"tools of my trade, please me kind to me?" :P (adapted frm IMSS)

emm. after so many eye-opening anatomy practicals, i think today is particularly interesting.

i like anatomy practicals, at least compared to lectures and tutorials!:) haha.

anyways, unlike last semester, we had an UNTOUCHED body to ourselves this time, without all the meddling to the skin, thoraxic cage being pulled apart, the brain being sawed into half etc...

my group was assigned to this body, and i think she looked around 70 maybe. she has outgowths of lumps all over her chest, we thought it might be soil at first. lol. haha. but it turned out to be abnormal growths tht are found in many elderly pple, but hers were just the more serious case.

yup, probably cos we are doing the thorax this week, we were supposed to go through the many layers to skin, fat, muscle etc. and tear apart the upper part of the body, the thoracic region to expose the whole rib cage. & after a THICK layer of fat, and unkindly ripping through the muscles, we had the ribcage seen,with the layers of skin and muscle opened up and flipped to the sides, like an opened book.

lots of fluid just kept oozing out like nobody's business lol. by the end of the practical, we had like a whole basin full of body fluid. haha.

ok, more gross stuff.

next, we had to open up the rib cage from the top, from the sternum and folding the rib cage down. to do that, we had to use a SHEARS or a LARGE SAW to cut open the rib cage from the lateral sides. i always thought those "weapons" should be left to the gardeners to play with, instead we are using them to force our way through the ribcage so that we can see the lungs and heart that are underneath. we even had to use a HAMMER and a CHISEL to break the sternum at the neck. there were lots of cracking of bones and physical work done! haha. it was gross to a certain extent, esp with the increasing overwhelming smell frm the bodies that was filling the whole lab.

finally, with much effort to rip through the bones without piercing through the diaphragm and the lungs/heart, we folded down the ribcage from the top, NEARLY breaking the lower ribs with too much enthusiasm. haha. we got to view the massive lungs and heart underneath. she had larger organs than usual, prob cos she was overweight too.

we were supposed to take out both lungs by cutting through the hilum. it was not an easy task! since lungs are divided into lobes, and they sit in deep cavities, we really had to push our whole hands underneath into the cavity and rip the whole lungs out.

unfortunately, on the left side, the lung ripped into two, & on the right, it was nearly sheared apart too. haha. but it was indeed a sense of achievement seeing both HUGE lungs (ok, 4-5 mini lungs...hehe) in our hands.

we ended the practical with guess wat, "george clooney saves the day"! haha. we were shown this clip frm a war movie (rather old i think, cos george clooney looks rather much younger and the acting was weird) where one of his comarades got shot and had a tension pneumothorax, basically air in the lungs causing the difficulty in breathing. so he punctured a tube through the victim's chest and drew air out, and the man cld breathe again. haha. so he saved the man's life! yays. lols. :P anyways, i tot it was weird for a movie to show a medical situation so accurately focused, right down to the microscopic details of the lung, the alveoli and the collapsing lung were shown too............ ..... ok... hehe:)

yup, now, there is a fireworks display and carnival tmr at fed sq to mark the end of summer. Moomba waterfest 2008. i didn go last year so i really want to go. but, I HAVE A TEST ON MONDAY!!! lets just see...

still, going all the way to Taipan on sunday for yumcha is another thing i am looking forward to. hopefully, i wont be eating with the guilt of everyone else studying while i am pigging myself with siewmais.

ok, weekends are full AGAIN!

btw, HAPPY 19TH BIRTHDAY PHEY YEE:) hope u liked my card and the surprise we gave u today:) get all the glowly sticky stuff out of yr hair tonight ya:) enjoy!!:)

p.s. too bad phtotgraphy is not allowed in the labs... nvm, hope my "vivid" description is good enough. :)

oh, and i just got the issue of "Gubermaculum", the magazine frm the faculty, and

i tot the jokes at the bottom of the pages are really funny. plus, they are all quoted from our LECTURERS!!:) only some of which i can remember, which shows how much i really listen. lols.:) enjoy!

1) "when u see a fat patient, you might suspect that they have Cushing's (metabolic disorder), but mostly they're just fat."

2) "it is really quite humbling, in fact really humbling, to find out that all you are is a repackaged worm."

3) "someone will come in and say something like: "Doc, you gotta help me, my toddler, he's eating paper all the time, my other children cant do their homework cos it just gets eaten. he is eating through the phonebook.. he's up to L!"

(apparently, this i remember vividly, cos i was thinking, hey, i should have a brother like that! my teachers will never blame me for "eaten" homeworks! & this is true u know, there is a uncontrolled desire to eat anything and everything!)

4) "calcium: it must be seen. it must be seen by something to dowomething. how attention-seeking!"

5) "you should be proud and boast about your flatulence. flatence is good! of coz, it can get out of hand..."

and others...

haha, dont u think my lecturers are so queer, or lame! haha. and they apparently dont even realise it. haha.

also, good luck to those receiving their a level results today:):)

Dora, i wanna make sure u dont repeat lol :)

and some JI guy escaped frm prison the other day. the police even sent out an MMS with his face! wait till i see him in melb!:) watch out! haha.