 30 wreaths in to the back of a semi tractor trailor. Some of the trees were so big they would tip the conveyor belt used to lift the trees to the back of the truck. My dad discovered his purpose in life, serving as a ballast weight on the conveyor belt lift to keep it from crashing down on the people retrieving the tree at the top.

Dr. Gross teaching adolescent intubation

The Emergency Medicine Interest Group asked Dr. Gross to give a teaching workshop on intubating patients. I snagged one of the twenty available spots hoping that learning early would help me inflict less pain on someone later. We learned a few different techniques for opening airways and assisting ventilation. We practiced in the emergency room simulator with adult and child simulator dummies.

Amature Transplant’s Dorsal Horn Concerto

I guess I’d make a good zombie because I’m really starting to like this brain stuff.

Friday afternoon I went rappelling with the Emergency Medicine Interest Group at Aqueduct Park. Dr. Caudell instructed a brief lesson having groups act out emergency medicine scenarios and then we were given an intro to rappelling and an opportunity to rappel about 10 meters down into the aqueduct at the Augusta canal. From the bottom, some of us opted to climb back up the wall instead of taking the easy path out.

Love is the fart of every heart: It pains a man when ’tis kept close, And others doth offend, when ’tis let loose. — Sir John Suckling

Nothing to do with the wedding, which was beautiful, wonderful, perfect, indescribable….

More so to do with recent social endeavors.

NG stands for nasogastric, but after today I know it means no good tube.

Rather uncomfortable. We practiced on each other.

My nurse practicioner mother with a complete degree and legit licence asked me to help diagnose my dad. I’m happy to entertain your inquiries but realize that I know just enough to be dangerous. And, more importantly, don’t try and sue me.

She tells me, “Your father thinks he’s pulled his hamstrings… He feels like he’s always got a charley horse… He’s got a sharp pain on the upper, medial [inner] thigh.”

Oh heavens. Inconsistancy abounds. Today’s lesson:

The thigh muscles lie within three compartments separated by a thick layer of fascia (connective tissue wall) and supplied by different nerves.

– Your hamstrings (semimembrenous, semitendenous, and the long and short heads of biceps femoris) sit in the posterior compartment. They flex your knee, i.e., bring your heel to your butt.

– The anterior compartment holds your sartorius, iliopsoas, pectineus, and quadriceps femoris (femoris rectus, vastus medialis, vastus intermedius, and vastus lateralis) which flex the hip and extend the knee, i.e., perform a straight leg raise. If you tear these muscles, that is what is commonly called a “charley horse.”

– The medial compartment houses the obturator externus, gracilis, and adductor group (longus, brevis, and magnus.) These muscles adduct the leg, i.e., bring your legs together.

Perhaps the best part is that there is nothing wrong with my dad’s leg at all. Considering his medical history, his pain is most likely caused by ossification of his lumbar and sacral spine (namely L5, S1, and S2) impinging on his sciatic nerve resulting in pain shooting down his leg. This is one of the reason why your mother yells at you to “SIT RIGHT!” as a kid. Bad posture can eventually deform your spine.

In case I haven’t sufficiently violated HIPAA, my father, Neil Harvey Nix, is a 54 year old white male who has not signed any forms permitting me to broadcast his clinical condition over the internet.

Like I said… I know just enough to be dangerous and don’t sue my ass.

This has been my existence. Studying on my bed, encompassed by Wheater’s Functional Histology, Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, piles of note packets, a rainbow of highlighters, and a giant drawing of the TCA cycle. My mom told me I’m just like Big Bird sitting in his nest.