Saturday, July 28, 2012

Too Sober for This

It's a Saturday night and I'm working on new and interesting ways to draw the sacral and lumbar plexuses.

It's suuuuuuper exciting you guys. Like, fist pumping in Jersey exciting.

So instead of drawing that...again...I'm going to compile a list of shots (courtesy of drinksmixer.com) that are anatomy related. (After reading through the list, I feel like a total prude because...seriously. Some of these are just plain obscene. I'm omitting those.)

Absolutly Screwed - if you've ever take an anatomy exam, you know this one is relevant.
Actual Buttery Nipple
Ass
Autopsy
Bare Ass
Blister
Breast Milk
Boot to the Head
Brain Damage
Brain Destroyer
Brain Eraser
Brain Eraser #2
Brain Freeze
Brain Hemmorage
Brain Hemmorhage #2
Brain Hemorrhage
Brain Tumor
Brain Tumor #2
Braindead
Braindead #2
Buttery Nipple
Buttery Nipple #2
Buttery Nipple #3
Buttery Nipple #4
Buttery Nipple With A Cherry Kiss
Buttery Nipples
Cardiac Arrest
Cerebellum
Cerebral Hemorage
Cerebral Hemorrhage #2
Evil Tongue
Flagella
Frosty Nipple
Head Shock
Headache
Headcrush
Headshot
Heart Attack
Heart Throb
Ironlung
Live Human Brains
Mind Eraser #2
Mind Eraser #4
Mind Game
Mindbender
Mindspaff
Mindtrip
Sperm
Slippery Nipple
Slippery Nipple #2
Slippery Nipple #3
Tonsil Tickler


Lotta nipple stuff. Lotta genital references too, but, well, we don't learn about that until next summer so I'm omitting it.



Anyway. Back to nerves and stuff.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Naming the Beast

They always say things are easier to handle if you can name them. The monster in the closet is a lot less scary when you know his name is Frank.

The pictures in this post may seem irreverent, but it's a heavy post and I needed to break it up somehow. 

Putting a name to the guy who did what he did on Thursday night hasn't done anything to help. In fact, the fact that he has such a generic name has made things worse.

Let me back up a step.

In case you've been living under a rock (lucky you if you have), last Thursday a guy named James Holmes, after apparently months of preparation, walked into a theater just a few miles from campus and shot over 70 people. He killed 12 of them, and when he was done (his THIRD gun jammed before he could use up the 6000+ rounds of ammo he had with him) he walked out to the parking lot and didn't even resist arrest.

Something like this has never happened so close to home for me. Even 9/11, which happened in the backyard I'd just moved away from, didn't freak me out this badly. I won't lie...I haven't been as nonchalant and brave as I'd always hoped I'd be in the face of something like this. And I wasn't even at the theater.

But I've got exams to take and a summer to survive, so I need to process this and move on. So to that end, I'm going to put a name to my emotions. Think of it as a little roll call for the monsters in my closet. Maybe it'll help some of you guys who may be dealing with this too.

Fear



There are some obvious sources of the fear. The big ones stem from the what ifs though. Like, what if we hadn't had an exam on Friday morning? Half my class would have been at that theater that night, quite possibly at that showing.
Or what if he'd decided to take his show to our school instead? He was a student at UC Denver AMC (my campus) until last month. He still had access to all the buildings, which are unlocked during the day. He could have come in to any given classroom and pulled the same thing. Wouldn't have had quite the theatrics of a dark theater and tear gas, but the devastation would have been similar.
And the what ifs don't stop at the past...what if someone else out there is just as sick and decides to copy him? What if this becomes a thing?

Which leads to the next monster:

Anger






What he did was heinous and horrifying. But it was also infuriating. How dare he invade a place of assumed trust? How dare he take away one of the few places that people can go and be gathered in the dark and feel safe about being there?

A little history on me: I don't like haunted houses. "Don't like" is an understatement. I have a long history of complete and utter terror in small, dark places where I think someone might be out to get me.

Movie theaters have never been an issue for me - they're dark and closed in, but they're big and there's no one trying to startle, scare, or kill me. Or, you know, that's how I felt before Thursday. Friday night, my brother went to see the movie in another state, across the country, and I literally couldn't breathe until I heard he was out again. That shouldn't happen. It's a freaking movie theater for crying out loud.

So, I'm angry. He didn't "just" hurt and kill all those people, he stole a safe place from the rest of us.

Which is a nice transition to the next monster...

Betrayal.



Not only did he steal the sense of security we have in a favorite place of pastime, but he betrayed our ability to profile. Bear with me here.

This guy came from a good family. His parents are smart, kind people (per neighbor accounts), and he was raised in a good neighborhood. He's smart. He's awkward, geeky, and probably was a little reclusive from moving to a new place.

Guys, this is what's killing me the most.

He's my people. I know his type. I watched the video of him giving the speech at summer camp. I know exactly the kind of guy he was before this. He's familiar territory for me. He could have been any given one of my classmates in undergrad.

Not only is he familiar territory, but for those of us who spend 8-16 hours a day on campus, he was one of us. When you go to a place every day...work, school, etc...there's an implicit pact you're making with everyone else who goes there every day. By showing up every day, you're saying "I'm part of this community, and so are you. You may annoy the crap out of me, but at the end of the day I've got your back." Maybe he missed that memo. Maybe no one told him he was part of the crowd. But he betrayed that pact in the worst possible way.

He brought a darkness and a chaos to a place we all held to be a safe space. It is a medical campus. Inherently, the place is there to teach people to do no harm. Of all the campuses and schools out there, this is the type that should be the safest of all. He broke that.

But on the flip side, there's this last monster...

Guilt



He walked our campus for months, and still in the end didn't feel connected enough to not do what he did. He didn't see himself as enough of a part of the organism that is our community to stop him from destroying it. Where were we? Why didn't anyone notice? He spent literally months preparing for this. Why didn't anyone notice?

I've found myself searching through half remembered faces to figure out if there was ever a moment where I might have run into him and done nothing to bring him back to the light side. What if I kept my eyes on the ground instead of looking up and smiling, at exactly the moment when he turned? What if I'm still doing that? What if there's someone else out there, breathing the same air I am, decaying inside because they don't feel connected to humanity anymore? I know, I know...everyone is responsible for their own decisions. But if everyone's seemingly independent decisions add up to a complete breakdown for someone else, it's hard not to take a little responsibility for that. I've been trying harder to make eye contact and smile when I'm out...it's hard, coming from 6 years of New England hospitality. But it's the only thing I've found to "do" right now that feels like I can at least say "I did the best I could" if something like this ever happened again.

I don't really have any answers here. I just needed to put it on paper (or computer) and name what I'm feeling so I can start moving on. We've had heightened security on campus this week, and they evacuated two buildings yesterday because of "suspicious packages". None of that's made me feel safer about being on campus. I think if they'd been more discreet in their security and let us keep pretending it didn't happen here, and it wasn't our campus, that maybe it would be easier to manage. But that's not the apples in this bushel, so we keep trucking.

Anyway, sorry for the heavy post. I hope it at least helps someone else process this...or at least doesn't turn everyone off reading for good. I promise, I'll have more fun stuff posted soon...ish.

Go hug a loved one. You just never know.


Sunday, July 15, 2012

Sometimes Google Images Is Helpful...

...and sometimes not. Looking for a good line drawing of the superior aspect of the skull, and this is what Google Images thought I wanted:

Nope. Not helpful.

The quest continues.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Not Dead...

...but not for lack of effort on school's part.

This semester is kicking my trash. Right now, I'm so burnt out, the only way I can study is to draw diagrams over and over. Even if my conscious brain isn't acknowledging receipt of information, my hands will know what to do on the exam and it'll be sort of like I have a note card there with me, if I can draw them right.

All faculty hazing aside, now that I'm seeing it applied I am really enjoying anatomy. It's fascinating. I am hopefully studying better for this exam than for the last one, but only time (ie, next Friday at 8 am) will tell. For now, here are a few of the less cadaverific things I'm learning:

Manual muscle testing.

If someone comes to you with a limitation, say, of the shoulder, there are a series of steps to take to determine what's causing the limitation. You first ask them to make whatever motion is limited (for kicks, let's say flexion, which is bringing your arm out in front of you) using both arms, to compare the two.

Clearly the limited side is his right side. 
You then "passively move the arm through the arc of motion". Translation: tell them to relax their arm, the bring it out in front of them as far as possible.

Now comes the Choose Your Own Adventure part of things.

If you can get the shoulder into full flexion (about 170 degrees), you test the shoulder flexor muscles' strength.

DON"T DO THIS EVER.

If you can't get the shoulder into full flexion, you pay attention to whether the patient is actively resisting (which might indicate pain) or if they simply can't go any further (which might indicate muscle shortness or tightness).

From there, you do stuff we haven't gotten to yet.

Anyway, that's my update. I'm still alive. School is kicking my trash. Tomorrow is an exam. Next week there are effectively 3 more (FOR THE SAME CLASS). The week after that there are 3 more, two of which make up 75% of my grade in one class.

So.

You know.

Still alive.

Surviving.