Remember my first patient? My cadaver in Anatomy Dissection lab that is. Well, today I learned a lot of things about him. No, I do not know his name or what he did for a living or what he did for fun when he was still living his life. I don't even know what his face looks like yet (face is covered by a bag until we get to that part). The mystery with our patients is finding out what could have possibly ended their life. We're not given that information, so whatever we do come up with would be all speculations. Anyway, last week, we found out that his axillary vein on the right side of his body was much bigger than the left side's axillary vein, indicating blockage of some kind. One of our Anatomy professors decided to cut that vein open and indeed there was a ball of plaque in the vein. So yesterday and today we took the lungs and the heart out of the thoracic cavity and today we found out some things. There is a huge tumor on the superior side of his right lung and some of that lung tissue was also black which might mean that he was a smoker. Again all speculations. But the most interesting part was when we took out the heart (which was difficult because of the calcified tumor) and we realized that the tumor also reached his heart and was blocking his Superior vena cava. The SVC is a major vein that returns deoxygenated blood to the heart. But imagine that, most of the vein was blocked with only a tiny tiny hole in the middle. We were able to piece together that the blockage we saw in the axillary vein last week must have had something to do with that tumor. I wonder how long he lived with that tumor before it got to that point. I mean, the human body is just so wonderful. Although that major vein was blocked, the body would have somehow found another route(s) to get that blood back to the heart, maybe by using some of the other smaller accessory veins. Not for long of course but for as long as it could. The more we work on our patient, the more we get to discover. Who knows what else we will find?
I felt soooo stupid during lab today. I told myself to go home and not come back to medical school. So while I was looking at my patient, I realized that there were two, NOT ONE, BUT TWO phrenic nerves. Now, all of my life I thought that we only had one. The phrenic nerve is the nerve that innervates your diaphragm. But oh my God, I'm an imposter....take me away.
My second embryo exam was this past Monday and believe it or not I got the same exact score as last time which means that I was above the class average of 78 percent. Glory to God!!! I just pray that it continues like this. It's funny how just last month I was able to do what I wanted, when I wanted. But now all I do is study. THAT'S. LITERALLY. MY. WHOLE. EXISTENCE at the moment, it's sad lol.
AUC finally posted our pictures for the white coat ceremony. If you're interested at looking at the pics go to this link
Below are my two pictures along with the class picture. Can you spot me in the class pic? :)
TTYL!
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